SOURCE: "Satire in St. Jerome," The Classical Journal, Vol. 36, No. 6, March, 1941, pp. 322-36.

In the following essay, Pence explores Jerome's satirical style, focusing primarily on his letters.

I.

Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus Sanctus was born between A.D. 340 and 350 into a world of bloodshed and destruction—the last age of the old Graeco-Roman civilization. In the span of his life came the final destruction of paganism and the crumbling of Rome under not only the attacks of barbarians from without, but also the lowered standards of morality within her boundaries. The date of his birth¹ fell in the troubled times after the death of Constantine in 337, but before Constantius, by shedding the blood of nine of his near relatives, made himself sole emperor in 353. He saw the long succession of emperors and puppet emperors, a few of them able and patriotic, but on the whole weak men, whose reigns...