30 September is St Jerome’s Day and is also the United Nations International Translators’ Day. This is his story.
Jerome
Jerome was born as Eusebius Hieronymus Sophronius in the AD 340s in Stridon, Dalmatia, near the Adriatic Coast. The town was later destroyed by the Goths, and several places along the Adriatic coast now claim to be Stridon and Jerome’s birthplace.
He was of Illyrian ancestry, and his native tongue was an Illyrian dialect, which some scholars believe to be an early form of Albanian. Jerome was first educated by his father, who later sent him to Rome, where he studied Latin and Greek and excelled in classical literature and languages.
Conversion
While in Rome, Jerome became a Christian and was baptised by Pope Liberius sometime in the 360s. After his baptism, he pursued a life of asceticism, travelling throughout the eastern Roman Empire. Drawn to a more devout lifestyle, he spent time living as a hermit in Syria, where he devoted himself to spiritual discipline and scriptural study.
Biblical Scholarship
From AD 382, Jerome served as secretary to Pope Damasus I in Rome, during which he translated many important works. Recognising his skills, the Pope commissioned him to produce a reliable Latin Bible. Parts of the Bible already existed in Latin, but the Church wanted an authoritative version.
Jerome began by revising the Old Latin Gospels and translating from the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures). In AD 384, after Pope Damasus died, Jerome travelled to the Holy Land with Paula, where he continued his work, translating the Old Testament from Hebrew.
Paula
Although Jerome is often depicted as working alone, much of his translation work was done with the assistance of a Roman noblewoman named Paula.
Paula, a wealthy Roman citizen, was married to Senator Toxotius and had four children. After her husband’s death, she dedicated herself to prayer and established a religious community on the Aventine Hill in Rome. In AD 382, she met Jerome and became a strong supporter of his work.
Following the deaths of Pope Damasus and her daughter Blesilla, Paula travelled to the Holy Land with her surviving daughter, Eustochium. There, Jerome founded a monastery for monks, while Paula established a convent for nuns.
Paula learned Hebrew and collaborated with Jerome as his patron, editor, and critic. She financed the acquisition of biblical manuscripts and, along with Eustochium, reviewed Jerome’s translations. Both women were proficient in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and their input improved the final work.
The Latin Vulgate Bible, completed in AD 405, stands as one of history’s great biblical translations. It was very much the product of collaboration between Jerome, Paula, and Eustochium, though history has often overlooked the contributions of the women. Artistic depictions usually present Jerome as the solitary translator.
Death and Burial
St Jerome died in Bethlehem on 30 September, around AD 420. He was buried beneath the Church of the Nativity, in what is now known as St Jerome’s Cave, a site still visited by pilgrims today.
In the 12th century, Jerome’s remains were moved to Rome, and his bones are now believed to rest in the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.
Jerome and the Apocrypha
Jerome left an unexpected legacy in the formation of the Apocrypha. While translating the Old Testament, he first worked from the Septuagint but later consulted Hebrew texts.
Living in Bethlehem before the Islamic conquest, Jerome was able to study with Jewish scholars fluent in Hebrew. He discovered that certain books in the Septuagint were unknown to the Jews of the Holy Land, who used only Hebrew scrolls. In his prologues, Jerome noted which texts he had translated from Greek rather than Hebrew, calling them apocryphus (from the Greek ἀπόκρυφος, meaning “hidden” or “secret”).
Centuries later, Martin Luther, when translating the Old Testament into German, adopted Jerome’s classification and placed these texts in a separate section, “die Apokryphen.” The Geneva Bible followed this example, creating the English category “Apocrypha,” later used by the King James Version (KJV) and some modern editions such as the NRSV.
Over time, “apocrypha” and “apocryphal” came to mean “of doubtful authenticity,” though this was not Jerome’s intended sense. Since the late 1700s, many Protestant Bible publishers have omitted these books entirely, though they remain in Catholic and Orthodox editions.
Legacy
Jerome’s Latin Vulgate became the standard Bible for Western Christianity for centuries and was declared the official text of the Catholic Church at the Council of Trent in 1546.
Before Greek manuscripts were widely available in the Renaissance, Jerome’s Latin served as the basis for translations into many European languages. The Venerable Bede and Alfred the Great translated into Anglo-Saxon from the Vulgate. King Charles IV of Bohemia commissioned a Czech translation from Jerome’s Latin, and his daughter Anne married King Richard II of England, leading to the first English Bible translations by John Trevisa, John Wycliffe, and the Lollards.
Catholic missionaries also used Jerome’s Latin in translations outside Europe. In 17th-century Mexico, priests produced Aztec lectionaries in Nahuatl, and in late 17th-century China, most of the New Testament was translated into Chinese from the Vulgate.
Though a masterpiece, Jerome’s work was not without flaws. Once Erasmus published Greek manuscripts, humanist scholars recognised errors, and reformers like Martin Luther and William Tyndale preferred translating from Greek originals. Today, even the Catholic Church uses a revision of Jerome’s work, the Nova Vulgata, completed in 1979.
Saint’s Day
Jerome was never formally canonised but is venerated as a saint. In 1295, Pope Boniface VIII declared him a Doctor of the Church. As is traditional, his date of death became his feast day: 30 September.
Many churches are dedicated to St Jerome, particularly in Italy. In the UK, two Anglican churches are named after him: one in West Hayes, Middlesex, and a now redundant church at Llangwm Uchaf, near Usk in Monmouthshire, Wales.
Patron Saint
Jerome is honoured as the patron saint of archaeologists, scholars, librarians, and translators. His life and writings laid the foundation for Christian biblical study, exegesis, and the Western monastic tradition.
He is remembered in the Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Lutheran traditions. Jerome is famously credited with the phrase: “Ignorantia Scripturae, ignorantia Christi est” (“Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ”).
International Translation Day
On 24 May 2017, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 71/288, officially declaring 30 September as International Translation Day, recognising the role of professional translators in connecting nations.
Collect Prayer
The Catholic collect prayer for St Jerome reads:
“O God, who wast pleased to give unto Thy Church Thy blessed Confessor Jerome, to be unto her a great teacher in the way of expounding Thine Holy Scriptures: be entreated, we beseech Thee, for that Thy servant’s sake, and grant unto us the strength to put in practice what he taught, both by his doctrine and by his life.”
