Saint '''Jerome''' (Latin: ''Hieronymus''), who lived from 342 – 30 September 420, is the most famous Catholic biblical scholar of antiquity, and perhaps of all time.
Jerome was born in Stridonia, on the borders of Dalmatia and Pannonia, and given the Latin name ''Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus''. He was, from his infancy, raised a Catholic, and was baptized in Rome. At Rome he learned Latin and Greek. Soon, however, desiring to give himself fully to Christ and to the knowledge of the Scriptures, Jerome journeyed East, studying at Antioch. He then, in order to purify his soul of all youthful temptations, set out into the desert (of Chalcis, south-west of Antioch). Thus did he act in imitation of Christ, St. John the Baptist, and the Desert Fathers. He found a converted Jew to teach him Hebrew (and Chaldaic). Additionally, Jerome was ordained a priest at Antioch. Eventually he made his way to Constantinople to study the Scriptures under the renowned scholar St. Gregory Nazianzus (“the Theologian”). Thereafter he journeyed to Rome, on ecclesiastical business, and was admitted into the court of Pope Damasus.
Damasus requested from Jerome, by then a master of the Scriptures and of the languages used in the sacred texts, that he would produce a Latin translation of the Bible. The Latin texts then in circulation were insufficient and in need of correction. This monumental task would take Jerome many years, and, following the Pope’s death, Jerome traveled to Bethlehem, to a monastery near the site of Jesus’ birth, to complete his work. Jerome gathered all manner of ancient manuscripts to aid him in his task, examining each text carefully in order to establish a proper edition. Eventually, Jerome produced his Latin Bible, the New Testament translated afresh from the original Greek, and the Old Testament, with the exception of certain books (whose previous translation he choose not to alter), translated afresh from the Hebrew and the Greek. This edition, known as the ''Vulgate'', would come to be the accepted Bible of Western Christendom for over a thousand years, and is still valued by Biblical scholars today for its expertise, and is consulted in the production of modern editions of the Bible.