On the Illustrious Holy Martyr Lucian (St. Jerome)

 By St. Jerome

(On Illustrious Men, ch. 77)

Lucian, a man of great talent, presbyter of the Church at Antioch, was so diligent in the study of the Scriptures, that even now certain copies of the Scriptures bear the name of Lucian. Works of his, On Faith, and short Epistles to various people are extant. He was put to death at Nicomedia for his confession of Christ in the persecution of Maximinus,* and was buried at Helenopolis in Bithynia.**

"Be Like the Cicada of the Night" (St. Jerome)

"Be like the cicada of the night. Wash your bed and water your couch nightly with tears. Keep vigil and be like the sparrow alone upon the housetop."

"Esto cicada noctium. Lava per singulas noctes lectum tuum, in lacrimis stratum tuum riga. Vigila et fiere sicut passer in solitudine."

- Letter of St. Jerome to Eustochium 

on the life asceticism and virginity (383-384)

 

 

Saint Photios the Great Against the Augustinian Doctrine of Original Sin

 

 

 

Theodore of Mopsuestia (ca. 350-428) wrote a book titled Against the Defenders of Original Sin which Saint Photios the Great read and reviewed in his Bibliotheca (177). It is often said that Theodore was the only eastern bishop who not only spoke about but also against Original Sin as formulated in the West, but with this review we see that Saint Photios does as well.  The chief defender of the doctrine of Original Sin, according to Theodore, was someone named "Aram", which scholars today mostly agree refers to Saint Jerome. However, Saint Jerome defended the doctrine of Original Sin primarily as a reaction to the extremes of Pelagianism, following in the footsteps of Saint Augustine. In actual fact, it was Saint Augustine who formulated the doctrine of Original Sin, also as a reaction to the extremes of Pelagianism, which is why Fr. George Florovsky writes of this book, "Theodore wrote against St. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin." Saint Photios was clearly unaware of both Saint Augustine's and Saint Jerome's defense of this doctrine, which he views as an obvious heresy foreign to the teachings of the Church and an extreme reaction against Pelagianism. Seeing that he praises Saint Augustine elsewhere in his writings, one wonders what he would have said about him if he knew that it was he who formulated this heresy. For pointing out the errors of these anonymous defenders of Original Sin, which were primarily Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome, Theodore of Mopsuestia is praised by Saint Photios, however Theodore also takes a wrong turn at points and falls into Nestorianism and Origenism and Pelagianism, which Saint Photios also discerned and condemned. Further, Theodore clearly embellished some points about Jerome in particular to make him look worse and supplement his argument. Unfortunately, everything we know of Theodore of Mopsuestia's book Against the Defenders of Original Sin comes from this review of Saint Photios and some fragments that alone have come down to us. Below is the excerpt of Saint Photios's review dealing with this book against Original Sin, to show how he condemned without hesitation this "new" false doctrine as something foreign to the Church.

Homily on Saint Jerome (Metr. Sotirios of Pisidia)

By Metropolitan Sotirios of Pisidia

On June 15th the Church remembers St. Jerome, a commemoration highlighting the bond between East and West that existed before the Great Schism (1054).  He was born in the Roman province of Dalmatia (which includes today’s city of Grahovo Polje, Slovenia) in the year 347.  His parents were wealthy Christians, who sent their son to Rome for an education under the best teachers.  He studied Latin and Greek Literature, as well as Philosophy and Rhetoric.  After that, the Saint studied Theology in Trier (the Celtic city of Trevorum, which is on the border between France and Germany), Aquileia (the ancient Roman city on the gulf of the Adriatic Sea) and in Antioch of Syria.  In Constantinople, he studied under St. Gregory the Theologian (329-390) and in Alexandria under Didymus the Blind (c. 313-398).  From this valuable experience came a thorough education and fluency in five languages, which prompted Pope Damasus (366-384) of Rome to invite St. Jerome to become his personal secretary and advisor in 382.  Despite such a high position, St. Jerome felt called to the Holy Land. After a long time in the Nitrian Desert (in northwestern Egypt, between Alexandria and Cairo), engaged in spiritual exercises in the midst of great holy ascetics, he made Bethlehem his permanent home in 386. While there he founded two monasteries, one for men (where he was the Abbot), and one for women. He was the spiritual father for both communities, and in addition to their monastic obligations, they engaged in studying and writing.

Abishag the Shunamite as an Image of the Wisdom of King David in his Old Age

 

Paris Psalter, David holding open Psalter flanked by Wisdom and Prophecy, c. 950.

 

By St. Jerome

Excerpt from Letter LII: to Nepotian

Once David had been a man of war, but at seventy age had chilled him so that nothing would make him warm. A girl is accordingly sought from the coasts of Israel — Abishag the Shunamite — to sleep with the king and warm his aged frame. Does it not seem to you — if you keep to the letter that killeth — like some farcical story or some broad jest from an Atellan play? A chilly old man is wrapped up in blankets, and only grows warm in a girl's embrace. Bathsheba was still living, Abigail was still left, and the remainder of those wives and concubines whose names the Scripture mentions. Yet they are all rejected as cold, and only in the one young girl's embrace does the old man become warm. Abraham was far older than David; still, so long as Sarah lived he sought no other wife. Isaac counted twice the years of David, yet never felt cold with Rebekah, old though she was. I say nothing of the antediluvians, who, although after nine hundred years their limbs must have been not old merely, but decayed with age, had no recourse to girls' embraces. Moses, the leader of the Israelites, counted one hundred and twenty years, yet sought no change from Zipporah.

A Summary of the Old Testament (St. Jerome)

By St. Jerome

 

(Excerpt from Letter 53 to Paulinus of Nola)

Genesis, we shall be told, needs no explanation; its topics are too simple — the birth of the world, the origin of the human race, the division of the earth, the confusion of tongues, and the descent of the Hebrews into Egypt!

Exodus, no doubt, is equally plain, containing as it does merely an account of the ten plagues, the decalogue, and sundry mysterious and divine precepts!

On James the Just, the Brother of our Lord (St. Jerome)

 

 

By St. Jerome

(On Illustrious Men, 2)

James, who is called the brother of the Lord, surnamed the Just, the son of Joseph by another wife, as some think, but, as appears to me, the son of Mary sister of the mother of our Lord of whom John makes mention in his book, after our Lord's passion at once ordained by the apostles bishop of Jerusalem, wrote a single epistle, which is reckoned among the seven Catholic Epistles and even this is claimed by some to have been published by some one else under his name, and gradually, as time went on, to have gained authority.

On the Annunciation (Sts. Ambrose of Milan, Jerome and Leo the Great)

By St. Ambrose of Milan

(Commentary on Luke, Bk. 2)

The mysteries of God are unsearchable, as is especially declared in the prophetic words: "What man is he that can know the counsel of God? or who can think what the will of the Lord is?"

Nevertheless, some things have been revealed to us. And hence we may gather, from the words and works of our Lord and Savior, that there was a special purpose of God in the fact that she who was chosen to bring forth the Lord was espoused to a man.

Why did not the power of the Highest overshadow her before she was so espoused? Perhaps it was lest any might blasphemously say that the Holy One was conceived in fornication.

Saint Marcella of Rome (+ 410)

Saint Marcella was born in 325 to a noble family of Rome. As a young girl, she heard Saint Athanasius speak. Having lost her husband in the seventh month of her marriage, she rejected the proposal of Cerealis the consul, uncle of Gallus Caesar, and resolved to imitate the lives of the ascetics of the East. She abstained from wine and meat, employed all her time in pious reading, prayer, and visiting the churches of the apostles and martyrs, and never spoke with any man alone. Her example was followed by many virgins of the first quality, who put themselves under her direction, and Rome was in a short time filled with monasteries. Her palace on the Aventine Hill was made into a monastery, where she lived with the virgins and widows of Rome.

