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Apostolic Letter Scripturae Sacrae Affectus of
the Holy Father Francis on the sixteen hundredth
anniversary of the death of Saint Jerome,
30.09.2020
APOSTOLIC LETTER
Scripturae Sacrae Affectus
OF THE HOLY FATHER
FRANCIS
ON THE SIXTEEN HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE
DEATH OF SAINT JEROME
Devotion to sacred Scripture, a “living and
tender love” for the written word of God: this
is the legacy that Saint Jerome bequeathed to
the Church by his life and labours.
Now, on the sixteen hundredth anniversary
of his death, those words taken from the opening
prayer of his liturgical Memorial give us an
essential insight into this outstanding figure
in the Church’s history and his immense love for
Christ.
That “living and tender love” flowed,
like a great river feeding countless streams,
into his tireless activity as a scholar,
translator and exegete.
Jerome’s profound knowledge of the
Scriptures, his zeal for making their teaching
known, his skill as an interpreter of texts, his
ardent and at times impetuous defence of
Christian truth, his asceticism and harsh
eremitical discipline, his expertise as a
generous and sensitive spiritual guide – all
these make him, sixteen centuries after his
death, a figure of enduring relevance for us,
the Christians of the twenty-first century.
Introduction
On 30 September 420, Saint Jerome died in
Bethlehem, in the community that he had founded
near the grotto of the Nativity.
He thus entrusted himself to the Lord
whom he had always sought and known in the
Scriptures, the same Lord whom, as a Judge, he
had already encountered in a feverish dream,
possibly during the Lenten season of 375.
That dream proved to be a decisive
turning point in his life, an occasion of
conversion and change in outlook.
He saw himself dragged before the Judge.
As he himself recalled: “Questioned about
my state, I responded that I was a Christian.
But the Judge retorted: ‘You lie!
You are a Ciceronian, not a Christian’”.
Jerome had loved from his youth the
limpid beauty of the Latin classics, whereas the
writings of the Bible had initially struck him
as uncouth and ungrammatical, too harsh for his
refined literary taste.
That experience inspired Jerome to devote
himself entirely to Christ and his word, and to
strive through his translations and commentaries
to make the divine writings increasingly
accessible to others.
It gave his life a new and more decisive
orientation: he was to become a servant of the
word of God, in love, as it were, with the
“flesh of Scripture”.
Thus, in the pursuit of knowledge that
marked his entire life, he put to good use his
youthful studies and Roman education,
redirecting his scholarship to the greater
service of God and the ecclesial community.
As a result, Saint Jerome became one of the
great figures of the ancient Church in the
period known as the golden age of patristics.
He served as a bridge between East and
West.
A youthful friend of Rufinus of Aquileia,
he knew Ambrose and was frequently in
correspondence with Augustine.
In the East, he knew Gregory of
Nazianzus, Didymus the Blind and Epiphanius of
Salamis.
The Christian iconographic tradition
presents him, in the company of Augustine,
Ambrose and Gregory the Great, as one of the
four great Doctors of the Western Church.
My predecessors have honoured Saint Jerome on
various occasions.
A century ago, on the fifteenth centenary
of his death, Benedict XV dedicated his
Encyclical Letter Spiritus Paraclitus (15
September 1920) to Jerome, presenting him to the
world as “doctor maximus explanandis
Scripturis”.
More recently, Benedict XVI devoted two
successive catecheses to his person and works.
Now on the 1600th anniversary of his
death, I too desire to commemorate Saint Jerome
and to emphasize once more the timeliness of his
message and teachings, beginning with his
immense love for the Scriptures.
Indeed, as a sure guide and authoritative
witness, Jerome in some sense dominated both the
XII Assembly of the Synod of Bishops devoted to
the Word of God, and the Apostolic Exhortation
Verbum Domini of my predecessor Benedict XVI,
published on the feast day of the Saint, 30
September 2010.
From Rome to Bethlehem
The journey of Saint Jerome’s life traversed the
roads of the Roman Empire between Europe and the
East.
Born around 345 in Stridon, on the border
between Dalmatia and Pannonia, in present-day
Croatia and Slovenia, he received a solid
upbringing in a Christian family.
As was the custom in those times, he was
baptized as an adult sometime between 358 and
364, while studying rhetoric in Rome.
During his Roman sojourn, he became an
insatiable reader of the Latin classics,
studying under the most celebrated teachers of
rhetoric then living.
Following his studies, he undertook a long
journey through Gaul, which brought him to the
imperial city of Trier, now in Germany.
There he first encountered Eastern
monasticism as disseminated by Saint Athanasius.
The result was a deep and enduring desire
for that experience, which led him to Aquileia,
where, with a few of his friends, “a choir of
the blessed”, he inaugurated a period of life in
common.
Around the year 374, passing through Antioch, he
decided to retire to the desert of Chalcis, in
order to realize in an ever more radical manner
an ascetical life in which great space was
reserved for the study of the biblical
languages, first Greek and then Hebrew.
He studied under a Christianized Jew who
introduced him to the knowledge of Hebrew and
its sounds, which he found “harsh and aspirate”.
