St Jerome
Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus (347-420) was born into a pagan family living in what is now Croatia. He converted to Christianity after coming to Rome to study rhetoric and philosophy, a sensible move in an empire whose ruling class was abandoning traditional religion. After a riotous student life, Jerome began to take the faith increasingly seriously and in his late 20s experienced a revelation that drove him to a life of ascetic withdrawal and deeper study of the Scriptures. He immersed himself in Hebrew and Greek and was commissioned by Pope Damasus I to produce a new version of the Latin Bible. His work, which came to be called the Vulgate, became the standard Bible in western Christianity for over 1,000 years.
Jerome was critical of the worldliness of the Roman clergy; they would accuse him of improper relations with some of the wealthy women whose spiritual adviser he was. He left Rome and settled in Bethlehem in 388. For the rest of his life he lived simply and dedicated himself to his studies, turning out numerous commentaries, saints’ lives, and polemics against contemporary heresies.
Jerome is the patron saint of translators, archaeologists, librarians, archivists and students. In art he is portrayed as an old hermit or monk, studying, or with a lion sitting tamely by, a reference to a story wherein he plucked a thorn from the beast’s foot.