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Above: St. Jerome Writing by Caravaggio (1605-6).
Nothing is normal about this story. An academic goes from secular living to becoming radicalized by spending time in the catacombs of dead Christians, packs up his dearest possessions and heads out to the desert. He ends up settling in a small cave where he spends the next thirty-four years obsessing over vigils, virginity and the endless study of Sacred Scripture all while terrorized as he hears the trumpet blasts that will precede the Final Judgement.
The strangeness of St Jerome is something unique, odd and fantastic. His story is one that, once engaged, draws most people to fall in love with this extreme, difficult, angry, struggling, rageful, lonely and incredible saint of Jesus Christ. With red hot blood he fought against heresy, schism, error and sin his entire life. However harsh he was to those who would regrettably find themselves on the receiving end of his correspondence pen, he was equally as aggressive, forceful and terrifying to the fallen nature that he would work to mortify throughout his life.
Jerome was born Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus c. 347 in Dalmatia, modern day Croatia. He was a saint, Latin Father, Doctor of the Church, priest, monk, ascetic, translator, confessor, theologian, rhetorician and genius. He studied in Rome as a young man, where he started spending time in the Roman catacombs and eventually converted and was baptized around 366, likely by Pope Liberius. Jerome then left the city in pursuit of a penitential monastic life, first beginning for a period with the monks in Syria and eventually ending up in Bethlehem where his greatest battles would take place for thirty-four years in a small cave that is underground near the Church of the Nativity.
Of course, Jerome is most notable for translating the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures into the Latin Vulgate. He is also known for his Biblical Commentaries, his letters, or his classics of rhetoric warring against those who dared to speak against Christ, Our Lady, the intercession of saints, relics, poverty, virginity or his exegesis. His hallmark temper would, at times, unfortunately, be turned toward many of his closest friends and he would cycle through relationships and peers throughout his lifetime. A lifetime of incredible literary and theological works that seem to never reach their end, their overall accomplishment is only a piece of his person. For Jerome, his ultimate purpose in life was to be subject to Christ and this was to be carried out by any means necessary. There is not a piece of Jerome that would be found to be lukewarm, for he would live and act in ways that would lead most modern and many of his contemporary Christians to feel disturbed.
An example of his impact on his local contemporaries can be seen in the seeking of his expulsion from Rome over the death of Blaesilla. Blaesilla, the daughter of St Paula of Rome, became a part of the community of Christian women that followed Jerome. Through the rigorous fasting routine he prescribed (and eventually would relax), the young zealous Blaesilla died a premature death at the age of twenty, a case that some consider the first anorexia death recorded. This link to Jerome would aid in the push to expel him from Rome as a repercussion of his perceived scandalous and fanatic impact on his followers.
His fanatic qualities were even harsher when turned on his own nature. His fight against his passions makes him a privileged figure to whom we can turn today. When we inhabit an overtly evil culture in the West that promotes and flaunts sin as an individual right or personal identity, it is Jerome who provides a window to the lengths a Christian should go in order to avoid the occasion of sin and for him, there is simply no length too far.
Another figure who understood these lengths was St Paul. Writing to the Church in Corinth, he gives his infamous labors list, stating,
I am more; in many more labours, in prisons more frequently, in stripes above measure, in deaths often. Of the Jews five times did I receive forty stripes, save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once I was stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I was in the depth of the sea. In journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils from my own nation, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils from false brethren. In labor and painfulness, in much watchings, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness (2 Corinthians 11: 22 – 27).
Jerome, as with many saints of Christ, also had his own list of the sufferings, the many things he would take on or things he would renounce to mortify himself as to be more perfectly wed to the Lord. We can catch glimpses of this willingness throughout his 150 letters that display how he encouraged his students, what he supported in his peers and that which he himself would endure.
His actions, as with all of his labors, were motivated by his intense faith. Jerome states, “Neither fame nor honor can disturb me, because the fear of the terrible judgment of God is constantly upon me.”[1] He confessed that the principal reason for which he had concealed himself in a dark cave, fasted so strictly, and practiced other penances, was his fear of hell. “For fear of hell,” he writes, “I have condemned myself to such a dungeon.”[2]
This was the cause of his mortification.