Jerome consciously chose the desert and the
eremitic life for their deeper meaning as a
locus of fundamental existential decisions, of
closeness and encounter with God.
There, through contemplation, interior
trials and spiritual combat, he came to
understand more fully his own weakness, his own
limits and those of others.
There too, he discovered the importance
of tears.
The desert taught him sensitivity to
God’s presence, our necessary dependence on him
and the consolations born of his mercy.
Here, I am reminded of an apocryphal
story in which Jerome asks the Lord: “What do
you want of me?”
To which Christ replies: “You have not
yet given me everything”.
“But Lord, I have given you all sorts of
things”.
“One thing you have not given me”.
“What is that?”
“Give me your sins, so that I may rejoice
in forgiving them once more”.
We then find him in Antioch, where he was
ordained a priest by the bishop of that city,
Paulinus, and later, about 379, in
Constantinople, where he met Gregory of
Nazianzus and continued his studies.
He translated from Greek into Latin
several important works (the homilies of Origen
and the Chronicle of Eusebius) and was present
for the Council celebrated there in 381.
Those years of study revealed his
generous enthusiasm and a blessed thirst for
knowledge that made him tireless and passionate
in his work.
As he put it: “From time to time I
despaired; often I gave up, but then I went back
out of a stubborn will to learn”.
The “bitter seed” of his studies was to
produce “savoury fruits”.
In 382, Jerome returned to Rome and placed
himself at the service of Pope Damasus who,
appreciating his outstanding gifts, made him one
of his close associates.
There Jerome engaged in a constant
activity, without however neglecting spiritual
matters.
On the Aventine, supported by
aristocratic Roman women intent on a radically
evangelical life, like Marcella, Paula and her
daughter Eustochium, he created a cenacle
devoted to the reading and the rigorous study of
Scripture.
Jerome acted as exegete, teacher and
spiritual guide.
At this time, he undertook a revision of
the earlier Latin translations of the Gospels
and perhaps other parts of the New Testament as
well.
He continued his work of translating
Origen’s homilies and biblical commentaries,
engaged in a flurry of letter writing,
publically refuted heretical writers, at times
intemperately but always moved by the sincere
desire to defend the true faith and the deposit
of Scripture.
This intense and productive period was
interrupted by the death of Pope Damasus.
Jerome found himself forced to leave Rome
and, followed by friends and some women desirous
of continuing the experience of spiritual life
and biblical study already begun, left for
Egypt, where he met the great theologian Didymus
the Blind.
He then travelled to Palestine and in 386
settled definitively in Bethlehem.
He resumed his study of the biblical
texts, texts now anchored in the very places of
which they spoke.
The importance he attributed to the holy places
is seen not only by his decision to live in
Palestine from 386 until his death, but also by
the assistance he gave to pilgrims.
In Bethlehem, a place close to his heart,
he founded in the environs of the grotto of the
Nativity, “twin” monasteries, male and female,
with hospices to provide lodging for pilgrims to
the holy places.
This was yet another sign of his
generosity, for he made it possible for many
others to see and touch the places of salvation
history, and to find both cultural and spiritual
enrichment.
In his attentive listening to the Scriptures,
Jerome came to know himself and to find the face
of God and of his brothers and sisters.
He was also confirmed in his attraction
to community life.
His desire to live with friends, as he
had in Aquileia, led him to establish monastic
communities in order to pursue the cenobitic
ideal of religious life.
There, the monastery is seen as a
“palaestra” for training men and women “who
consider themselves least of all, in order to be
first among all”, content with poverty and
capable of teaching others by their own style of
life.
Jerome considered it a formative
experience to live “under the governance of a
single superior and in the company of many” in
order to learn humility, patience, silence and
meekness, in the awareness that “the truth does
not love dark corners and does not seek
grumblers”.
He also confessed that he “yearned for
the close cells of the monastery” and “desired
the eagerness of ants, where all work together,
nothing belongs to any individual, and
everything belongs to everyone”.
Jerome saw his studies not as a pleasant pastime
and an end unto itself, but rather as a
spiritual exercise and a means of drawing closer
to God.
His classical training was now directed
to the deeper service of the ecclesial
community.
We think of the assistance he gave to
Pope Damasus and his commitment to the
instruction of women, especially in the study of
Hebrew, from the time of the first cenacle on
the Aventine.
In this way, he enabled Paula and
Eustochium to “enter the serried ranks of
translators”, and, something unheard of in those
days, to read and chant the Psalms in the
original language.
His great erudition was employed in offering a
necessary service to those called to preach the
Gospel.
As he reminded his friend Nepotianus:
“the word of the priest must be flavoured by the
reading of Scripture.
I do not wish that you be a disclaimer or
charlatan of many words, but one who understands
the sacred doctrine (mysterii) and knows deeply
the teachings (sacramentorum) of your God.
It is typical of the ignorant to play
around with words and to garner the admiration
of inexpert people by speaking quickly.
Those who are shameless often explain
that which they do not know and pretend to be a
great expert only because they succeed in
persuading others”.
