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St. Jerome’s importance lies in the facts: (1) That he was the author of the Vulgate Translation of the Bible into Latin, (2) That he bore the chief part in introducing the ascetic life into Western Europe, (3) That his writings more than those of any of the Fathers bring before us the general as well as the ecclesiastical life of his time. It was a time of special interest, the last age of the old Greco-Roman civilization, the beginning of an altered world. It included the reigns of Julian (361–63), Valens (364–78), Valentinian (364–75), Gratian (375–83), Theodosius (379–95) and his sons, the definitive establishment of orthodox Christianity in the Empire, and the sack of Rome by Alaric (410). It was the age of the great Fathers, of Ambrose and Augustine in the West, of Basil, the Gregories, and Chrysostom in the East.
Jovinianus, about whom little more is known than what is to be found in Jerome's treatise, published a Latin treatise outlining several opinions: That a virgin is no better, as such, than a wife in the sight of God. Abstinence from food is no better than a thankful partaking of food. A person baptized with the Spirit as well as with water cannot sin. All sins are equal. There is but one grade of punishment and one of reward in the future state. In addition to this, he held the birth of Jesus Christ to have been by a "true parturition," and was thus refuting the orthodoxy of the time, according to which, the infant Jesus passed through the walls of the womb as his Resurrection body afterwards did, out of the tomb or through closed doors.
This book assembles eighteen studies by internationally renowned scholars that epitomize the latest and best advances in research on the greatest polymath in Latin Christian antiquity, Jerome of Stridon (c.346-420) traditionally known as "Saint Jerome." It is divided into three sections which explore topics such as the underlying motivations behind Jerome's work as a hagiographer, letter-writer, theological controversialist, translator and exegete of the Bible, his linguistic competence in Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac, his relations to contemporary Jews and Judaism as well as to the Greek and Latin patristic traditions, and his reception in both the East and West in late antiquity down through the Protestant Reformation. Familiar debates are re-opened, hitherto uncharted terrain is explored, and problems old and new are posed and solved with the use of innovative methodologies. This monumental volume is an indispensable resource not only for specialists on Jerome but also for students and scholars who cultivate interests broadly in the history, religion, society, and literature of the late antique Christian world.
His Commentary on Matthew, written in 398 and profoundly influential in the West, appears here for the first time in English translation. Jerome covers the entire text of Matthew's gospel by means of brief explanatory comments that clarify the text literally and historically.
This volume is conceived as a complement to another Middle English Texts series text, Sherry Reames' Middle English Legends of Women Saints. This selection is intended to be broadly representative of saints' lives in Middle English and of the classic types of hagiographic legend as these were presented to the lay public and less-literate clergy of late medieval England.
No other source gives such an intimate portrait of this brilliant and strong minded individual, one of the four great doctors of the West and generally regarded as the most learned of the Latin fathers.
In the West, monastic ideals and scholastic pursuits are complementary; monks are popularly imagined copying classics, preserving learning through the Middle Ages, and establishing the first universities. But this dual identity is not without its contradictions. While monasticism emphasizes the virtues of poverty, chastity, and humility, the scholar, by contrast, requires expensive infrastructure—a library, a workplace, and the means of disseminating his work. In The Monk and the Book, Megan Hale Williams argues that Saint Jerome was the first to represent biblical study as a mode of asceticism appropriate for an inhabitant of a Christian monastery, thus pioneering the enduring linkage of monastic identities and institutions with scholarship. Revisiting Jerome with the analytical tools of recent cultural history—including the work of Bourdieu, Foucault, and Roger Chartier—Williams proposes new interpretations that remove obstacles to understanding the life and legacy of the saint. Examining issues such as the construction of Jerome’s literary persona, the form and contents of his library, and the intellectual framework of his commentaries, Williams shows that Jerome’s textual and exegetical work on the Hebrew scriptures helped to construct a new culture of learning. This fusion of the identities of scholar and monk, Williams shows, continues to reverberate in the culture of the modern university. "[Williams] has written a fascinating study, which provides a series of striking insights into the career of one of the most colorful and influential figures in Christian antiquity. Jerome's Latin Bible would become the foundational text for the intellectual development of the West, providing words for the deepest aspirations and most intensely held convictions of an entire civilization. Williams's book does much to illumine the circumstances in which that fundamental text was produced, and reminds us that great ideas, like great people, have particular origins, and their own complex settings."—Eamon Duffy, New York Review of Books
