RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Jerome
panied them and acted as their spiritual adviser. The pilgrims, joined by Bishop Paulinus of Antioch, visited Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and the 3. Resi- holy places of Galilee, and then went dence in to Egypt, the home of the great Palestine heroes of the ascetic life. In Alexanafter 385. dria Jerome listened to the blind catechist Didymus expounding the prophet Hosea and telling his reminiscences of the great Anthony, who had died thirty years before; he spent some time in Nitria, admiring the disciplined community life of the numerous inhabitants of that " city of the Lord," but detecting even there " concealed serpents," i.e., the poison of Origenistic heresy. Late in the summer of 386 he was back in Palestine, and settled down for the remainder of his life in a hermit's cell near Bethlehem, surrounded by a few friends, both men and women (including Paula and Eustochium), to whom he acted as priestly guide and teacher. Amply provided by Paula with the means of livelihood and of increasing his collection of books, he led a life of incessant activity in literary production. To these last thirty-four years of his career belong the most important of his works — his version of the Old Testament from the original text, the best of his scriptural commentaries, his catalogue of Christian authors, and the dialogue against the Pelagians, the literary perfection of which even a controversial opponent recognized. To this period also belong the majority of his passionate polemics, which distinguished him among the orthodox Fathers, including notably the treatises occasioned by the Origenistic controversy against Bishop John of Jerusalem and his early friend Rufinus. As a result of his onslaughts on the Pelagians, he was subjected to actual persecution at their hands about the beginning of 416, when a body of excited partizans broke into the monastic buildings, set them on fire, and laid violent hands on the inmates, killing a deacon, and forcing Jerome to seek safety in a neighboring fortress. The date of his death is given by the Chronicon of Prosper. His remains, originally buried at Bethlehem, are said to have been later translated to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore at Rome, though other places in the West claim some relics — the cathedral at Nepi boasting the possession of his head, which, according to another tradition, is in the Escurial.
II. Works: The writings of Jerome cover nearly all the principal departments of Christian theology; but the most numerous and important 1. Biblical belong to that of Biblical study, inand eluding especially his labors for the Exegetical. improvement or translation of the Latin text. His knowledge of Hebrew, primarily required for this branch of his work, gives also to his exegetical treatises (especially to those written after 386) a value greater than that of most patristic commentaries, although he is as a rule too much hampered by Jewish tradition, and indulges too often in allegorical and mystical subtleties after the manner of Philo and the Alexandrian school. But he deserves credit for the distinctness with which he emphasizes the difference between the Old-Testament Apocrypha and the
Hebraica Veritas of the canonical books (cf. especially his introductions to the Books of Samuel, see Prologus Galeatus, to the Solomonic writings, to Tobit, and to Judith. His exegetical works fall into three groups : (a) his translations or recastings of Greek predecessors, including fourteen homilies on Jeremiah and the same number on Ezekiel by Origen (translated c. 380 in Constantinople); two homilies of Origen on the Song of Solomon (in Rome, c. 383); and thirty-nine on Luke (c. 389, in Bethlehem). The nine homilies of Origen on Isaiah included among his works were not done by him. Here should be mentioned, as an important contribution to the topography of Palestine, his book De situ et nominibus locorum Hebraeorum, a translation with additions and some regrettable omissions of the Onomasticon of Eusebius. To the same period (c. 390) belongs the Liber interpretationis nominum Hebraicorum, based on a work supposed to go back to Philo and expanded by Origen. (b) Original commentaries on the Old Testament. To the period before his settlement at Bethlehem and the following five years belong a series of short Old-Testament studies — De seraphim, De voce Osanna, De tribus quaestionibus veteris legis (usually included among the letters as xviii., xx., xxxvi.); Quaestiones hebraicae in Genesin; Commentarius in Ecclesiasten; Tractatus septem in Psalmos x.-xvi. (lost); Explanations in Michaeam, Sophoniam, Nahum, Habacuc, Aggaeum. About 395 he composed a series of longer commentaries, though in rather a desultory fashion — first on the remaining seven minor prophets, then on Isaiah (c. 395-c. 400), on Daniel (c. 407), on Ezekiel (between 410 and 415), and on Jeremiah (after 415, left unfinished), (c) New-Testament commentaries. These include only Philemon, Galatians, Ephesians, and Titus (hastily composed 387-388); Matthew (dictated in a fortnight, 398); Mark, selected passages in Luke, the prologue of John, and Revelation. Treating the last-named book in his cursory fashion, he made use of an excerpt from the commentary of the North- African Tichonius, which is preserved as a sort of argument at the beginning of the more extended work of the Spanish presbyter Beatus of Libana. But before this he had already devoted to the Apocalypse another treatment, a rather arbitrary recasting of the commentary of Victorinus (d. 303), with whose chiliastic views he was not in accord, substituting for the chiliastic conclusion a spiritualizing exposition of his own, supplying an introduction, and making certain changes in the text.
One of Jerome's earliest attempts in the department of history was his Temporum liber, composed
c. 380 in Constantinople; this is a re- 2. His- casting in Latin of the chronological torical. tables which compose the second part
of the Chronicon of Eusebius, with a supplement covering the period from 325 to 379. In spite of numerous errors taken over from Eusebius, and some of his own, Jerome produced a valuable work, if only for the impulse which it gave to such later chroniclers as Prosper, Cassiodorus, and Victor of Tannuna to continue his annals. Three other works of a hagiological nature are the Vita Pauli monachi, written during his first sojourn at
Jerome
Jerome of Prague