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The saints

St. Jerome

The scholar who went to live beside the cave of the Nativity, and gave the West its Bible.

Feast: 30 September · about 340 to 420 · The early Church · Stridon, Rome and Bethlehem

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An old Latin inscription cut into the rock at the grave of St. Jerome, beneath the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

Qasinka, 2013. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

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Bethlehem, 386

After the death of his patron Pope Damasus, a brilliant and sharp-tongued scholar leaves Rome.1

By way of Antioch and Alexandria he reaches Bethlehem in 386.1

He would stay there for the rest of his life, translating the Scriptures from the Hebrew.

Patron of librarians, scholars and translators3

01St. Jerome

The Bible in Latin

In Rome, under Pope Damasus, Jerome corrected the Latin version of the Four Gospels in 384.1

In Bethlehem he went on to translate the Old Testament from the Hebrew.1

The Catechism quotes him: ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.2

02St. Jerome

Bethlehem

He died at Bethlehem on 30 September 420.1

An old Latin inscription cut into the rock at the grave of St. Jerome, beneath the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
The inscription at St. Jerome’s grave in the caves beneath the Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem. Qasinka, 2013. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

Live it this week

Read one Gospel through

Jerome said that not knowing the Scriptures is not knowing Christ. Read the Gospel of Mark this week, about two chapters a day. It’s the shortest Gospel and you can finish it by Sunday.

Notes

How we know · 3 sources for this page
  1. Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), “St. Jerome”. New Advent edition. newadvent.org
  2. Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 133. vatican.va
  3. Franciscan Media, Saint of the Day: “Saint Jerome”. franciscanmedia.org. franciscanmedia.org

The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913) is in the public domain; we quote the New Advent edition. Texts of the Holy See are quoted briefly from vatican.va. Scripture: World English Bible, Catholic edition (public domain); Verse numbers are modern, with Douay-Rheims numbers in brackets where they differ. Photographs: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image; full list on the photo credits page.

Lines in the narrator’s voice, without a note, are our reflection, not a historical claim. Stone & Incense restates Church teaching in plain words; our wording is not an official Church text. Report an errorCorrections.