St Jerome

St Jerome (331-420) was a Father of the Church, and also a prolific writer and thinker, born at Stridon in North Illyria, a town on the confines of Dalmatia and Pannonia, of rich parents, presumably Christian, although he first became Christian himself of his own election after he was grown up. He went to Rome, probably about 360, where he was baptized. From the day of his baptism, "he left," as he says, "not only parents and kindred, but the accustomed luxuries of delicate life".

His fame rests on a translation of the Scriptures into Latin, known as the Vulgate, which he executed at Bethlehem at intervals from A.D. 385 to 404, with the design of showing to the Latin world what was and what was not contained in the original documents for the faith of the Church, and with the result, that in the long run the Old and the New Testaments were for the first time presented to and received by the Church as both of equal, or at least common authority, and as both sections of one book.

Wisdom & Quotes

• Love knows nothing of order.

- letter 7

• In solitude pride quickly creeps in.

- letters to Rusticus

St John Chrysostom