St. Jerome

Who they were

Jerome was the finest Latin scholar of his age: educated in Rome, secretary to Pope Damasus, master of Greek and, almost alone in the Western Church, of Hebrew, which he learned from rabbis at real social cost. Damasus set him the task that consumed his life, a reliable Latin Bible.

Jerome moved to Bethlehem, settled in a cave adjacent to the Nativity grotto, and spent more than thirty years producing the Vulgate, the translation that would carry Scripture to the West for over a millennium, while running a monastery, answering correspondence from across the empire, and conducting the scholarly feuds that made him famous in the other direction. His pen, when provoked, and he was easily provoked, was the most feared in Christendom, and he knew it, and confessed it, and kept working. The lion at his feet in a thousand paintings is a legend that migrated from another saint's story. He died at Bethlehem around 420, and is a Doctor of the Church.

Why people turn to St. Jerome

Translators, librarians, editors, scholars, and students buried in sources. And the informal one worth naming honestly: people whose temperament is genuinely difficult and who serve God anyway, sanctity and crankiness proving compatible.

How to ask their intercession

Before the translation, the thesis, or the archive dive. His famous line, that ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ, is the working motto here, and one mystery prayed with the Gospel text open is a very Jerome rosary.