Select Letters of Saint Jerome

JEROME—or, to give him his significant Greek name, Eusebius Hieronymus—was born A.D. 345 at Stridon in Dalmatia, a small town near Aquileia, which was partly destroyed by the Goths during their invasion of 377. His father, Eusebius, and his mother were Christians of moderate wealth and were alive in 373 when Jerome first went to the East, but probably died when Stridon was taken by the barbarians. Jerome himself received a good education at his local school, and then, like most young provincials of talent, he was attracted to Rome, where he studied rhetoric under the great grammarian Aelius Donatus, returning with his friend Bonosus to Aquileia in 370. In that town he established his first society of ascetics, which lasted for three years until some event—referred to by him variously as ‘a sudden storm’ and ‘a monstrous rending asunder’—broke up the fellowship, and Jerome with a few of his closer associates went eastwards to Antioch.

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