St. Jerome

St. Jerome was born Eusebius Hieronymus around 342 at Stridon, on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia, and died on 30 September 420 at Bethlehem. Educated in Rome and baptized there, he traveled widely, spent time as a hermit in the Syrian desert, and mastered Greek and Hebrew in addition to Latin — a rare accomplishment that made him the greatest biblical scholar of the early Church. For a time he served as secretary to Pope Damasus I, who commissioned him to revise the Latin translations of Scripture.

Settling at last in a monastery near the birthplace of Christ in Bethlehem, he devoted decades to translating the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek into Latin, producing the version known as the Vulgate, which became the Church's standard text for over a thousand years. Famously irascible and blunt in controversy yet deeply penitent and ascetic, he is often depicted with a lion and a skull. He is honored as a Doctor of the Church and one of the four great Latin Fathers, and is the patron of biblical scholars and translators.