The time is about 418 A.D.; the place, a monastery in Bethlehem, near the cave of the Nativity.  In a lonely cell, within these monastic walls, we shall find the man we seek.  He is so old and feeble that he has to be raised in his bed by means of a cord affixed to the ceiling.  He spends his time chiefly in reciting prayers.  His voice, once clear and resonant, sinks now to a whisper.  His failing vision no longer follows the classic pages of Virgil or dwells fondly on the Hebrew of the Old Testament.  This is Saint Jerome, the champion of asceticism, the biographer of hermits, the lion of Christian polemics, the translator of the Bible, and the worthy, brilliant, determined foe of a dissolute society and a worldly church.  Although he spent thirty-four years of his life in Palestine, I shall consider Jerome in connection with the monasticism of the West, for it was in Rome that he exercised his greatest influence.  His translation of the Scriptures is the Vulgate of the Roman church, and his name is enrolled in the calendar of her saints.  “He is,” observes Schaff “the connecting link between the Eastern and Western learning and religion.”

By charming speech and eloquent tongue Jerome won over the men, but principally the women, of Rome to the monastic life.  So powerful was his message when addressed to the feminine heart, that mothers are said to have locked their daughters in their rooms lest they should fall under the influence of his magnetic voice.  It was largely owing to his own labors that he could write in after years:  “Formerly, according to the testimony of the apostles, there were few rich, few noble, few powerful among the Christians.  Now, it is no longer so.  Not only among the Christians, but among the monks are to be found a multitude of the wise, the noble and the rich.”

Near to the very year that Athanasius came to Rome, or about 340 A.D., Jerome was born at Stridon, in Dalmatia, in what is now called the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.  His parents were modestly wealthy and were slaveholders.  His student days were spent in Rome, where he divided his time between the study of books and the revels of the streets.  One day some young Christians induced him to visit the catacombs with them.  Here, before the graves of Christian martyrs, a quiet and holy influence stole into his heart, that finally led to his conversion and baptism.  Embracing the monastic ideal, he gathered around him a few congenial friends, who joined him in a covenant of rigid abstinence and ascetic discipline.  Then followed a year of travel with these companions, through Asia Minor, ending disastrously at Antioch.  One of his friends returned home, two of them died, and he himself became so sick with fever that his life was despaired of.  Undismayed by these evils, brought on by excessive austerities, he determined to retire to a life of solitude.