Jerome’s years in Bethlehem, to the time of his
death in 420, were the most fruitful and intense
period of his life, completely dedicated to the
study of Scripture and to the monumental work of
translating the entire Old Testament on the
basis of the original Hebrew.
At the same time, he commented on the
prophetic books, the Psalms and the letters of
Paul, and wrote guides to the study of the
Bible.
The deep learning that flowed over into
his works was the fruit of a collaborative
effort, from the copying and collating of
manuscripts to further reflection and
discussion.
As he put it: “I have never ever trusted
in my own powers to study the divine volumes… I
have the habit of asking questions, also about
that which I thought I knew and even more so
about that of which I was not sure”.
Conscious of his limitations, he asked
for constant prayer and intercession for his
efforts to translate the sacred texts “in the
same Spirit by whom they were written”.
Nor did he fail to translate works by
authors indispensable for exegesis, such as
Origen, “in order to make them available to
those who would like to study this material more
deeply and systematically”.
As an enterprise carried out within the
community and at the service of the community,
Jerome’s scholarly activity can serve as an
example of synodality for us and for our own
time.
It can also serve as a model for the
Church’s various cultural institutions, called
to be “places where knowledge becomes service,
for no genuine and integral human development
can occur without a body of knowledge that is
the fruit of cooperation and leads to greater
cooperation”.
The basis of such communion is Scripture,
which we cannot read merely on our own: “The
Bible was written by the People of God for the
People of God, under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit.
Only in this communion with the People of
God can we truly enter as a ‘we’ into the heart
of the truth that God himself wishes to convey
to us”.
His solid experience of a life nurtured by the
word of God enabled Jerome, through the many
letters he wrote, to become a spiritual guide.
He became a fellow traveller to many, for
he was convinced that “no skill can be learned
without a teacher”.
Thus he wrote to Rusticus: “This is what
I would like to make you understand, taking you
by the hand like an ancient mariner, the
survivor of several shipwrecks, attempting to
teach a young sailor”.
From his peaceful corner of the world, he
followed the course of human affairs in an age
of great upheaval, marked by events like the
sack of Rome in 410, which affected him deeply.
In those letters he dealt with doctrinal
controversies, constantly in defence of sound
doctrine.
His letters also show the value he placed
on relationships.
Jerome could be forceful but also gentle,
sincerely concerned for others, and, since “love
is priceless”, enthusiastic in showing genuine
affection.
This can also be seen from the fact that
he offered his works of translation and
commentary as a munus amicitiae.
They were to be a gift above all for his
friends, correspondents and those to whom his
works were dedicated – all of whom he begged to
read them with a friendly rather than a critical
eye – but also for his readers, his
contemporaries and those who would come after
them.
Jerome spent the last years of his life in the
prayerful reading of Scripture, both privately
and in community, in contemplation and in
serving his brothers and sisters through his
writings.
All this in Bethlehem, near the grotto
where the eternal Word was born of the Virgin
Mary.
For he was convinced that “they are
blessed who bear within them the cross, the
resurrection, the places of Christ’s nativity
and ascension!
Blessed are they who have Bethlehem in
their heart, in whose heart Christ is born each
day!”.
The “sapiential” aspect of Jerome’s life
To understand Saint Jerome’s personality fully,
we need to unite two dimensions that
characterized his life as a believer: on the one
hand, an absolute and austere consecration to
God, renouncing all human satisfaction for love
of Christ crucified (cf. 1 Cor 2:2; Phil
3:8.10), and on the other, a commitment to
diligent study, aimed purely at an ever deeper
understanding of the Christian mystery.
This double witness, wondrously offered
by Saint Jerome, can serve as a model above all
for monks, since all who live a life of
asceticism and prayer are urged to devote
themselves to the exacting labour of research
and reflection.
It is likewise a model for scholars, who
should always keep in mind that knowledge has
religious value only if it is grounded in an
exclusive love for God, apart from all human
ambition and worldly aspiration.
These two aspects of his life have found
expression in the history of art.
Saint Jerome was frequently depicted by
great masters of Western painting following two
distinct iconographic traditions.
One can be described as primarily
monastic and penitential, showing Jerome with a
body emaciated by fasting, living in the desert,
kneeling or prostrate on the ground, in many
cases clutching a rock and beating his breast,
his eyes turned towards the crucified Lord.
In this line, we find the moving
masterpiece of Leonardo da Vinci now in the
Vatican Museums.
Another tradition shows Jerome in the
garb of a scholar, seated at his writing desk,
intent on translating and commenting on the
sacred Scriptures, surrounded by scrolls and
parchments, devoted to defending the faith
through his erudition and his writings.
Albrecht Dürer, to cite one famous
example, portrayed him more than once in this
pose.
The two aspects are brought together in the
painting by Caravaggio located in the Borghese
Gallery in Rome: indeed in a single scene the
elderly ascetic is shown dressed simply in a red
robe with a skull on his table, a symbol of the
vanity of earthly realities; but at the same
time he is evidently depicted as a scholar, his
eyes fixed on a book as his hand dips a quill
into an inkwell – the typical act of a writer.
