Saint Jerome of Stridon

Volume III contains the *Commentaries* of the holy Doctor on the Prophets, which were written at different times.

Volume IV contains: 1° The *Commentary on the Gospel of Saint Matthew*, around the year 398; 2° several *Letters* in which the holy doctor explains some difficulties relating to the New Testament; 3° *Commentaries* on the epistles of Saint Paul to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, to Titus, and to Philemon.

The second part of volume IV contains the Letters of Saint Jerome, which are divided into several classes, and many of which are true treatises, as well as his ascetic and polemical works. We shall content ourselves with indicating the principal ones: 1° The Lives of Saint Paul, hermit, of Saint Hilarion, and of Saint Malchus; 2° the C atalogue of Illustrious Writers, Catalogue des écrivains illustres Bio-bibliographical work by Saint Jerome. written in 392, and divided into thirty-five chapters. In the last one, Saint Jerome speaks of his own works; but he is, by his own account, only an abortion, and the last of all Christians; 3° the Book against Helvidius, who maintained that the Blessed Virgin, after the birth of Jesus Christ, had other children by Saint Joseph, and who had gone so far as to teach that virginity had no advantage over marriage. This work was written around the year 384; 4° the two Books against Jovinian, which also have as their object the defense of virginity, around the year 392; 5° Apology of the holy doctor concerning his books against Jovinian, around the year 393; 6° the Book against Vigilantius; 7° dialogue against the Luciferians; 8° works of Saint Jerome against Rufinus; 9° the Dialogues against the Pelagians.

In volume V, the works attributed to Saint Jerome and a collection of pieces relating to the history of this holy doctor have been included.

The style of Saint Jerome, in his commentaries on Scripture, is pure, simple, and clear, but accompanied by a certain dryness. He believed that the dignity of the divine oracles was sufficient unto itself. It is not so with his other works; the Saint strove to give his style all the polish of which he was capable. His thoughts are noble, as are his expressions. One notices in his discourse a variety of turns as pleasant as it is surprising; he knows how to employ figures with great art, and he is no less successful in the use he makes of the subtleties of logic. He brings in with taste the finest traits of philosophers and classical authors, and he possesses the talent of embellishing his works with what is most curious in the arts and sciences. The arrangement of all these parts is so perfect that each appears to be in its place; and one can compare his discourse to those works of marquetry, where all the pieces are so artistically joined together that they appear made for one another. It must be admitted, however, that this manner of writing sometimes announces a little too much affectation. The judicious Fénelon also says that the style of Saint Jerom e is no Fénelon French prelate and writer who commented on the style of Jerome. t always according to the rules; but he adds at the same time that some faults into which he fell should not prevent one from preferring him for eloquence to those who hold a distinguished place among orators.

In addition to the works we have of his, he composed several others that have not come down to us, and whose loss is inestimable. Cassiodorus had them all in his library, namely: a book on Heresies, of which Saint Augustine speaks, testifying to the sorrow of not having been able to find it; a treatise on the Resurrection, which Orosius brought back to the West, and which was addressed to Oceanus; thirty homilies on the Gospel of Saint Luke; twenty-eight translated from the Greek of Origen; seven treatises on the Psalms; a volume on the four Evangelists; an exposition on the Judgment of Solomon, on the Apocalypse, and an Epistle addressed to Antius, where he clarified many difficult questions. It is good, when speaking of the works of this great Saint, to warn the reader here that, among those printed under his name, several have slipped in that are not his: the most dangerous are the Commentaries on the Epistles of Saint Paul, of which Pelagius is the a Pélage Heresiarch opposed by Jerome at the end of his life. uthor.

Dom Martianay, a Benedictine of the Congregation of Saint bénédictin de la congrégation de Saint-Maur Religious order that produced a major edition of the works of Jerome. -Maur, produced in Paris an edition of the Works of Saint Jerome in five folio volumes, the first of which appeared in 1693 and the last in 1706. The Book of Hebrew Names and the other critical works of the holy doctor had been, until then, horribly disfigured, even in the editions of Erasmus and Marianus Victorius. Cave and other scholars gave great praise to the work of Dom Martianay, although it does not possess the degree of perfection it might have had. This religious shows, in truth, more judgment and erudition here than in some of his other treatises; but it is far from being comparable to those of Mabillon and Constant. He left a great number of errors in the text of Saint Jerome, and his notes are not always accurate. The order he followed in the arrangement of the holy doctor's letters creates such confusion that one does not know how to go about finding or citing them. He did not provide the chronicle of Saint Jerome, nor the martyrology attributed to him in some ancient manuscripts, although this Father only translated it into Latin, as we learn from Bede and Walahfrid Strabo. This martyrology was published by Dom Luc d'Achery, Spécil., vol. IV.

Martianay included a life of Saint Jerome in the fifth volume of the Works of this Father; but he reissued it in French, with additions, in 1706. In it, he defends the holy doctor against Baillet, who, in speaking of him, uses very harsh expressions, and also against some other critics who did not sufficiently measure the terms they used. Barbeyrac also mistreated Saint Jerome and slandered him by imputing to him a doctrine he did not teach; but he was soundly refuted by Dom Ceillier, Apologie des Pères, pp. 308-311.

Vallarsi, an Oratorian from Italy, produced in Verona, in 1728, a new edition of the Work s of Sai Vallarsi Italian Oratorian, editor of a reference edition of the works of Jerome in Verona. nt Jerome in 10 folio volumes, with Vérone City of birth and foundation of the order of Fazzio. a life of this Father and very useful notes. He was assisted in this work by several scholars, notably by the Marquis Scipione Maffei; but he has been reproached, like Erasmus and some other critics, for having corrected the text of his author according to his own conjectures, and without the authority of manuscripts, which greatly diminishes the utility of his enterprise. In 1706-1728, a new edition of the Works of Saint Jerome by Messrs. Vallarsi and Maffei appeared in Verona. Mr. Migne reproduced it in his Patrologia Latina, from volume XII to volume XXX.

The Selected Epistles were published in 1815, in Lyon, based on the edition of Canisius and Martianay, one octavo volume; in Milan, in 1833, octavo; in Paris, at Lecoffre, in 1855, one octavo volume and one duodecimo volume. The Letter to Nepotian, with notes by Catalan, appeared in 1781, one octavo volume. Some letters appeared in the small Library of the Latin Fathers, published in Rome, in 1839, by Father Ventura. Saint Jerome's commentaries on the Gospel of Saint Matthew are found in the Christian classics of M. Gaume, in two volumes, duodecimo. MM. Collombet and Graguire translated the selected works of Saint Jerome into French, with notes and commentaries. The Latin text is on the facing page. The translation is followed by dissertations on various subjects of Christian archaeology, by M. l'abbé Greppo, vicar general of the diocese of Belley, Lyon, Périsse, ten octavo volumes. The Selected Letters are also found in the Masterpieces of the Fathers, with translation by M. l'abbé Orsini and M. X. and text on the facing page, eleventh volume of the collection. The Selected Library of the Fathers, volume XX, contains a fairly large number of pieces translated by Abbé Guillou. Several works of the Saint are found translated into French in the Library for the use of Christian Ladies. The Literary Pantheon contains the works of Saint Jerome, translated into French by Matougues, under the direction of M. Aimé Martin, Paris, Aug. Desrez, 1536, large quarto.

See Tillemont; Guillier; the Verses of the Saint, by Martianay and Villaret. — Cf. Father Dolei, *Hieronymus vitae sum scriptor*: this is a life of the holy doctor, extracted from his writings.