HIERONYMUS

Best known as Saint Jerome. One of the most famous of the Latin Fathers of the Church. He was born at Stridon on the borders of Dalmatia and Pannonia, about A.D. 340. He was the son of respectable and wealthy Christian parents, and received in Rome and Treves a secular education in rhetoric and philosophy. In 374, during a journey in the East, he was alarmed by a dream, which led to his withdrawing from the world and living as a hermit in the Syrian desert. After five years he left his retirement and lived in Antioch, Constantinople, and Rome, till he settled at Bethlehem in 386. He there founded a monastery and a school of learning, and he ended an active life in 420. Among his numerous works mention must be made of his translation and continuation (in 380 B.C.) of the Greek Chronological Tables of Eusebius (q.v.); this is of great value for the history of Roman literature, owing to its quotations from the work of Suetonius De Viris Illustribus, which was then extant in its complete form. In imitation of the latter and under a similar title he wrote a work on Christian Literature. He also wrote the well-known Latin version of the Bible known as the Vulgate, which is, strictly speaking, a revision, and in part a new version, of an older translation.