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Voices and influences

Jerome

The scholar who went to the Hebrew itself and gave the West a Bible it read for a thousand years.

Summary

This site quotes Jerome 2,794 times across 57 books, and lists 0 works.

  • Lived died 420.
  • Quoted here most in Matthew: 558 of 2,794.
Jerome. Painted by Caravaggio. The file is marked public domain. This site's record does not give the artist's death year, which is what settles the painting's own rights. The file record

Jerome

Lived
died 420
Tradition
Patristic

5 of 2,794 quotations

Own words

Quoted in full, because Jerome died in 420 and these works are out of copyright. Each citation below names its edition and its year. A citation naming a modernised text means that edition makes its own editorial changes, and that edition's terms are not in this site's record.

(Chapter 49, verse 3) Reuben, my firstborn, you are my strength and the first of my sons, tough in bearing and tough in insolence and injury, like water that does not boil.

Hebrew Questions on Genesis, 420

The rest of the quotation

You went up on your father's bed, then you defiled it when you went up. In Hebrew it is written: Reuben, my firstborn, you are my strength, and the first in power among my sons. Greater in carrying, and greater in strength. You are poured out like water, do not exceed. For you have ascended the bed of your father and defiled the couch in his ascent.

Genesis 49:3 Reuben, you are my firstborn, my might, and the beginning of my strength, excelling in honor, excelling in power. BSB

But we your people and the sheep of your pasture. When he says "sheep," he signifies innocence. Sheep have nothing but a shepherd. We will give you thanks forever. We will confess: either we do penance, or, what is better, we glorify.

Homily 12, on Psalm 78, 420

The rest of the quotation

From generation to generation; among the first people, and among the second people. Although according to the historical sense it is said otherwise in Ezekiel, nevertheless according to the spiritual understanding we say this, since these two peoples — that is, the two rods — are joined together in Ezekiel, and become one kingdom.

Psalms 79:13 Then we Your people, the sheep of Your pasture, will thank You forever; from generation to generation we will declare Your praise. BSB

I have become like the pelican of the wilderness. There are said to be two kinds of these birds.

Homily 28, on Psalm 101, 420

The rest of the quotation

One lives in the waters, and its food is fish; and one lives in the wilderness, and its food is venomous creatures, that is, serpents and crocodiles and lizards. Now these birds are called in Latin 'onocrotali.' To that one therefore have I become like, which lives in the wilderness, which eats venomous creatures: that is, my food was to me as it were poison. I have become like the night-raven in its dwelling-place.

Psalms 102:6 I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins. BSB

"Be exalted above the heavens, O God." God is not exalted except above the heavens, he is not exalted above the earth. When we are earthly, we do not exalt God; but if from earthly we have been made heavenly, then we exalt God.

Homily 34, on Psalm 107, 420

The rest of the quotation

And our Lord, when he was on earth, did not exalt us. Someone may say: You speak rashly, since he himself says in the Gospel: "When I have been lifted up, I will draw all things to myself."

Psalms 108:5–6 Be exalted, O God, above the heavens; may Your glory cover all the earth. Respond and save us with Your right hand, that Your beloved may be delivered. BSB

Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion. Just now we heard the holy presbyter preaching that, because of its transgression of the law, the Jewish people has been forsaken; and how is it that now it is said, Praise the Lord, O…

Homily 57, on Psalm 147, 420

The rest of the quotation

Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion? Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem. Jerusalem, "vision of peace." Praise your God, O Zion. Zion is interpreted "watchtower." You see, then, what he says: Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem. Wherever there is a vision of peace, wherever there is contemplation of God, there let there be praise of God.

