Eusebius Hieronymus (Saint Jerome)
Eusebius Hieronymus (Saint Jerome)
Circa 347-420 c.e.
Bishop, bible translator, saint
Bible Translator. Jerome was born into a Christian family in Strido, near the Adriatic coast in northern Italy. As a boy he was sent to Rome, where he was taught by the scholar Donatus, among others. In 373 he went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On the way he fell ill, and stayed in the desert for three years. Ordained as a priest in 379, he accompanied the bishop of Antioch to the Council of Constantinople in 382 and then to Rome. There he became Pope Damasus’s secretary and received the task of revising the old Latin translation of the Bible. This assignment took him until about 406, but it became the version used in western Christendom until the time of Martin Luther. After Damasus’s death, Jerome returned to Asia Minor, accompanied by a rich widow and her daughter, settling eventually in Bethlehem, where he died in 419 or 420.
Sources
Adam Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Quaestiones hebraicae in Genesim (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993; New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).
J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies (London: Duck-worth, 1975).