Jerome

Jerome (?347-420 CE) – his name in Latin was Eusebius Hieronymus - was a Christian saint, translator, biblical commentator, and voluminous letter-writer. His Latin translation of the Bible (known as the Vulgate) was the first to translate the Old Testament from the original Hebrew (rather than from the Greek of the Septuagint).

Jerome was born, sometime in the 340s, into a wealthy family in Stridon, a village not far from the Roman settlement of Emona in what is now Slovenia. At the age of 12 he was sent to Rome to continue his education, and after completing his studies there devoted much of the next two decades to travel: in the late 360s, for example, he spent time in Treveris (modern Trier); in 369 visited an area of Slovenia close to his birthplace; and in the early 370s lived for a time in the city of Aquileia in northern Italy. From the mid-370s, however, apart from a period of three years (382-385) when he returned to Rome to become secretary to Pope Damasus I, Jerome spent the final four-and-a-half decades of his life in the Middle East, from 375 to 377 as a hermit in the desert of Chalcis in northern Lebanon, and from 377 at Antioch in Syria, where he studied biblical texts, translated Origen and Eusebius from the Greek, and in 382 began to learn Hebrew. On his return to the Middle East in 385, after the death of Pope Damasus, Jerome was accompanied by a small group of wealthy aristocratic women who shared his ascetic ideals and looked to him as their spiritual adviser. A member of this group, Paula, financed the building of a monastery in Bethlehem, and it was in this monastery that Jerome lived for the rest of his life. His translation of the Bible, begun in 382, was completed in 405, and he devoted the remaining years of his life to composing commentaries on various books of the Bible, to writing treatises on moral and theological questions, and to managing his extensive correspondence with other scholars and lay Christians..

Jerome is venerated as a Christian saint and numbered by Roman Catholics among the Doctors (i.e., teachers) of the Church. He is traditionally considered to be the patron saint of translators, librarians, and encyclopaedists.