These two “sapiential” aspects were very much
evident in Jerome’s own life.
If, as a true “Lion of Bethlehem”, he
could be violent in his language, it was always
in the service of a truth to which he was
unconditionally committed.
As he explained in the first of his
writings, the Life of Saint Paul, Hermit of
Thebes, lions can roar but also weep.
What might at first appear as two
separate aspects of Saint Jerome’s character
were joined by the Holy Spirit through a process
of interior maturation.
Love for sacred Scripture
The distinctive feature of Saint Jerome’s
spirituality was undoubtedly his passionate love
for the word of God entrusted to the Church in
sacred Scripture.
All the Doctors of the Church –
particularly those of the early Christian era –
drew the content of their teaching explicitly
from the Bible.
Yet Jerome did so in a more systematic
and distinctive way.
Exegetes in recent times have come to appreciate
the narrative and poetic genius of the Bible and
its great expressive quality.
Jerome instead emphasized in sacred
Scripture the humble character of God’s
revelation, set down in the rough and almost
primitive cadences of the Hebrew language in
comparison to the refinement of Ciceronian
Latin.
He devoted himself to the study of sacred
Scripture not for aesthetic reasons, but – as is
well known – only because Scripture had led him
to know Christ.
Indeed, ignorance of Scripture is
ignorance of Christ.
Jerome teaches us that not only should the
Gospels and the apostolic Tradition present in
the Acts of the Apostles and in the Letters be
studied and commented on, but that the entire
Old Testament is indispensable for understanding
the truth and the riches of Christ.
The Gospel itself gives evidence of this:
it speaks to us of Jesus as the Teacher who
appeals to Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms
(cf. Lk 4:16-21; 24:27.44-47) in order to
explain his own mystery.
The preaching of Peter and Paul in the
Acts of the Apostles is likewise rooted in the
Old Testament, apart from which we cannot fully
understand the figure of the Son of God, the
Messiah and Saviour.
Nor should the Old Testament be thought
of merely as a vast repertoire of citations that
prove the fulfilment of the ancient prophecies
in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Rather, only in light of the Old
Testament prefigurements is it possible to know
more profoundly the meaning of the Christ event
as revealed in his death and resurrection.
Today we need to rediscover, in
catechesis and preaching, as well as in
theological exposition, the indispensable
contribution of the Old Testament, which should
be read and digested as a priceless source of
spiritual nourishment (cf. Ez 3:1-11; Rev
10:8-11).
Jerome’s complete devotion to Scripture is shown
by his impassioned way of speaking and writing,
similar to that of the ancient prophets.
From them, this Doctor of the Church drew
the inner fire that became a vehement and
explosive word (cf. Jer 5:14; 20:9; 23:29; Mal
3:2; Sir 48:1; Mt 3:11; Lk 12:49) necessary for
expressing the burning zeal of one who serves
the cause of God.
As with Elijah, John the Baptist and the
Apostle Paul, indignation at lies, hypocrisy and
false teaching inflamed Jerome’s speech, making
it provocative and seemingly harsh.
We can better understand the polemical
dimension of his writings if we read them in the
light of the most authentic prophetic tradition.
Jerome thus emerges as a model of
uncompromising witness to the truth that employs
the harshness of reproof in order to foster
conversion.
By the intensity of his expressions and
images, he shows the courage of a servant
desirous not of pleasing others, but his Lord
alone (Gal 1:10), for whose sake he expended all
his spiritual energy.
The study of sacred Scripture
Saint Jerome’s impassioned love for the divine
Scriptures was steeped in obedience.
First, to God who revealed himself in
words that demand a reverent hearing, and, then
to those in the Church who represent the living
Tradition that interprets the revealed message.
The “obedience of faith” (Rom 1:5; 16:26)
is not, however, a mere passive reception of
something already known; on the contrary it
demands an active personal effort to understand
what was spoken.
We can think of Saint Jerome as a
“servant” of the word, faithful and industrious,
entirely devoted to fostering in his brothers
and sisters in faith a more adequate
understanding of the sacred “deposit” entrusted
to them (cf. 1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:14).
Without an understanding of what was
written by the inspired authors, the word of God
itself is deprived of its efficacy (cf. Mt
13:19) and love for God cannot spring up.
Biblical passages are not always immediately
accessible.
As Isaiah said (29:11), even for those
who know how to “read” – that is, those who have
had a sufficient intellectual training – the
sacred book appears “sealed”, hermetically
closed to interpretation.
A witness is needed to intervene and
provide the key to its liberating message, which
is Christ the Lord.
He alone is able to break the seal and
open the book (cf. Rev 5:1-10) and in this way
unveil its wondrous outpouring of grace (Lk
4:17-21).
Many, even among practising Christians,
say openly that they are not able to read it
(cf. Is 29:12), not because of illiteracy, but
because they are unprepared for the biblical
language, its modes of expression and its
ancient cultural traditions.
As a result the biblical text becomes
indecipherable, as if it were written in an
unknown alphabet and an esoteric tongue.
