Jerome, Saint (340?-420), a father of the Latin church. He was born at Stridon, a frontier between Styria and Hungary. He went to Rome while quite a young man and there studied Greek and Roman classics. There, too, Jerome was baptized into the Christian faith. He traveled in the East, pursuing his studies until a dream led him to renounce classical learning and devote himself to the Bible. For four years he lived as a hermit, enforcing upon himself the most rigid discipline and the most laborious studies. At this time he learned Hebrew that he might translate the Bible. Jerome was ordained as a presbyter at Antioch and later began to expound the Scriptures at Rome at the same time beginning to revise the Latin New Testament. Finding his work resented by the clergy he went to Palestine and there at Bethlehem founded a monastery in which he spent the remainder of his life. He translated the whole Bible into Latin. Jerome's Vulgate, as his version is called, is regarded as the foundation of ecclesiastical Latin. Jerome is considered one of the great scholars of the Western church.

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