St. Jerome: The Cranky Translator

“Read assiduously and learn as much as you can. Let sleep find you holding your Bible, and when your head nods let it be resting on the sacred page.”

Albrecht Dürer's St. Jerome in his Study

I discovered the story of St. Jerome when I was researching the patron saint of those who proclaim the Word of God during Mass. Turns out that more than just the patron saint of lectors, he is also is a prayer advocate for librarians, libraries, archivists, translators and encyclopedists.

St. Jerome was born in 347 and is named as one of the Doctors of the Church. He was a priest, spent years of his life as a hermit but is most famous for his numerous literary works, particularly his translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek to Latin (called the Vulgate).

What is beautiful about this translation is that St. Jerome made the Scripture accessible to the general population who could understand Latin. At the time, the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greeks and mostly unavailable to the faithful except through liturgy or the clergy. St. Jerome's translation would hugely influence biblical writings for much of the Middle Ages.

One of my favorite images of St. Jerome is an engraving by Albrecht Durer. As the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford writes, "Jerome is shown with his traditional attributes: a crucifix, a skull symbolising mortality, the lion from whose paw he had removed a thorn and a cardinal’s hat denoting his service to the Church. The composition is unusual in relegating Jerome to the back of the space, but this only serves to emphasise his absolute concentration on his work, oblivious to the furnishings of his study that Dürer has realised in astonishing detail." (To be fair, this colored image is a later interpretation of what is otherwise a black and white engraving.)

Interestingly, even though the act of meticulous generosity (resulting in the translation of the Bible) would suggest otherwise, St. Jerome was, as Word of Fire describes it, cantankerous and cranky. What a relief for those of us who struggle with patience and yearn for sanctity!

Another fun piece of trivia about St. Jerome is that he is said to have tamed a lion by removing a thorn from its paw. Of course there is much legend and history interwoven together in stories such as these, but it's incredible to see all the medieval art that seems to uphold the story as true!

St. Jerome's feast day is September 30 and a great way to celebrate is reading one of your favorite Gospels or Bible story. (Preferably cuddled up with a few pets, just in case you don't have tame lion handy.)

“Read assiduously and learn as much as you can. Let sleep find you holding your Bible, and when your head nods let it be resting on the sacred page.”

Some other great quotes from St. Jerome on Sacred Scripture:

“Exercise your mind, feed it daily with Holy Scripture.”

“Let a priest's speech be seasoned with Sacred Scripture.”

“It is wrong to say Scripture lies, nay, it is impious even to admit the very notion of error where the Bible is concerned.”

“Love the Bible and wisdom will love you; love it and it will preserve you; honor it and it will embrace you. These are the jewels you should wear around your neck and on your ears.”

“Just as we have to dig for gold in the earth, so we have to dig deep into Sacred Scripture for its divine meaning.”

“What other life can there be without knowledge of the Bible wherein Christ, the life of them that believe, is set before us?”

“Does one not seem to dwell, already here on earth, in the Kingdom of Heaven when one lives within these sacred texts, when one meditates upon them?”

St. Jerome and the Lion by Scott Gustafson