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The book has no illustrations or index. It may have numerous typos or missing text. However, purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original rare book from the publisher's website (GeneralBooksClub.com). You can also preview excerpts of the book there. Purchasers are also entitled to a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can select from more than a million books without charge. Original Publisher: London : Heinemann; Publication date: 1933; Subjects: Biography
526 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1933
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 7, 2025
From about 1999 till 2004 there raged a fiery blast furnace within my heart. It abated a bit in the Spring of 2004, when my workplace efforts were crowned with the award of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal.
At first buoyed by this distinction, my energy quickly flagged, sputtered and gave out the next year - when I retired.
As Stéphane Mallarme says, the smoke of ego is pride. And I was asphyxiated.
I had reached the point of utter burnout.
It became clear to me as that year progressed that the root reason of my fall was widespread moral turpitude, which had become painfully obvious to me in my workplace in 1999, for it had been clearly nothing to write home about from an ethical perspective.
Then, I discovered Amazon.
Immersing myself in early patristic Church history, in 2006 I decided to explore the world of this terminally angry saint.
I was not disappointed.
Jerome lived in Rome at the time of the barbarian invasions - and he had been no lover of the egregious and fiery concupiscence in which he found himself engulfed - just as I had experienced the effects of second-hand amoral fire and smoke in the workplace.
So Jerome escaped to the deserts of the mideast, there eventually to die, a fiery hermit.
Other contemporaneous saints, like Augustine, respected and revered this angry man. And so did I.
But modern observers rightly had their doubts.
I, though, smouldering in the black smoke of burnout -
Heard Jerome with his clarion call sounding the charge.
‘Once more, into the fray!’
But, I found to my dismay, the fray would have to wait awhile. My wounds smarted too much. And I was still asphyxiated by my ego’s smoke.
Early on in my life, I had tried on my parent's egos for size, but they were an awkward fit. So, then, picking a ripe Apple from the garden, I bit into it hungrily - but it tasted horrible.
In the end I had to give up on all the usual panaceas, like Jerome.
As in the Scottish ballad which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,” I found, like that mortally wounded laird, I had to:
Just sit down and rest awhile -
And then I’ll rise again!
And rise again I did, in 2017 when I joined Goodreads... because, my memories being the catalyst, I performed a wholesale spring cleaning on my soul, through my reviews.
Whew!
So now, seeing my little self as it really is - and nothing much to write home about - old Jerome’s prideful smoke is finally leaving my system...
And Peace is the tradeoff - blooming in burnout.
At first buoyed by this distinction, my energy quickly flagged, sputtered and gave out the next year - when I retired.
As Stéphane Mallarme says, the smoke of ego is pride. And I was asphyxiated.
I had reached the point of utter burnout.
It became clear to me as that year progressed that the root reason of my fall was widespread moral turpitude, which had become painfully obvious to me in my workplace in 1999, for it had been clearly nothing to write home about from an ethical perspective.
Then, I discovered Amazon.
Immersing myself in early patristic Church history, in 2006 I decided to explore the world of this terminally angry saint.
I was not disappointed.
Jerome lived in Rome at the time of the barbarian invasions - and he had been no lover of the egregious and fiery concupiscence in which he found himself engulfed - just as I had experienced the effects of second-hand amoral fire and smoke in the workplace.
So Jerome escaped to the deserts of the mideast, there eventually to die, a fiery hermit.
Other contemporaneous saints, like Augustine, respected and revered this angry man. And so did I.
But modern observers rightly had their doubts.
I, though, smouldering in the black smoke of burnout -
Heard Jerome with his clarion call sounding the charge.
‘Once more, into the fray!’
But, I found to my dismay, the fray would have to wait awhile. My wounds smarted too much. And I was still asphyxiated by my ego’s smoke.
Early on in my life, I had tried on my parent's egos for size, but they were an awkward fit. So, then, picking a ripe Apple from the garden, I bit into it hungrily - but it tasted horrible.
In the end I had to give up on all the usual panaceas, like Jerome.
As in the Scottish ballad which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called “the grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,” I found, like that mortally wounded laird, I had to:
Just sit down and rest awhile -
And then I’ll rise again!
And rise again I did, in 2017 when I joined Goodreads... because, my memories being the catalyst, I performed a wholesale spring cleaning on my soul, through my reviews.
Whew!