Writing to his student Paula he applauds her rejection of the world and the taking on of ascetic practices: “For in your case, as I well know, renunciation of the world has been complete; you have rejected and trampled on the delights of life, and you give yourself daily to fasting, to reading, and to prayer.”[3]
To the young monk Rusticus he encourages poverty: “May our renunciation of the world be made freely and not under compulsion! May we seek poverty gladly to win its glory and not suffer anguish because others lay it upon us!”[4]
To the widow Furia, he encourages fasting: “By rigid fast and vigil she must quench the fiery darts of the devil.”[5]
To Paulinus the Bishop of Nola, Jerome encourages strict discipline, prayer and to joyfully accept poverty
Let some holy volume be ever in your hand. Pray constantly, and bowing down your body lift up your mind to the Lord. Keep frequent vigils and sleep often on an empty stomach. Avoid tittle-tattle and all self-laudation. Flee from wheedling flatterers as from open enemies. Distribute with your own hand provisions to alleviate the miseries of the poor and of the brethren. With your own hands, I say, for good faith is rare among men. You do not believe what I say? Think of Judas and his bag.[6]
In his treatise Against Vigilantius, he states, “Belch out your shame, if you will, with men of the world, I will fast with women; yea, with religious men whose looks witness to their chastity, and who, with the cheek pale from prolonged abstinence, show forth the chastity of Christ.”[7]
To Eustochium, saint and daughter of St Paula of Rome, he encourages Christ-focused relationships: “Let your companions be women pale and thin with fasting, and approved by their years and conduct; such as daily sing in their hearts.”[8]
And again to Eustochium, Jerome lays out a summary of his ascetic labors and the suffering he endured for Christ,
How often, when I was living in the desert, in the vast solitude which gives to hermits a savage dwelling-place, parched by a burning sun, how often did I fancy myself among the pleasures of Rome! I used to sit alone because I was filled with bitterness. Sackcloth disfigured my unshapely limbs and my skin from long neglect had become as black as an Ethiopian’s. Tears and groans were every day my portion; and if drowsiness chanced to overcome my struggles against it, my bare bones, which hardly held together, clashed against the ground. Of my food and drink I say nothing: for, even in sickness, the solitaries have nothing but cold water, and to eat one’s food cooked is looked upon as self-indulgence… Helpless, I cast myself at the feet of Jesus, I watered them with my tears, I wiped them with my hair: and then I subdued my rebellious body with weeks of abstinence. I do not blush to avow my abject misery; rather I lament that I am not now what once I was. I remember how I often cried aloud all night till the break of day and ceased not from beating my breast till tranquility returned at the chiding of the Lord. I used to dread my very cell as though it knew my thoughts; and, stern and angry with myself, I used to make my way alone into the desert. Wherever I saw hollow valleys, craggy mountains, steep cliffs, there I made my oratory, there the house of correction for my unhappy flesh.[9]
The destruction of material items, moving into a cave, removing comforts, detaching from wealth, denying sleep, praying unceasingly, moving away from family and friends, living chaste, praying vigils, fasting to the points of sickness, renouncing his favorite literature, scourging himself, shedding tears over past sins, submitting himself entirely to Scripture, encouraging virginity, giving alms, losing relationships, learning new languages, moving from city to city, being hated and exiled, being mocked and ridiculed. Prudent or not, perfect or not, there is nothing Jerome wouldn’t do to die to self and to live for Christ.
Classically told, Pope Sixtus V while passing a painting of St Jerome, once exclaimed, “You do well to carry that stone, for without it the Church would have never canonized you.” This may have contained some truth. For in the person of St Jerome, we can see pieces of our brokenness and the necessity to respond better to Christ’s calling to “pick up our cross”, mortify ourselves and truly detach from the allures and distractions of this fading world, for many of us have yet to pick up our rocks or to confine ourselves to a dungeon.
St Jerome, ora pro nobis.
[1] Weninger, Father Francis Xavier. “St. Jerome, Confessor and Doctor of the Church.” The Lives of the Saints.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Jerome to Paula https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001039.htm
[4] Jerome to Rusticus https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001125.htm
[5] Jerome to Furia https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001054.htm
[6] Jerome to Paulinus https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001058.htm
[7] Jerome Against Vigilantius https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3010.htm
[8] Jerome to Eustochium https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3001022.htm
[9] Ibid.