SOURCE: "Conclusion" in The Christian Church in the Epistles of St. Jerome, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1923, pp. 107-09.

In the essay that follows, Hughes contends that Jerome's writings express the unique character of medieval Christianity.

Dean Fremantle in his "Prolegomena to Jerome" says (p. xxxiii.) truly enough:

His writings contain the whole spirit of the Church of the Middle Ages, its Monasticism, its contrast of sacred things with profane, its credulity and superstition, its value for relics, its subjection to hierarchical authority, its dread of heresy, its passion for pilgrimages.

But after all it is the Vulgate which was his crowning achievement and his greatest contribution to the Church of Christ. In it his varied gifts are seen to most advantage, for, as a translator of the Bible, he shows a capacity, a caution, a patience, an independence of judgment, a diligence and a critical acumen which...