Preface to the Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Daniel (St. Jerome)

Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Daniel

Preface

By St. Jerome

Porphyry wrote his twelfth book against the prophecy of Daniel, denying that it was composed by the person to whom it is ascribed in its title, but rather by some individual living in Judaea at the time of the Antiochus who was surnamed Epiphanes. He furthermore alleged that "Daniel" did not foretell the future so much as he related the past, and lastly that whatever he spoke of up till the time of Antiochus contained authentic history, whereas anything he may have conjectured beyond that point was false, inasmuch as he would not have foreknown the future. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, made a most able reply to these allegations in three volumes, that is, the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth. Appollinarius did likewise, in a single large book, namely his twenty-sixth. Prior to these authors Methodius made a partial reply.

Preface to the Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Obadiah (St. Jerome)

By St. Jerome

Prologue to the Book of the Prophet Isaiah (St. Jerome)

Prologue to the Book of the Prophet Isaiah

By St. Jerome

No one, when he will have seen the Prophets to be written in verses, would think them to be bound in meter among the Hebrews, and to have anything in common with the Psalms or the works of Solomon. But what is customary to be used in Demosthenes and Cicero, as they are written in words with divisions, who certainly wrote prose and not in verses, we also, providing ease of reading, have divided a new translation with a new kind of writing. And first, knowing of Isaiah what is presented in his speech, certainly as a man noble and of urbane elegance he does not have anything of rusticity mixed into his speech. For this reason it happens that in comparison with others the translation was not able to preserve the flower of his speech. And then adding this, that it is being spoken not only by a prophet, but by an evangelist. For thus all the mysteries of Christ and the Church are pursued to clarity, so that you would not think them to be prophesied of the future, but they covered the history of things past. For this reason I suppose the Seventy interpreters to have been unwilling at that time to set forth clearly for the gentiles the sacraments of their faith, not throwing holy things to dogs or pearls to swine, which things, when you will have read this edition, you will note were hidden by them.

Saint John II, Patriarch of Jerusalem (+ 417)

St. John of Jerusalem (Feast Day - March 30);
Greek miniature depicts the Church of Holy Zion

Verses

The president of the perceptible throne of Zion,
Departed for the Zion which is invisible.

Our Holy Father John was born around 356 and succeeded Saint Cyril as Patriarch of Jerusalem in 387. Many scholars today ascribe to him the five Mystagogical Catecheses traditionally ascribed to his predecessor Cyril.

On September 15, 394 Patriarch John officiated in the Consecration of the Church of Holy Zion: the homily pronounced by John was preserved in Armenian and not published until 1973.

In 415, he took part in the translation of the relics of Saint Stephen the Protomartyr from his tomb in the village of Kafargamala to Jerusalem in cooperation with Bishops Eusthonos of Sebaste and Eleutheros of Jericho.

Saint Jerome of Stridon (+ 420)

St. Jerome (Feast Day - June 15)

Verses

Jerome the great died,
Not dissimilarly remaining great crowned.

Saint Jerome of Stridon was born around 347 into a Christian family in the city of Stridon located on the border between Dalmatia and Pannonia. His full name is Eusebius Hieronymos Sophronios. His parents sent him to Rome, where he studied the secular sciences. At the beginning of his life in the capital, the youth was captivated by worldly vanities and fell into temptations of the flesh. To appease his conscience, he would visit on Sundays the sepulchres of the martyrs and the Apostles in the catacombs. This experience would remind him of the terrors of hell:

Saint Jerome Resource Page

St. Jerome (Feast Day - June 15)

Verses

Jerome the great died,
Not dissimilarly remaining great crowned.

 

Life and Veneration 

 

Saint Jerome of Stridon (+ 420) 

 

Saint Jerome as a Model for our Lives 

 

Homily on Saint Jerome (Metr. Sotirios of Pisidia)

Writings  

 

A Summary of the Old Testament (St. Jerome)

 

On the Annunciation (Sts. Ambrose of Milan, Jerome and Leo the Great) 

 

A Christmas Sermon of Saint Jerome 

 

The 70 Weeks Prophecy of Daniel According to St. Jerome 

 

Why Did Rachel Weep For the Holy Children of Bethlehem?

