SOURCE: "St. Jerome as an Historian" in A Monument to Saint Jerome: Essays on Some Aspects of His Life, Works and Influence, edited by Francis X. Murphy, Sheed & Ward, 1952, pp. 115-41.

In the essay that follows, Murphy describes the development of Jerome's interest in history alongside a chronological investigation of his life and writings. Murphy notes how that interest expresses itself in Jerome's writings that are not overtly historical.

The seventy-odd years that form the Age of St. Jerome—from 347 to 420—were hardly an era of great historical writing. As F. Lot and Professor Laistner have pointed out, but for the productions of the pagan Ammianus Marcellinus and the Christian Sulpicius Severus, the fifth century finds the West bereft of any true historian. But the situation might easily have been different. For, several times in the course of his long, eventful career, the most erudite man of the...