The Principal Works of St. Jerome

Jerome was born in the troubled times which followed the death of Constantine (337), and before Constantius became sole Emperor (353). He was still a schoolboy during the reign of Julian (361–63), and when he heard of his death. During his student life at Rome, Jovian and Valentinian were Emperors, and at Treves, where he next sojourned, the latter Emperor held his court. His first letter refers to a scene in which Ambrose, then Prefect of Liguria, seems to have taken part (370), and his settlement at Aquileia synchronises with the law of Valentinian restraining legacies to the clergy (370). He went to the East in the year of the death of Athanasius (373), and during his stay in the desert and at Antioch (374-80) occurred the death of Valentinian, the defeat and death of his brother Valens in the battle of Adrianople, the elevation of Theodosius to the purple, and the call of Gregory Nazianzen to Constantinople. He was ordained by Paulinus, one of the three Bishops of Antioch, and studied under Apollinaris, thus touching on both the chief points for which the Council of Constantinople was called (381). At that Council he was probably present, being, as stated above, a disciple of its president, Gregory Nazianzen. He was present also at the Western Council held the next year in Rome under Pope Damasus, whose trusted counsellor he became (pp. 233, 255). His later life, spent at Bethlehem (386–420), witnessed the division of the Empire between the sons of Theodosius, the fall of the Prefect Rufinus (p. 174), to whom Jerome had been denounced, the triumph of Stilicho and his death (at which he weakly rejoiced, p. 237), Alaric’s sack of Rome xii (410) and his death, the revolt of Heraclian, the marriage of Alaric’s successor, Adolphus, with the Emperor’s sister, Galla Placidia, and the death of Arcadius (408); in ecclesiastical matters, it witnessed the rise of Chrysostom (398) and his exile (403) and death (407), the condemnation of Origenism (400), and the Pelagian controversy (415). It is of this period that we are now to give a sketch.