 

Abishag the Shunamite as an Image of the Wisdom of King David in his Old Age

Commentary on the Book of Daniel

Preface to the Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Daniel (St. Jerome)


Commentary on the Book of Jonah

Saint Jerome's Commentary on the Book of Jonah (1 of 5)

Saint Jerome's Commentary on the Book of Jonah (2 of 5)

Saint Jerome's Commentary on the Book of Jonah (3 of 5)

Saint Jerome's Commentary on the Book of Jonah (4 of 5)

Saint Jerome's Commentary on the Book of Jonah (5 of 5)


Commentary on the Book of Obadiah

Preface to the Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Obadiah (St. Jerome)


Lives of the Saints

Life of Saint Paula of Rome (St. Jerome)

The Life of Saint Hilarion the Great (St. Jerome)

Saint Constantia of Paphos

Holy Abba Pityroum of Egypt, Disciple of Saint Anthony

Holy Abba Apollo of the Thebaid

Life and Sayings of Holy Abba Or of Nitria

Holy Martyr Philosophos of Alexandria

A Profitable Tale of the Monk Malchus Who Was Disobedient

Life and Sayings of Holy Abba Elias the Wonderworker

Holy Abba Apollo of the Thebaid   

Saint Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers  

 

Holy Martyrs Phileas the Bishop of Thmuis and Philoromus of the Thebaid 

 

Saint Dionysios, Bishop of Corinth  

 

The Mission of Saints Pantaenus and Bartholomew in India

 

On James the Just, the Brother of our Lord (St. Jerome)

 

   

Figures Associated With St. Jerome

Saint Eustochium, Daughter of Saint Paula

Saint Fabiola of Rome (+ 399)

Saint Lea of Rome (+ 384)

Saint Chromatius, Bishop of Aquileia (+ 409)

Saint Marcella of Rome (+ 410)

Saint Paulinus the Merciful, Bishop of Nola (+ 431)

Saint Anastasius I, Pope of Rome (+ 401)

Saint Porphyrios, Bishop of Gaza (+ 420)

The Holy Myriad Venerable Martyrs of Nitria

Saint Lea of Rome (+ 384)

St. Lea of Rome (Feast Day - March 22)

All that we know of Saint Lea comes to us from one epistle of Saint Jerome (Ep. 23) which he addressed to Saint Marcella. Lea was a noblewoman of Rome, born into wealth and privilege, and she was a contemporary of Jerome. However, soon after her marriage she was widowed and left very sound financially. Instead of retiring as a wealthy widow, however, she joined a convent of consecrated virgins in the city of Rome — shedding all the money and social standing she possessed. In later years she was named the prioress of the convent. Saint Lea supported the house run by Saint Marcella, working as a menial servant, and later served as the group’s superior.

Life of Saint Paula of Rome (St. Jerome)

This, one of the longest of Jerome's letters, was written to console Eustochium for the loss of her mother who had recently died. Jerome relates the story of Paula in detail; speaking first of her high birth, marriage, and social success at Rome, and then narrating her conversion and subsequent life as a Christian ascetic. Much space is devoted to an account of her journey to the East which included a visit to Egypt and to the monasteries of Nitria as well as a tour of the most sacred spots in the Holy Land. The remainder of the letter describes her daily routine and studies at Bethlehem, and recounts the many virtues for which she was distinguished. It then concludes with a touching description of her death and burial and gives the epitaph placed upon her grave. The date of the letter is 404 A.D.

By St. Jerome

Letter 108

To Eustochium

1. If all the members of my body were to be converted into tongues, and if each of my limbs were to be gifted with a human voice, I could still do no justice to the virtues of the holy and venerable Paula. Noble in family, she was nobler still in holiness; rich formerly in this world's goods, she is now more distinguished by the poverty that she has embraced for Christ. Of the stock of the Gracchi and descended from the Scipios, the heir and representative of that Paulus whose name she bore, the true and legitimate daughter of that Martia Papyria who was mother to Africanus, she yet preferred Bethlehem to Rome, and left her palace glittering with gold to dwell in a mud cabin. We do not grieve that we have lost this perfect woman; rather we thank God that we have had her, nay that we have her still. For "all live unto" God,2730 and they who return unto the Lord are still to be reckoned members of his family. We have lost her, it is true, but the heavenly mansions have gained her; for as long as she was in the body she was absent from the Lord2731 and would constantly complain with tears:-"Woe is me that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar; my soul hath been this long time a pilgrim."2732 It was no wonder that she sobbed out that even she was in darkness (for this is the meaning of the word Kedar) seeing that, according to the apostle, "the world lieth in the evil one;"2733 and that, "as its darkness is, so is its light;"2734 and that "the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not."2735 She would frequently exclaim: "I am a stranger with thee and a sojourner as all my fathers were,"2736 and again, I desire "to depart and to be with Christ."2737 As often too as she was troubled with bodily weakness (brought on by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings), she would be heard to say: "I keep under my body and bring it into subjection; lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway;"2738 and "It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine;"2739 and "I humbled my soul with fasting;"2740 and "thou wilt make all" my "bed in" my "sickness;"2741 and "Thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer."2742 And when the pain which she bore with such wonderful patience darted through her, as if she saw the heavens opened2743 she would say "Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at rest."2744

