Completely reset text;
archival quality paper
and binding; CIP data
5x8, approx. 190 pages.
Hardcover
ISBN-13:
978-1-934182-22-2
$35.00
Translated with an introduction by Paul Carroll
How do you mark a saint? By his holiness and, as these letters
brilliantly reveal, by his humor. The Catholic Church honors
Jerome (345-420 A.D.) as one of her greats, calling him Doctor
Maximus in exponendis Sacris Scripturis: doctor of biblical
translation and exegisis. But this translation of letters (first
published in 1956 but never reprinted) presents an unexpected
view of the man as well as of the Church who claims him for her
own. For on stage in these pages is one of the West’s most
vigorous and gifted satirists. Nothing escapes Jerome’s pen—
whether it be effeminate, ambitious, lecherous priests; the
comfortable vanities of nuns; the pomposities of bishops and of
saints; or the decadence of Roman society and the sophistry of
the educated. Everything that offends against the truths he
holds dear is fair stalking for Saint Jerome. And, as the
introduction makes clear, what shines through all the more
powerfully in these models of high, literate satire, is the
permanent core of beliefs, breathtakingly unsanctimonious, that
fueled his literary gifts and, according to ancient Christian
tradition, also made him a saint.