This shows the need for the mediation of an
interpreter, who can exercise a “diaconal”
function on behalf of the person who cannot
understand the meaning of the prophetic message.
Here we think of the deacon Philip, sent
by the Lord to approach the chariot of the
eunuch who was reading a passage from Isaiah
(53:7-8), without being able to unlock its
meaning.
“Do you understand what you are reading?”
asked Philip, and the eunuch replied: “How can
I, unless someone guides me?” (Acts 8:30-31).
Jerome can serve as our guide because, like
Philip (cf. Acts 8:35), he leads every reader to
the mystery of Jesus, while responsibly and
systematically providing the exegetical and
cultural information needed for a correct and
fruitful reading of the Scriptures.
In an integrated and skilful way he
employed all the methodological resources
available in his day – competence in the
languages in which the word of God was handed
down, careful analysis and examination of
manuscripts, detailed archeological research, as
well as knowledge of the history of
interpretation – in order to point to a correct
understanding of the inspired Scriptures.
This outstanding aspect of the activity of Saint
Jerome is also of great importance for the
Church in our own time.
If, as Dei Verbum teaches, the Bible
constitutes as it were “the soul of sacred
theology” and the spiritual support of the
Christian life, the interpretation of the Bible
must necessarily be accompanied by specific
skills.
Centres of excellence for biblical research –
such as the Pontifical Biblical Institute in
Rome, and the École Biblique and the Studium
Biblicum Franciscanum in Jerusalem – and for
patristic research, like the Augustinianum in
Rome, certainly serve this purpose, but every
Faculty of Theology should strive to ensure that
the teaching of sacred Scripture is carried out
in such a way that students are provided with
necessary training in interpretative skills,
both in the exegesis of texts and in biblical
theology as a whole.
Sadly, the richness of Scripture is
neglected or minimized by many because they were
not afforded a solid grounding in this area.
Together with a greater emphasis on the
study of Scripture in ecclesiastical programmes
of training for priests and catechists, efforts
should also be made to provide all the faithful
with the resources needed to be able to open the
sacred book and draw from it priceless fruits of
wisdom, hope and life.
Here I would recall an observation made by Pope
Benedict XVI in the Apostolic Exhortation Verbum
Domini: “The [sacramental nature] of the word
can be understood by analogy with the real
presence of Christ under the appearances of the
consecrated bread and wine… Saint Jerome speaks
of the way we ought to approach both the
Eucharist and the word of God: ‘We are reading
the sacred Scriptures.
For me, the Gospel is the body of Christ;
for me, the holy Scriptures are his teaching.
And when he says: whoever does not eat my
flesh and drink my blood (Jn 6:53), even though
these words can also be understood of the
[Eucharistic] Mystery, Christ’s body and blood
are really the word of Scripture, God’s
teaching’”.
Sadly, many Christian families seem unable – as
was prescribed in the Torah (cf. Dt 6:6) – to
introduce their children to the word of the Lord
in all its beauty and spiritual power.
This led me to institute the Sunday of
the Word of God as a
means of encouraging the prayerful
reading of the Bible and greater familiarity
with God’s word.
All other expressions of piety will thus
be enriched with meaning, placed in their proper
perspective and directed to the fulfilment of
faith in complete adherence to the mystery of
Christ.
The Vulgate
The “sweetest fruit of the arduous cultivation”
of Jerome’s study of Greek and Hebrew was his
translation of the Old Testament into Latin from
the original Hebrew.
Up to that time, Christians of the Roman
empire could read the Bible in its entirety only
in Greek.
The books of the New Testament had been
written in Greek; a complete Greek version of
the Old Testament also existed, the so-called
Septuagint, the translation made by the Jewish
community of Alexandria around the second
century before Christ.
Yet for readers of Latin, there was no
complete version of the Bible in their language;
only some partial and incomplete translations
from the Greek.
To Jerome and those who continued his
work belongs the merit of undertaking a revision
and a new translation of the whole of Scripture.
Having begun the revision of the Gospels
and the Psalms in Rome with the encouragement of
Pope Damasus, Jerome, from his cell in
Bethlehem, then started the translation of all
the Old Testament books directly from the
Hebrew.
This work lasted for many years.
To complete this labour of translation, Jerome
put to good use his knowledge of Greek and
Hebrew, as well as his solid training in Latin,
employing the philological tools he had at his
disposal, in particular Origen’s Hexapla.
The final text united continuity in
formulas by now in common use with a greater
adherence to the Hebrew style, without
sacrificing the elegance of the Latin language.
The result was a true monument that
marked the cultural history of the West, shaping
its theological language.
Jerome’s translation, after initially
encountering some rejection, quickly became the
common patrimony of both scholars and ordinary
believers; hence the name “Vulgate”.
Medieval Europe learned to read, pray and
think from the pages of the Bible translated by
Jerome.
In this way, “sacred Scripture became a
sort of ‘immense lexicon’ (Paul Claudel) and
‘iconographic atlas’ (Marc Chagall), from which
both Christian culture and art could draw”.
