Jerome

Life events

1. Born

   Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus was born at Stridon, of Illyrian ancestry, sometime between 342 and 347 AD.

2. Educated

   Jerome traveled to Rome with his friend Bonosus of Sardica to study rhetoric and philosophy, studying under the philologist Aelius Donatus; he was baptized in Rome during this same period.

3. Other

   Jerome withdrew for approximately four to five years to the desert of Chalcis southeast of Antioch — known as the Syrian Thebaid — where he made his first attempt to learn Hebrew under a converted Jew and translated portions of the Gospel of the Hebrews into Greek.

4. Wrote — 380

   While in Constantinople around 380, Jerome composed his Chronicon, a translation, reworking, and continuation of the Chronicon of Eusebius, which became an influential historical text in Latin Christendom.

5. Wrote — 382

   As protégé of Pope Damasus I in Rome from 382, Jerome undertook a revision of the Vetus Latina Gospels based on Greek manuscripts and updated the Psalter, launching what would become decades of Bible translation work.

6. Exiled — 385

   Soon after the death of Pope Damasus I on 10 December 384, Jerome was compelled to leave Rome following a clerical inquiry into allegations of an improper relationship with the widow Paula; Roman opinion had already turned against him over the death of Paula's daughter Blaesilla, whose health collapsed under his ascetic guidance.

7. Wrote — 405

   Jerome completed his translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew by 405, working from a monastery in Bethlehem funded by Paula; by 390 he had turned to translating directly from Hebrew rather than the Septuagint, departing from all prior Latin tradition, producing what became the core of the Vulgate.

8. Died — 420

   Jerome died on 30 September 420, having spent approximately 34 years near Bethlehem producing biblical commentaries and polemical writings after completing the Vulgate.

Relationships

Documented claims

• Jerome's Vulgate Old Testament was translated directly from Hebrew rather than the Septuagint, breaking with all prior Latin translations and placing him in controversy with Augustine, who held the Septuagint divinely inspired. (certain)
• Jerome is often depicted with a lion — based on a hagiographical tradition that he tamed a lion by healing its paw — a story scholars trace to confusion with Gerasimus or to the Roman tale of Androcles; it first appears in Jacobus de Voragine's thirteenth-century Golden Legend. (legendary)
• Between 392 and 393, Jerome composed De Viris Illustribus, a biobibliography spanning four centuries of Christian writers from the apostolic age through his own day — the first such systematic canon in Latin Christianity. (certain)
• The Catholic Church recognizes Jerome as patron saint of translators, librarians, and encyclopedists; the Council of Trent in 1546 declared the Vulgate authoritative for public lectures, disputations, sermons, and expositions. (certain)
• A passage in Jerome's hagiography describing six ounces of barley bread daily, dimming eyes, and a stony skin eruption relieved by adding oil to his diet is identified by modern scholars as the earliest recorded account of severe vitamin A deficiency, its symptoms, and its cure. (plausible)