St Jerome (Sept 30)
by the Revd Dr Robert Wilson PhD (Cantab), Old Roman Apostolate UK
Today we celebrate the feast of St. Jerome. He was born around the year 342 near Aquileia. He studied in Rome under Donatus, a noted pagan scholar, and soon himself became noted for his learning. He initially showed no great signs of sanctity and led a careless and irreligious life. Despite this, he was eventually baptised and determined to travel to improve his studies. He spent some time in Trier and then in Aquileia. He then decided to move East in order to further his desire to live an ascetic life. In 374 he settled in Antioch. He suffered from ill health and later recalled how in a feverish state he imagined himself appearing before the judgement seat of Christ. He was asked who he was and replied that he was a Christian. He was told “Thou liest, thou art a Ciceronian, for where thy treasure is, there is thy heart also.” This experience made a deep impression on him. He realised that his preoccupation with learning had been essentially pagan rather than Christian and determined to withdraw into the wilderness of Chalcis, south east of Antioch, to live the life a hermit. This lasted for four years. The church of Antioch was much divided at the time and St. Jerome eventually became embroiled in controversy. The West acknowledged Paulinus as Bishop of Antioch and St. Jerome was ordained to the priesthood by him (though he had no wish to be ordained and never celebrated the Eucharist, continuing to regard himself primarily as a scholar and a monk). He later studied at Constantinople under St. Gregory of Nazianzen, but when he resigned his episcopate in 382, St. Jerome travelled to Rome to attend a council.
It was while in Rome that St. Damasus, the Bishop of Rome, asked him to be his secretary and consequently St. Jerome remained in Rome. Along with his official duties he had a great impact on society in Rome, encouraging many prominent aristocratic women to embrace the religious life. This aroused much controversy and, after the death of his patron St. Damasus in 384, St. Jerome was compelled to withdraw from Rome and return once more to the East. He eventually settled in Bethlehem where he remained for the rest of his life. Despite his vocation to live a life of withdrawal from the world he could not resist becoming embroiled in further controversies. He had earlier argued with Helvidius, who had said that Jesus’ brothers were his actual brothers, rather than cousins, as St. Jerome claimed. He now argued with Jovinian, who had said that marriage was equal in value to celibacy, a claim that St. Jerome bitterly resisted to such an extent that he said things that were unnecessarily derogatory of the married state. He also argued with Vigilantius, who criticised the cult of relics that was so prominent in the life of the Church. The sharpest controversy of all came with his former friend Rufinus, who had continued to defend the legacy of the third century Alexandrian exegete Origen, a great biblical scholar who had espoused heretical views on some subjects such as the pre-existence of the soul (a Platonic rather than Christian notion) and universalism. St. Jerome had himself initially been a great admirer of Origen, but later came to believe him to be a heretic who had been more Platonist than Christian.
St. Jerome’s greatest contribution lay not in his controversial writings but in his biblical scholarship. He had begun this work while in Rome, but now in Bethlehem was able to fully devote his energies to biblical translation. He lived to a great age and died on this day in 420.
The life of St. Jerome provides a valuable case study of many of the conflicting forces at work in the fourth and early fifth century. St. Jerome was born at a time when the toleration of Christianity was a relatively new phenomenon. By the time of his death it had become the official religion of the Empire. Hence, he lived in an age when the Christian faith had finally become something respectable to uphold. Inevitably, this led to a general dilution of religious fervour and an increasing worldliness in the Church. St. Jerome determined to resist this development, along with many others of his contemporaries who were drawn to the East to seek an ascetic life. He was conscious that his own education had been more pagan than Christian and determined to make good this deficit in later life. The paradox of the situation is that, for all his desire to renounce the world, he could never resist the temptation to become embroiled in ceaseless controversy of a type that would seem to reflect more his pagan rhetorical training than any specifically Christian influence. Though he desired to uphold orthodoxy at a time when it seemed to be continually under threat, he struggled to find a way to speak the truth in love and this meant that he ended up quarrelling with most of those whom he worked with, including former friends.
Despite these defects his lasting legacy lay in his work as a biblical scholar and translator. He realised the importance of translating from the Hebrew originals rather than the Greek text of the Septuagint and this would form the basis of the Vulgate, the Bible of the Latin Church, for which he is justly famous. Though no one translation of the Bible is perfect St. Jerome’s Vulgate became the accepted standard translation, showing his linguistic skill and immense learning. Unlike his contemporary, St. Augustine, St. Jerome was not an original thinker. His place among the four great Latin doctors (St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, St. Jerome and St. Gregory the Great) was secured by his biblical scholarship. Though it would be true to say that in the heat of controversy he sometimes showed a zeal that was not according to knowledge he was motivated by a desire to uphold orthodoxy in an age when it seemed to be continually under threat.
Let us pray that we will follow the example of St. Jerome and continue to faithfully uphold that same orthodox Christian faith today.
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