Literature, art and even popular language
have continually been shaped by Jerome’s
translation of the Bible, leaving us great
treasures of beauty and devotion.
It was due to this indisputable fact that the
Council of Trent, in its decree Insuper,
affirmed the “authentic” character of the
Vulgate, thus attesting to its use in the Church
through the centuries and bearing witness to its
value as a tool for the purpose of study,
preaching and public disputation.
Yet the Council did not seek to minimize
the importance of the original languages, as
Jerome never stopped insisting, much less forbid
undertaking a comprehensive translation in the
future.
Saint Paul VI, following the indication
of the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council,
desired that the work of revising the Vulgate be
brought to completion and placed at the service
of the whole Church.
Thus in 1979 Saint John Paul II, in the
Apostolic Constitution Scripturarum Thesaurus,
promulgated the typical edition called the
“Neo-Vulgate”.
Translation as inculturation
By his translation, Jerome succeeded in
“inculturating” the Bible in the Latin language
and culture.
His work became a permanent paradigm for
the missionary activity of the Church.
In effect, “whenever a community receives
the message of salvation, the Holy Spirit
enriches its culture with the transforming power
of the Gospel ”.
Here a kind of circularity is
established: just as Jerome’s translation is
indebted to the language and culture of
classical Latin, whose influence is very
evident, so his translation, by its language and
its symbolic and highly imaginative content,
became in turn an impetus to the creation of a
new culture.
Jerome’s work of translation teaches us that the
values and positive forms of every culture
represent an enrichment for the whole Church.
The different ways by which the word of
God is proclaimed, understood and experienced in
each new translation enrich Scripture itself
since, according to the well-known expression of
Gregory the Great, Scripture grows with the
reader, taking on new accents and new resonance
throughout the centuries.
The entrance of the Bible and the Gospel
into different cultures renders the Church ever
more clearly “a bride bedecked with jewels” (Is
61:10).
At the same time it witnesses to the fact
that the Bible continually needs to be
translated into the linguistic and mental
categories of each culture and generation, also
in the secularized global culture of our time.
It has been rightly pointed out that an analogy
exists between translation as an act of
“linguistic” hospitality and other forms of
hospitality.
This is why translation does not concern
language alone but really reflects a broader
ethical decision connected with an entire
approach to life.
Without translation, different linguistic
communities would be unable to communicate among
themselves; we would close the doors of history
to one another and negate the possibility of
building a culture of encounter.
In effect, without translation there can
be no such hospitality; indeed hostility would
increase.
A translator is a bridge builder.
How many hasty judgments are made, how
many condemnations and conflicts arise from the
fact that we do not understand the language of
other persons and fail to apply ourselves, with
firm hope, to the endless demonstration of love
that translation represents.
Jerome too had to counter the dominant thought
of his time.
If the knowledge of Greek was relatively
common at the dawn of the Roman Empire, by his
time it was already becoming a rarity.
He came to be one of the best experts in
Greco-Christian language and literature and he
undertook a still more arduous and solitary
journey when he undertook the study of Hebrew.
If, as it has been said, “the limits of
my language are the limits of my world”, we can
say that we owe to Saint Jerome’s knowledge of
languages a more universal understanding of
Christianity and one steeped more deeply in its
sources.
With the celebration of this anniversary of the
death of Saint Jerome, our gaze turns to the
extraordinary missionary vitality expressed by
the fact that the the word of God has been
translated into more than three thousand
languages.
To how many missionaries do we owe the
invaluable publication of grammars, dictionaries
and other linguistic tools that enable greater
communication and become vehicles for “the
missionary aspiration of reaching everyone”!
We need to support this work and invest
in it, helping to overcome limits in
communication and lost opportunities for
encounter.
Much remains to be done.
It has been said that without translation
there can be no understanding: we would
understand neither ourselves nor others.
Jerome and the Chair of Peter
Jerome always had a special relationship with
the city of Rome: Rome was the spiritual haven
to which he constantly returned.
In Rome he was trained as a humanist and
formed as a Christian; Jerome was a homo
Romanus.
This bond arose in a very particular way
from the Latin language of which he was a master
and which he deeply loved, but above all from
the Church of Rome and especially the Chair of
Peter.
The iconographic tradition
anachronistically depicts him wearing the robes
of a cardinal as a sign of his being a priest of
Rome under Pope Damasus.
In Rome he began to revise the earlier
translation.
Even when jealousies and
misunderstandings forced him to leave the city,
he always remained strongly linked to the Chair
of Peter.
For Jerome, the Church of Rome is the fertile
ground where the seed of Christ bears abundant
fruit.
At a turbulent time in which the seamless
garment of the Church was often torn by
divisions among Christians, Jerome looked to the
Chair of Peter as a sure reference point.
“As I follow no leader save Christ, so I
communicate with none but Your Holiness, that
is, with the Chair of Peter.
For this, I know, is the rock on which
the Church is built”.
At the height of the controversy with the
Arians, he wrote to Damasus: “He that does not
gather with you scatters; he that is not of
Christ is of antichrist”.