Saint Fabiola of Rome (+ 399)

St. Fabiola of Rome (Feast Day - December 27);
Jean-Jacques Henner painted this portrait of Fabiola (in a classical Roman profile) in 1885;
this idealized rendition of the Saint was lost in 1912.

Saint Fabiola belonged to the patrician Roman family of the gens Fabia. She had been married to a man who led so vicious a life that to live with him was impossible. She obtained a divorce from him according to Roman law and, contrary to the ordinances of the Church, she entered upon a second union before the death of her first husband.

At the time of Saint Jerome's stay at Rome (382-84), Fabiola was not one of the ascetic circle which gathered around him. It was only later that, upon the death of her second consort, she decided to enter upon a life of renunciation and labor for others. On the day before Easter, following the death of her second consort, she appeared before the gates of the Lateran Basilica, dressed in penitential garb, and did public penance for her sin, which made a great impression upon the Christian population of Rome. The Pope received her formally again into full communion with the Church.

The Life of Saint Hilarion the Great (St. Jerome)

The Life of Saint Hilarion the Great

By St. Jerome

(Written in Bethlehem in the year 390)

1. Before I begin to write the life of the blessed Hilarion I invoke the aid of the Holy Spirit who dwelt in him, that He who bestowed upon the saint his virtues may grant me such power of speech to relate them that my words may be adequate to his deeds. For the virtue of those who have done great deeds is esteemed in proportion to the ability with which it has been praised by men of genius. Alexander the Great of Macedon who is spoken of by Daniel as the ram, or the panther, or the he-goat, on reaching the grave of Achilles exclaimed "Happy Youth! To have the privilege of a great herald of your worth," meaning, of course, Homer. I, however, have to tell the story of the life and conversation of a man so renowned that even Homer were he here would either envy me the theme or prove unequal to it. It is true that that holy man Epiphanius, bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, who had much intercourse with Hilarion, set forth his praises in a short but widely circulated letter. Yet it is one thing to praise the dead in general terms, another to relate their characteristic virtues. And so we in taking up the work begun by him do him service rather than wrong: we despise the abuse of some who as they once disparaged my hero Paulus, will now perhaps disparage Hilarion; the former they censured for his solitary life; they may find fault with the latter for his intercourse with the world; the one was always out of sight, therefore they think he had no existence; the other was seen by many, therefore he is deemed of no account. It is just what their ancestors the Pharisees did of old! They were not pleased with John fasting in the desert, nor with our Lord and Saviour in the busy throng, eating and drinking. But I will put my hand to the work on which I have resolved, and go on my way closing my ears to the barking of Scylla's hounds.

Saint Eustochium, Daughter of Saint Paula

St. Eustochium (Feast Day - September 28);
Painting from the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle, England

Saint Eustochium was born Eustochium Julia at Rome around the year 368. She was the daughter of Saint Paula and is also venerated as a saint and was an early Desert Mother. She was the third of four daughters of the Roman Senator Toxotius, for whom Jerome made a lot of fanciful claims of ancestry. After the death of her husband (ca. 380) Paula and her daughter Eustochium lived in Rome as austere a life as the Desert Fathers of Egypt. Eustochium had three sisters, Blaesilla, Paulina, and Rufina, and a brother, Toxotius.