Sermon Tone Analysis

Scholars and Scientists \\ Erasmus \\ Pious humanist who sparked the Reformation

"Would that the farmer might sing snatches of Scripture at his plough and that the weaver might hum phrases of Scripture to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveler might lighten with stories from Scripture the weariness of his journey."

"When I get a little money I buy books," wrote Erasmus of Rotterdam, who took the name Desiderius in his adult life.

"If any is left … I buy food and clothes."

This illegitimate son of a Dutch priest lived in search of knowledge, in pursuit of piety, in love with books, and oppressed by the fear of poverty.

Along the way, his writings and scholarship started a theological earthquake that didn't stop until western European Christendom was split.

| *Timeline* |

| *1431* | Joan of Arc burned at stake |

| *1453* | Constantinople falls; end of Eastern Roman Empire |

| *1456* | Gutenberg produces first printed Bible |

| *1466* | Erasmus born |

| *1536* | Erasmus dies |

| *1540* | Ignatius Loyola gains approval for Society of Jesus |

No fan of monasticism \\ Born in Rotterdam, orphaned by the plague, Erasmus was sent from the chapter school of St. Lebuin's—which taught classical learning and the humanities—to a school conducted by the monastic Brethren of the Common Life.

He absorbed an emphasis on a personal relationship with God but hated the severe rules of monastic life and the intolerant theologians.

They intended to teach humility, he later recalled, by breaking the pupils' spirits.

But he was poor, and both he and his brother had to enter monasteries; Erasmus decided to join the Augustinians.

He wanted to travel, gain some academic elbow room, and leave behind the "barbarians" who discouraged him from classical studies.

And as soon as he was ordained a priest in 1492, he did, becoming secretary to the bishop of Cambrai, who sent him to Paris to study theology.

He hated it there too.

The dorms stank of urine, the food was execrable, the studies mechanical, and the discipline brutal.

But he was able to begin a career in writing and traveling that took him to most of the countries of Europe.

Though he often complained of poor health, he was driven by a desire to seek out the best theologians of his day.

On a trip to England in 1499, he complained of bad beer, barbarism, and inhospitable weather, but he also met Thomas More, who became a friend for life.

On the same trip he heard John Colet teach from the Scriptures, not the layers of commentaries he had studied in Paris.

Colet, who would later become the dean of St. Paul's, encouraged the Dutch scholar to become a "primitive theologian" who studied Scripture like the church Fathers, not like the argumentative scholastics.

Thereafter Erasmus devoted himself to the Greek language, in which the New Testament was written.

"I cannot tell you, dear Colet, how I hurry on, with all sails set, to holy literature," he soon wrote to his new friend.

"How I dislike everything that keeps me back, or retards me."

!

The result was his most significant work: an edition of the New Testament in original Greek, published in 1516.

Accompanying it were study notes as well as his own Latin translation—correcting some 600 errors in Saint Jerome

*General Information*

Jerome (Eusebius Hieronymus), c.347-420, was a Father of the Church and Doctor of the Church, *whose great work was the translation of the Bible into Latin, the edition known as the Vulgate* (see Bible).

He was born at Stridon on the borders of Dalmatia and Pannonia of a well-to-do Christian family.

His parents sent him to Rome to further his intellectual interests, and there he acquired a knowledge of classical literature and was baptized at the age of 19.

Shortly thereafter he journeyed to Trier in Gaul and to Aquileia in Italy, where he began to cultivate his theological interests in company with others who, like himself, were ascetically inclined.

About 373, Jerome set out on a pilgrimage to the East.

In Antioch, where he was warmly received, he continued to pursue his humanist and monastic studies.

He also had a profound spiritual experience, dreaming that he was accused of being "a Ciceronian, not a Christian."

Accordingly, he determined to devote himself exclusively to the Bible and theology, although the translator Rufinus (345-410), Jerome's close friend, suggested later that the vow was not strictly kept.

Jerome moved to the desert of Chalcis, and while practicing more rigorous austerities, pursued his studies, including the learning of Hebrew.

On his return to Antioch in 378 he heard Apollinaris the Younger (c.310-c.390)

lecture and was admitted to the priesthood (379) by Paulinus, bishop of Antioch.

In Constantinople, where he spent three years around 380, he was influenced by Gregory of Nazianzus.

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When Jerome returned to Rome Pope Damasus I appointed him confidential secretary and librarian and commissioned him to begin his work of rendering the Bible into Latin.

After the death (384) of Damasus, however, Jerome fell out of favor, and for a second time he decided to go to the East.

He made brief visits to Antioch, Egypt, and Palestine.