Psalms 147:12 Exalt the LORD, O Jerusalem; praise your God, O Zion! BSB

Influence, on the record

The life, in order

The life told as one accountfrom this site's record

Eusebius Hieronymus was born about 347 at Stridon, a town on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia that no longer exists. His parents were Christians with money. They sent him to Rome, where he studied grammar and rhetoric under the great teacher Donatus, collected pagan authors, and was baptized in his late teens. He traveled east, and about 375 went into the desert of Chalcis, southeast of Antioch, to live as a hermit. He lasted a few years. He hated the heat, quarreled with the monks over the Trinity, and — by his own account — hired a converted Jew to teach him Hebrew, largely to keep his mind off Rome. That decision changed the history of the Bible in the West. Ordained at Antioch, he went on to Constantinople, where he heard Gregory of Nazianzus, and then in 382 to Rome, where Pope Damasus made him a secretary and set him to revising the Latin Gospels against the Greek. In Rome he also became teacher to a circle of wealthy Christian women — Marcella, Paula, and Paula's daughter Eustochium — who studied Scripture and Hebrew with him. His scorn for the worldly Roman clergy was returned with interest, and after Damasus died in 384 he left the city for good. In 386 he settled at Bethlehem, where Paula founded monasteries for men and women and paid for his books. He stayed thirty-four years, working in a cave beside the traditional site of the Nativity. There he did the thing he is known for. Instead of correcting the old Latin against the Greek Septuagint, he translated the Old Testament out of the Hebrew — going to Jewish teachers for help, arguing that the Hebraica veritas, the Hebrew truth, was the standard. Augustine wrote to warn him that congregations would riot over changed familiar words, and in North Africa one did. Jerome kept going. He also wrote commentaries on most of the prophets, on Matthew and several letters of Paul, a catalogue of Christian writers, letters that were copied and read as literature, and translations of Origen and Eusebius. He was a savage controversialist. He broke publicly with his oldest friend Rufinus over Origen, attacked Jovinian, Vigilantius, and Pelagius in print, and lost few opportunities to wound. In 410 refugees from the sack of Rome arrived at his door and he wrote that the light of the world had gone out. Paula died in 404, Eustochium in 419. Jerome died at Bethlehem in 420. His translation, gathered later with other Latin books into what came to be called the Vulgate, was the Bible of Western Europe until the Reformation and remained the Roman Catholic standard far beyond it. Sources: Jerome, Letters and De viris illustribus; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church; the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series, second series volume 6; the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.

2,794 quotations across 57 books

Where this voice is quoted

Mark 9:33–35Catena Aurea by Aquinas (420)

Then they came to Capernaum. While Jesus was in the house, He asked them, “What were you discussing on the way?”

Where it is to be observed, that the disciples disputed by the way concerning the chief place, but Christ Himself sat down to teach humility; for princes toil while the humble repose.

Mark 10:20LETTER 118, TO JULIAN (420)

“Teacher,” he replied, “all these I have kept from my youth.”

He who declared that he had observed all the commandments had already yielded to the power of riches from the very outset.

Mark 10:21LETTER 118, TO JULIAN (420)

Jesus looked at him, loved him, and said to him, “There is one thing you lack: Go, sell everything you own and give to the poor, and you will have…

This is why those who are rich find it hard to enter the kingdom of heaven. For it is a kingdom which desires for its citizens a soul that soars aloft free from all ties and hindrances.

Mark 11:9HOMILIES 94 (420)

The ones who went ahead and those who followed were shouting: “Hosanna!” “Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!”

The boys in the Gospel raised aloft their branches as the Savior entered Jerusalem. They kept on crying: "Hosanna." … They borrowed these versicles from Psalm 117. Hosanna, moreover, is the Hebrew for "O Lord, grant salvation!"

Mark 12:42LETTER 54, TO FURIA 17 (420)

Then one poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amounted to a small fraction of a denarius.

I pass on to the widow in the gospel who, though she was but a poor widow was yet richer than all the people of Israel.

Mark 12:44LETTER 53, TO PAULINUS 11 (420)

For they all contributed out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

There is an old saying that a miser lacks as much what he has as what he has not. The believer has a whole world of wealth; the unbeliever has not a single farthing.

Mark 14:3HOMILIES OF ST. JEROME, HOMILY 84 (420)

While Jesus was in Bethany reclining at the table in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of expensive perfume, made of pure nard.

This woman has a very special message for you who are about to be baptized. She broke her alabaster jar that Christ may make you "christs," his anointed.

Mark 14:4HOMILIES OF SAINT JEROME, HOMILY 84 (420)

Some of those present, however, expressed their indignation to one another: “Why this waste of perfume?

To him [Judas], it seemed to be wasting the ointment because the jar is broken, but, for us, it was a great good because the perfume spread throughout the world. Why are you indignant, Judas, because the alabaster jar is broken?

Mark 14:6AGAINST VIGILANTIUS 7 (420)

But Jesus said, “Leave her alone; why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful deed to Me.

When the apostles pleaded that the ointment was being wasted, they were rebuked by the voice of the Lord. Christ did not need the ointment, nor do martyrs need the light of candles.

Mark 14:31ON THE PSALMS, HOMILY 54 (420)

But Peter kept insisting, “Even if I have to die with You, I will never deny You.” And all the others said the same thing.

One of twelve deserted; eleven remained loyal. The cross came; they fled; one remained—Peter, one with One. This one himself fled, and would that he had! He denied Christ. We may say, then, that the entire human race was lost.

Mark 16:14TO PAMMACHIUS AGAINST JOHN OF JERUSALEM 34 (420)

Later, as they were eating, Jesus appeared to the Eleven and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him…

As he showed them real hands and a real side, so he really ate with his disciples;4 really walked with Cleophas; conversed with men with a real tongue;6 really reclined at supper; with real hands took bread, blessed and broke it, and was offering it…