SOURCE: Excerpt from An Homage to Jerome, Patron Saint of Translators, translated by Jean-Paul de Chezet, The Marlboro Press, 1984, pp. 39-41.

In this excerpt from a work originally published in French in 1946, Larbaud discusses the inventive effort that Jerome invested in his translation of the Vulgate.

Hieronymopolis is encircled by two concentric lines of fortifications: one low, much damaged, almost collapsed: Jerome's revision of the Itala,¹ one of the first Latin versions of the Bible; the other tall, thick, powerful, awe-inspiring: the Vulgate. Two high towers overlook these walls: the Gallican Psalter and the Roman Psalter. It is generally through them, from without, that one approaches Jerome's achievement: these towers and ramparts, visible from afar, at the same time announce and hide the city. All the critics and scholars who have studied Jerome have said that his "masterwork," his greatest title to glory, laus praecipua,² was the Vulgate...