Consequently Jerome could also state: “He
who is united to the Chair of Peter is one with
me”.
Jerome was often involved in bitter disputes for
the cause of the faith.
His love for the truth and his ardent
defence of Christ perhaps led him to an excess
of verbal violence in his letters and writings.
Yet he lived for peace: “I wish for peace
as much as others; and not only do I wish for
it, I ask for it.
But the peace which I want is the peace
of Christ; a true peace, a peace without
rancour, a peace which does not involve war, a
peace which will not reduce opponents but will
unite friends”.
Today more than ever, our world needs the
medicine of mercy and communion.
Here I would like to say once again: let
us offer a radiant and attractive witness of
fraternal communion.
“By this all will know that you are my
disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn
13:35).
This is what Jesus, with intense prayer,
asked of the Father: “that they may all be one…
in us… so that the world may believe” (Jn
17:21).
Loving what Jerome loved
At the conclusion of this Letter, I wish to
address an appeal to everyone.
Among the many tributes paid to Saint
Jerome by later generations, one is that he was
not simply one of the greatest scholars of the
“library” from which Christianity was enriched
over the course of time, beginning from the
treasury of sacred Scripture.
It could also be said of Jerome that, as
he himself said of Nepotianus, “by assiduous
reading and constant meditation he made his
heart a library of Christ”.
Jerome spared no effort in expanding his
own library, which he always viewed as an
indispensable workshop for understanding the
faith and the spiritual life; in this way he
serves as a fine example also for the present
time.
But he did not stop there.
For him, study was not limited to the
years of his youthful training, but a continual
commitment, a daily priority.
We can say that he became himself a
library and a source of knowledge for countless
others.
Postumianus, who traveled throughout the
East in the fourth century in order to explore
the growth of monasticism and spent some months
with Jerome, saw this with his own eyes.
As he wrote: “[Jerome] is always occupied
in reading, always at his books: he takes no
rest day or night; he is perpetually either
reading or writing something”.
In this regard, I often think of the experience
a young person can have today entering a
bookshop in his or her city, or visiting an
Internet site, to look for the section on
religious books.
In most cases, this section, when it
exists, is not only marginal but poorly stocked
with works of substance.
Looking at those bookshelves or webpages,
it is difficult for a young person to understand
how the quest of religious truth can be a
passionate adventure that unites heart and mind;
how the thirst for God has inflamed great minds
throughout the centuries up to the present time;
how growth in the spiritual life has influenced
theologians and philosophers, artists and poets,
historians and scientists.
One of the problems we face today, not
only in religion, is illiteracy: the hermeneutic
skills that make us credible interpreters and
translators of our own cultural tradition are in
short supply.
I would like to pose a challenge to young
people in particular: begin exploring your
heritage.
Christianity makes you heirs of an
unsurpassed cultural patrimony of which you must
take ownership.
Be passionate about this history which is
yours.
Dare to fix your gaze on the young Jerome
who, like the merchant in Jesus’ parable, sold
all that he had in order to buy the “pearl of
great price” (Mt 13:46).
Jerome can truly be called the “library of
Christ”, a perennial library that, sixteen
centuries later, continues to teach us the
meaning of Christ’s love, a love that is
inseparable from an encounter with his word.
This is why the present anniversary can
be seen as a summons to love what Jerome loved,
to rediscover his writings and to let ourselves
be touched by his robust spirituality, which can
be described in essence as a restless and
impassioned desire for a greater knowledge of
the God who chose to reveal himself.
How can we not heed, in our day, the
advice that Jerome unceasingly gave to his
contemporaries: “Read the divine Scriptures
constantly; never let the sacred volume fall
from your hand”?
A radiant example of this is the Virgin Mary,
evoked by Jerome above all as Virgin and Mother,
but also as a model of prayerful reading of the
Scriptures.
Mary pondered these things in her heart
(cf. Lk 2:19.51) “because she was a holy woman,
had read the sacred Scriptures, knew the
prophets, and recalled that the angel Gabriel
had said to her the same things that the
prophets had foretold… She looked at her newborn
child, her only son, lying in the manger and
crying.
What she saw was, in fact, the Son of
God; she compared what she saw with all that she
had read and heard”.
Let us, then, entrust ourselves to Our
Lady who, more than anyone, can teach us how to
read, meditate, contemplate and pray to God, who
tirelessly makes himself present in our lives.
Given in Rome, at the Basilica of Saint John
Lateran, on 30 September, the Memorial of Saint
Jerome, in the year 2020, the eighth of my
Pontificate.
FRANCIS
______________________________
[1]“Deus qui beato Hieronymo presbitero suavem
et vivum Scripturae Sacrae affectum tribuisti,
da, ut populus tuus verbo tuo uberius alatur et
in eo fontem vitae inveniet”.Collecta Missae
Sanctae Hieronymi,Missale Romanum, editio typica
tertia, Civitas Vaticana, 2002.
[2]Epistula(hereafterEp.)22, 30: CSEL 54, 190.
[3]AAS 12 (1920), 385-423.
[4]Cf. General Audiences of 7 and 14 November
2007:Insegnamenti, III, 2 (2007), 553-556;
586-591.
[5]SYNOD OF BISHOPS,Twelfth Ordinary General
Assembly,Message to the People of God(24 October
2008).
[6]Cf. AAS 102 (2010), 681-787.
[7]Chronicum374: PL 27, 697-698.
[8]Ep. 125, 12: CSEL 56, 131.
[9]Cf.Ep.122, 3: CSEL 56, 63.
[10]Cf.Morning Meditation, 10 December 2015.The
anecdote is related in A. LOUF,Sotto la guida
dello Spirito, Qiqaion, Mangano (BI), 1990,
154-155.
[11]Cf.Ep.125, 12: CSEL 56, 131.
[12]Cf. Apostolic ExhortationVerbum Domini, 89:
AAS 102 (2010), 761-762.
[13]Cf.Ep.125, 9.15.19: CSEL 56,
128.133-134.139.
[14]Vita Malchi monachi captivi, 7, 3: PL 23,
59-60.
[15]Praefatio in LibrumEsther, 2: PL 28, 1505.
[16]Cf.Ep. 108, 26: CSEL 55, 344-345.
[17]Ep.52, 8: CSEL 54, 428-429; cf.Verbum
Domini, 60: AAS 102 (2010), 739.
[18]Praefatio in Librum Paralipomenon LXX,
1.10-15:Sources Chrétiennes592, 340.
[19]Praefatio in Pentateuchum: PL 28, 184.
[20]Ep. 80, 3: CSEL 55, 105.
[21]Message on the Occasion of the Twenty-fourth
Public Session of the Pontifical Academies, 4
December 2019:L’Osservatore Romano, 6 December
2019, p. 8.
[22]Verbum Domini, 30: AAS 102 (2010), 709.
[23]Ep.125, 15.2: CSEL 56, 133.120.
[24]Ep.3, 6: CSEL 54, 18.
[25]Cf.Praefatio in Librum Iosue, 1, 9-12: SCh
592, 316.
[26]Homilia in Psalmum 95: PL 26, 1181.
[27]Cf.Vita S. Pauli primi eremitae, 16, 2: PL
23, 28.
[28]Cf.In Isaiam Prologus: PL 24, 17.
[29]Cf. SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL,
Dogmatic Constitution on Divine RevelationDei
Verbum, 14.
[30]Cf. ibid.
[31]Cf. ibid., 7.
[32]Cf. SAINT JEROME,Ep.53, 5: CSEL 54, 451.
[33]Cf. SECOND VATICAN ECUMENICAL COUNCIL,
Dogmatic Constitution on Divine RevelationDei
Verbum, 12.
[34]Ibid., 24.
[35]Cf. ibid., 25.
[36]Cf. ibid., 21.
[37]N. 56; cf.In Psalmum 147: CCL 78, 337-338.
[38]Cf. Apostolic Letter Motu ProprioAperuit
Illis, 30 September 2019.
[39]Cf. Apostolic ExhortationEvangelii Gaudium,
152.175: AAS 105 (2013), 1083-1084.1093.
[40]Cf.Ep. 52, 3: CSEL 54, 417.
[41]Cf. Apostolic ExhortationVerbum Domini, 72:
AAS 102 (2010), 746-747.
[42]SAINT JOHN PAUL II,Letter to Artists(4 April
1999), 5: AAS 91 (1999), 1159-1160.
[43]Cf. DENZIGER-SCHÖNMETZER,Enchiridion
Symbolorum, ed. 43, 1506.
[44]25 April 1979: AAS 71 (1979), 557-559.
[45]Apostolic ExhortationEvangelii Gaudium, 116:
AAS 105 (2013), 1068.
[46]Homilia in EzechielemI, 7: PL 76, 843D.
[47]Cf. Apostolic ExhortationEvangelii Gaudium,
116: AAS 105 (2013), 1068.
[48]Cf. P. RICOEUR,Sur la traduction, Paris,
2004.
[49]Cf. Apostolic ExhortationEvangelii Gaudium,
24: AAS 105 (2013), 1029-1030.
[50]L. WITTGENSTEIN,Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus, 5.6.
[51]Apostolic ExhortationEvangelii Gaudium,31:
AAS 105 (2013), 1033.
[52]Cf. G. STEINER,After Babel.Aspects of
Language and Translation, New York, 1975.
[53]Cf.Ep.15, 1: CSEL 54, 63.
[54]Ibid., 15, 2: CSEL 54, 62-64.
[55]Ibid., 16, 2: CSEL 54, 69.
[56]Ibid., 82, 2: CSEL 55, 109.
[57]Cf. Apostolic ExhortationEvangelii Gaudium,
99: AAS 105 (2013), 1061.
[58]Ep.60, 10; CSEL 54, 561.
[59]SULPICIUS SEVERUS,DialogusI, 9, 5: SCh510,
136-138.
[60]Ep.52, 7: CSEL 54, 426.
[61]Homilia de Nativitate DominiIV: PL Suppl.
2, 191.
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