St Jerome

St Jerome (c. 331-420), also Jerome of Stridon, born Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, 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. In some sources Saint Jerome's year of berth is mentioned about c. 342–347. 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".

Saint Jerome's 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. His feast days are 30 September (Catholic Church) and 15 June (Eastern Orthodox Church).

Wisdom & Quotes

• A friend is long sought, hardly found, and with difficulty kept.

– Letter 3

• Love is not to be purchased, and affection has no price.

– Letter 3

• The friendship that can cease has never been real.

– Letter 3

• Love knows nothing of order.

- letter 7

• Sweet it is to lay aside the weight of the body and to soar into the pure bright ether. Do you dread poverty? Christ calls the poor blessed. (Luke 6:20) Does toil frighten you? No athlete is crowned but in the sweat of his brow. Are you anxious as regards food? Faith fears no famine. Do you dread the bare ground for limbs wasted with fasting? The Lord lies there beside you. Do you recoil from an unwashed head and uncombed hair? Christ is your true head. Does the boundless solitude of the desert terrify you? In the spirit you may walk always in paradise. Do but turn your thoughts there and you will be no more in the desert.

– Letter 14

• It is idle to play the lyre for an ass.

– Letter 27

• Everything must have in it a sharp seasoning of truth.

– Letter 31

• Do not let your deeds belie your words, lest when you speak in church someone may say to himself, "Why do you not practice what you preach?"

– Letter 52

• No one cares to speak to an unwilling listener. An arrow never lodges in a stone: often it recoils upon the sender of it.

– Letter 52

• That clergyman soon becomes an object of contempt who being often asked out to dinner never refuses to go.

– Letter 52

• A clergyman who engages in business, and who rises from poverty to wealth, and from obscurity to a high position, avoid as you would the plague.

– Letter 52

• It is worse still to be ignorant of your ignorance.

– Letter 53

• Even brute beasts and wandering birds do not fall into the same traps or nets twice.

– Letter 54

• Sometimes the character of the mistress is inferred from the dress of her maids.

– Letter 54

• The face is the mirror of the mind, and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.

– Letter 54

• The scars of others should teach us caution.

– Letter 54

• When the stomach is full, it is easy to talk of fasting.

– Letter 58

• Every day we are changing, every day we are dying, and yet we fancy ourselves eternal.

– Letter 60

• Early impressions are hard to eradicate from the mind. When once wool has been dyed purple, who can restore it to its previous whiteness?

– Letter 107

• We are always ready to imitate what is evil; and faults are quickly copied where virtues appear inattainable.

– Letter 107

• In solitude pride quickly creeps in.

- letters to Rusticus

• Opulence is always the result of theft, if not committed by the actual possessor, then by his predecessor.
• They fill their houses through the plunder and losses of others, so that the saying of the philosophers may be fulfilled, 'Every rich man is unjust or the heir of an unjust one.'

– Commentary on Jeremiah

• To die is the lot of all, to commit homicide only of the weak man.

– Apology Against Rufinus, Book 3

• The vices of our teachers are not to be imitated, their virtues are.

– Apology Against Rufinus, Book 3

• To sin is human, to lay snares is diabolical.

– Apology Against Rufinus, Book 3

St John Chrysostom

Nearby pages
St Joachim, St John, St John Chrysostom, St John the river, St John the town