So now, seeing my little self as it really is - and nothing much to write home about - old Jerome’s prideful smoke is finally leaving my system...
And Peace is the tradeoff - blooming in burnout.
July 5, 2016
St Jerome was a major figure in Latin Christianity in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Besides revising the Latin Bible, his greatest influence lies in giving power to the rising monastic movement in the Latin world. He came from Dalmatia on the Adriatic, spent time as a hermit, then went to Rome before spending years as a monk in Bethlehem.
Although Jerome was a controversialist, little of his polemic is visible on the surface in this selection of letters. Occasionally, you can see him making oblique reference to people who might possibly criticise him for some things, and there is a devastating caricature of his erstwhile friend Rufinus in one letter as well. Furthermore, we read here Jerome's version of the First Origenist Controversy.
For the most part, though, this selection is Jerome the ascetic, not Jerome the polemicist. We see his ideas about how to be a good monk, a good nun, a good widow, or a good clergyman set down. We see his instructions on how to educate a young girl in Christian discipline. Much is worth thinking on, chewing on, mulling over, and much is also quotable.
We also encounter Jerome here as a source for the Later Roman Empire. Basically, he reads in these letters as though the world were on the precipice, if not already falling into the abyss. Sometimes I know he is being hyperbolic, at other times it is a trope ('She's lucky death spared her seeing the world invaded by barbarians'), but at other times there is genuine feeling behind it. Jerome is keenly aware of the catastrophes of his age, but is this because they were that much more acute or because they serve his rhetoric well? I reckon that it is a bit of both.
This selection is well worth reading as an introduction to Jerome and his thought.
Although Jerome was a controversialist, little of his polemic is visible on the surface in this selection of letters. Occasionally, you can see him making oblique reference to people who might possibly criticise him for some things, and there is a devastating caricature of his erstwhile friend Rufinus in one letter as well. Furthermore, we read here Jerome's version of the First Origenist Controversy.
For the most part, though, this selection is Jerome the ascetic, not Jerome the polemicist. We see his ideas about how to be a good monk, a good nun, a good widow, or a good clergyman set down. We see his instructions on how to educate a young girl in Christian discipline. Much is worth thinking on, chewing on, mulling over, and much is also quotable.
We also encounter Jerome here as a source for the Later Roman Empire. Basically, he reads in these letters as though the world were on the precipice, if not already falling into the abyss. Sometimes I know he is being hyperbolic, at other times it is a trope ('She's lucky death spared her seeing the world invaded by barbarians'), but at other times there is genuine feeling behind it. Jerome is keenly aware of the catastrophes of his age, but is this because they were that much more acute or because they serve his rhetoric well? I reckon that it is a bit of both.
This selection is well worth reading as an introduction to Jerome and his thought.
March 24, 2022
St Jerome is an interesting guy. Sometimes he's a leeeeetle bit crazy (I do not think Adam and Eve were virgins in the garden...) but it was very interesting to look at the thoughts of an early Christian writing around the time of the sack of Rome. The benefit of reading the letters of someone so chronologically distant from me is that his faults are incredibly obvious to my 21st century eyes, but this also means his virtues are different than the ones common today. And it made me think more about other things I had assumed about this era in history.
Also his letter in response to friends asking him advice on on how to raise their new born baby girl was beautiful, especially the section on educating her well:
"Let her play with [carved letters], making play a road to learning."
"Above all take care to not make her lessons distasteful; a childish dislike offen lasts longer than childhood."
In why it is important to choose a *good* teacher for even the beginner things, like reading: "Things must not be despised as trifles, if without them great results are impossible."
"Children should never learn what they will afterwards have to unlearn."
Also his letter in response to friends asking him advice on on how to raise their new born baby girl was beautiful, especially the section on educating her well:
"Let her play with [carved letters], making play a road to learning."
"Above all take care to not make her lessons distasteful; a childish dislike offen lasts longer than childhood."
In why it is important to choose a *good* teacher for even the beginner things, like reading: "Things must not be despised as trifles, if without them great results are impossible."
"Children should never learn what they will afterwards have to unlearn."
June 3, 2017
They say St. Jerome carried a stone to beat himself for his sins. They say he is only a saint because of his stone. He may have been a saint, but charity to others in his letters was not one of them. Seems like theological in-fighting was a blood sport in those days.
June 30, 2014
Wonderful writings of a saintly man in the early Church.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews