Jerome: Everything About the “Doctor of the Church”

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

St. Jerome is one of the most influential figures in the history of Christianity, revered as a "Doctor of the Church" for his theological insights and scholarly contributions. Yet his life was marked by controversy, theological debates, personal struggles, and a profound quest for spiritual truth.

Who is Jerome? In this article, I’ll examine the life of Jerome, tracing his early years in a small town, his education in Rome, his monastic experiences in the desert, and his pivotal role in the development of biblical translation, as well as the controversies and challenges he faced.

Jerome’s Early Life

Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus was born sometime between the years 342 and 347 CE. In English sources, by the way, the name “Hieronymus” was later anglicized to “Jerome.” He was born in a small town called Stridon in the Roman province of Dalmatia, which included modern-day northern Albania, much of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia. The original name for this region was Illyria, and it had its own language which has long been extinct.

In Jerome: His Life, Writings, and Controversies,  J.N.D. Kelly notes that Jerome’s family was quite wealthy and owned large tracts of land around Stridon. This can be confirmed, according to Kelly, by letters later sent from Jerome to his younger brother Paulinianus instructing him to sell off some of those lands. By the way, if you’re interested in Jerome’s letters, 150 of them are freely available here.

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Jerome writes in his Preface to Job, as well as one of his copious letters, that his parents were Christians. The name he shared with his father — Eusebius, meaning “devout” in Greek — was a common Christian name in the Roman Empire. Although Jerome wasn’t baptized as an infant, his parents did make sure he was enrolled as a catechumen, someone receiving instruction in the Christian faith. Kelly notes that, although infant baptism was common at the time, equally common was the practice of postponing it until the turbulence of adolescence and even young  manhood had passed (Augustine of Hippo did this, for instance).

For all intents and purposes, Jerome lived the normal childhood of the son of a wealthy family, including a basic education, until he reached adolescence.

Jerome’s Education in Rome

Wealthy children in the ancient Mediterranean world were often sent away from home for their education. Jerome was sent to Rome, along with his friend Bonosus of Sardica, to study rhetoric and philosophy. Kelly says that this normally happened in wealthy families in the 4th century when a child was around the age of 12. There, Jerome studied under a well-known grammarian and teacher of rhetoric named Aelius Donatus, learning Latin and at least some Greek.

From his many letters, we know that during the years he spent in Rome, the young Jerome had several friends and classmates in addition to Bonosus. One of these was Turranius Rufinus, with whom Jerome would maintain contact for years, although that contact would not always be friendly. Another was named Heliodorus, a man with whom he would maintain a lifelong friendship.

From those same letters, we discover that the young Jerome was interested in more than education while at Rome. In one of these, he writes of himself as the Prodigal Son, who was “befouled with the squalor of every kind of sin.” He also says that he had fallen “on the slippery path of youth.” He illuminates this further when he writes that, as an older man, he praised virginity, not because he himself was a virgin but because he admired what he had lost.

However, in Jerome’s Commentary on Ezekiel he writes that to relieve his conscience for indulging in those hedonistic pleasures, he would visit the burial places of martyrs and the apostles in the catacombs:

That last line from Vergil, the translation of which means “Horror strikes hearts everywhere, and at the same time the very silences terrify them," betrays both Jerome’s fearful state of mind at that time as he contemplated eternal damnation and the vast influence of his classical education through famous Latin authors such as Vergil and Terrence.

Solitude and Asceticism in the Desert

Jerome’s formal education probably ended when he was around 20 years old as it did for most wealthy young men. His hedonistic days over, he seems to have begun taking his spiritual life more seriously. There are, unfortunately, very few clues from this time of his life, but Kelly notes that there are a few hints from letters written much later.

He made his way first to the city of Trier in modern-day Germany, along with his friend Bonosus. In one of his letters, he says they lived in a place on the banks of the Rhine river. Our only hint about his activities in Trier is one small phrase in which he says he had copied some well-known books to keep for his library.

After a stay of undetermined length, he made his way back to Stridon, his hometown, presumably without Bonosus. We don’t know how long he stayed there, but this time of his life was characterized by a long period of travel during which he visited the city of Aquileia in northern Italy and then Antioch, Syria. While in Antioch, he was visited by his friend from student days Heliodorus, who had some notable news: their old friend Rufinus was living as a monk at a place called Nitria, a well-known monastic settlement in Egypt. He then learned that Bonosus had become a solitary monk on a tiny island in the Adriatic Sea.

The news of his former companions inspired Jerome to become a desert monk himself. He therefore traveled to the Syrian desert of Chalcis, not far from Antioch, where many solitary monks were known to live. His letters say that it was here that he first began to learn Hebrew from a local Jewish Christian. Additionally, in his book Nazarene Jewish Christianity: From the End of the New Testament Period Until Its Disappearance in the Fourth Century, Ray Pritz writes that at this time, Jerome was able to read and copy a Gospel written in Hebrew, later translating it into Greek, getting more practice in translation which would later serve him well.

Like other solitary monks in Chalcis, Jerome probably lived in a cave, according to Kelly. We know that he also fasted extensively and spent large amounts of time in solitude. However, there was sporadic contact with other monks living nearby. This contact would lead to a controversy based on an ongoing disagreement in the larger Christian world over the proper way to understand the Trinity.

One of Jerome’s letters from this time was to a local priest, complaining that other monks in the area were insulting and abusing him for his position on the Trinity. Basically, there were arguments over whether God was one in three persons, or three separate beings, much as Arius had apparently claimed decades before and for which he had been denounced at the Council of Nicaea. This would not be the last controversy in Jerome’s theological life.

Later, for example, Jerome and his former friend Rufinus would conduct a heated war of words over the writings of Origen of Alexandria. Many in the Church had already condemned some of Origen’s ideas by this time, including the pre-existence of souls and Origen’s use of Platonic philosophy. Jerome thus vehemently denounced Origen while Rufinus, whose Latin translations of some of Origen’s writings are still our only copies, staunchly defended Origen as a spiritual authority.

This highlights Jerome’s fiery personality. J.N.D. Kelly writes that while Rufinus’ letters reveal him to be “more cautious, more deliberate, more steadfast,” Jerome’s letters show that he was “much more passionate, impulsive, egotistical… and sensitive” to criticism.

Constantinople and a Return to Rome

The abuse he suffered, especially the indignity of being called a heretic, made Jerome angry enough that he finally decided to leave the desert. He went first to Constantinople, capital of the eastern Empire. While living there, he attended the Council of Constantinople, a fairly small council at which debates about the nature of the Trinity continued. In addition, he wrote a commentary on Isaiah 6 in the form of a letter to the current Pope Damasus in Rome. This would be his foray into serving the Pope.

Though we don’t know the details of how he was taken on, the next we see of Jerome is when he serves as the Pope’s protégé in Rome. Among his other clerical and ecclesiastical duties, he started a revision of the already-translated Latin versions of the Gospels.

At that time in Rome, Jerome was often surrounded by wealthy women who would be his benefactors and patrons. These included the widows Marcella, Lea, and Paula, as well as Paula's daughters, Blaesilla and Eustochium. His influence and commitment to asceticism caused these women to reject the hedonism of Roman life. In his preface to Cartas de S. Jerónimo (Letters of St. Jerome), Ruiz Bueno writes that approximately 40% of Jerome’s letters were addressed to them and that he was criticized by the Roman clergy for spending so much time with women.

When Pope Damasus died in 384 CE, Jerome was removed from his position, partly because of lascivious allegations about his relationship with the widow Paula. In addition, Jerome's condemnation of Blaesilla's decadent lifestyle led her to take on severe ascetic practices, so severe, in fact, that she died just four months after beginning to follow his instructions. Many Roman elites were outraged. It was time for Jerome to leave Rome.

The Monastery at Bethlehem

The widow Paula paid for Jerome to travel to and live in a monastery in Bethlehem. It was here that he would finally work intensively on his Latin translation of the Bible, which came to be known as the Vulgate and which he had begun in Rome in 382 CE. He first revised older Latin versions of the Gospels, and then began an extensive translation of the entire Hebrew Bible. His translation differed from previous versions, however, since he translated directly from the Hebrew rather than the Greek version, known as the Septuagint.

He completed the entire Bible by 405 CE. Augustine of Hippo thought Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew was a mistake, believing that the Septuagint was itself an inspired translation. In addition, modern scholars have often disparaged Jerome’s grasp of the Hebrew and, thus, the accuracy of his translation. However, in Jerome's Hebrew Philology: A Study Based on His Commentary on Jeremiah, Michael Graves concludes that Jerome was an adequate, if not proficient, translator of Hebrew.

Jerome lived the next 15 years in the monastery at Bethlehem, producing vast quantities of writings, including commentaries, letters, histories, and hagiographies (biographies of saints), despite failing eyesight. He died in Bethlehem in 420 CE.

Conclusion

Coming from a highly-privileged Christian family in Stridon, Jerome was sent to Rome, like other scions of Roman wealth, to further his education. The years he spent in Rome and his studies in Latin rhetoric and grammar, would stand him in good stead later as an author and scholar.

In addition to enjoying the pleasures of youth, the young Jerome found himself fearing eternal punishment. Nevertheless, his time spent repenting in the catacombs among the bodies of saints seems to have convinced him to take his Christian life more earnestly.

Drawn to the asceticism of desert monks, Jerome then spent time in the Syrian desert, living a mostly solitary life of prayer and austerity and only leaving when theological controversy erupted around him, exposing him to accusations of heresy. As a result, he returned to Rome.

In Rome, working for Pope Damasus, he began what would become his masterpiece: the Vulgate, a Latin translation of the entire Bible, rendered from the original languages. However, accused by the Roman elite of scandal and being responsible for the death of a young woman under his tutelage, Jerome fled to a monastery in Bethlehem where he lived out his final years.

In the Catholic Church, he is the patron saint of translators, librarians, and encyclopedists, for obvious reasons.