A prickly scholar translates the Bible into Latin forever and always. Jerome was standing in the presence of the seated Christ, who asked him who he was. Their works and fine prose gave him the greatest pleasure. But Jerome had also been reared in a Christian home, been baptized as an adult in Rome, and had frequently descended into the darkened catacombs to pray at the tombs of the martyrs and saints.
His double identity as both a scholar of Latin and Greek rhetoric on the one hand, and as a committed Christian on the other hand, dueled within him.
Jerome fervently loved God and the Catholic religion with all his soul, but it was a troubled soul. Jerome was full of spit and vinegar. He was a complex man and a complex saint. Saint Jerome was born in an unknown year in a region northeast of Venice, Italy. His father sent him as a young man to Rome to perfect his education under a famous tutor.
Jerome was a superb student and mastered Latin and Greek. At about the age of thirty, he decided to become a monk and traveled to the desert of Syria. For four years he lived a life of austerity, penance, and isolation.
He fasted from the classics he loved so much and instead studied Hebrew from a Jewish convert. When he finally came out of the desert, he was ordained a priest in Antioch but never truly exercised any priestly ministry.