In 386, Jerome settled at Bethlehem in a monastery established for him by Paula, one of a group of wealthy Roman women whose spiritual advisor he had been and who remained his lifelong friend.

There he began his most productive literary period, and there he remained for 34 years, until his death.

From this period come his major biblical commentaries and the bulk of his work on the Latin Bible.

The writings of Jerome express a scholarship unsurpassed in the early church and helped to create the cultural tradition of the Middle Ages.

He developed the use of philological and geographical material in his exegesis and recognized the scientific importance of archaeology.

In his interpretation of the Bible he used both the allegorical method of the Alexandrian and the realism of the Antiochene schools.

A difficult and hot-tempered man, Jerome made many enemies, but his correspondence with friends and enemies alike is of great interest, particularly that with Saint Augustine.

*His greatest gifts were in scholarship, and he is a true founder of scientific biblical exegesis in the West.*

Feast day: Sept. 30 (Western).

Ross Mackenzie

*Bibliography* \\ Berschin, W., Greek Letters and the Latin Middle Ages, rev.

ed.

(1989); Kelly, J. N. D., Jerome, His Life, Writings, and Controversies (1975); Steinmann, Jean, Saint Jerome and His Times (1959); Wiesen, David S., St. Jerome as a Satirist (1949; repr.

1964).

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*Saint Jerome*

*General Information*

Saint Jerome, [in Latin, Eusebius Hieronymus] (347?-419 or 420), was Father of the Church, Doctor of the Church, and biblical scholar, and whose most important work was a translation of the Bible into Latin (see Vulgate).

Jerome was born in Stridon, on the border of the Roman provinces of Dalmatia and Pannonia, about 347.

After a period of literary study in Rome, he withdrew to the desert, where he lived as an ascetic and pursued the study of Scripture.

In 379 he was ordained a priest.

He then spent three years in Constantinople (present-day �stanbul) with the Eastern church father, Saint Gregory of Nazianzus.

In 382 he returned to Rome, where he was made secretary to Pope Damasus I and became an influential figure.

Many people placed themselves under his spiritual direction, including a noble Roman widow named Paula and her daughter, both of whom followed him to the Holy Land in 385 after the death of Damasus.

Jerome fixed his residence at Bethlehem in 386, after Paula (later Saint Paula) founded four convents there, three for nuns and one for monks; the latter was governed by Jerome himself.

There he pursued his literary labors and engaged in controversy not only with heretics Jovinian and Vigilantius and the adherents of Pelagianism, but also with monk and theologian Tyrannius Rufinus and with Saint Augustine.

Because of his conflict with the bishop of Jerusalem, by about 395 Jerome found himself threatened with expulsion by the Roman civil authorities.

Although this threat was averted, Jerome's later years were overshadowed by the sack of Rome in 410, the death of Paula and her daughter, and his own increasing isolation.

In addition to his work on the Bible, Jerome's literary activity was extensive and varied.

He continued the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea, which covered sacred and profane history from the birth of Abraham to AD303, bringing the narrative to the year 378.

For his De Viris Illustribus (On Famous Men), Jerome drew upon the Ecclesiastical History of the same Eusebius.

He also wrote a number of commentaries on various books of the Bible, as well as polemical treatises against various theological opponents.

Jerome was a brilliant and prolific correspondent; more than 150 of his letters survive.

His feast day is September 30.

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*Saint Jerome*

*Advanced Information*

(ca.

347-419)

Jerome was a Biblical scholar and translator who aimed to introduce the best of Greek learning to Western Christianity.

He sensed the inferiority of the West, and he labored to add scholarship to the public glory of the church.

Jerome, whose Latin name was Eusebius Hieronomous, was born in the little town of Strido near the border of Italy and Dalmatia (today's Yugoslavia).

His parents were well-to-do Catholics who sent their son to Rome for his higher education.

There he heard the great grammarian Donatus, laid the foundation of his library of classical Latin authors, and adopted Cicero as his model of Latin style.

At the end of his studies, when about twenty years of age, he set off for Gaul.

In Treves, the imperial capital, he experienced a type of conversion, renouncing a secular career for meditation and spiritual work.

This change of career led him back to his home and to neighbouring Aquilia, where he met Rufinus and other clergymen and devout women interested in asceticism.

Thus began his career of cultivating ascetic and scholarly interests.

In 373 Jerome decided to travel to the East.

He settled for a time in the Syrian desert southeast of Antioch.

There he mastered Hebrew and perfected his Greek.

After ordination at Antioch he went to Constantinople and studied with Gregory of Nazianzus.

In 382 he returned to Rome, where he became the friend and secretary of Pope Damasus.

We have Damasus to thank for the first impulse toward Jerome's Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate.