Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (The Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History, 13)

Winner of the Award for Excellence from the American Academy of ReligionWinner of the Philip Schaff Prize from the American Society of Church HistoryWinner of the John Gilmary Shea Prize from the American Catholic Historical Association Just as they aspired to revive the Greek and Roman past, so the humanist scholars of the Renaissance sought to retrieve the early Christian era. Among the most fully studied figures of Christian antiquity was Saint Jerome. Eugene Rice's award-winning book traces the saint's changing images and fortunes from 1300 to 1600 and charts how culture―popular and elite, secular and sacred, pietistic and scholarly―celebrated those aspects of Jerome's life that best suited its own purposes. Just as they aspired to revive the Greek and Roman past, so the humanist scholars of the Renaissance sought to retrieve the early Christian era. Among the most fully studied figures of Christian antiquity was Saint Jerome. Eugene Rice's award-winning book traces the saint's changing images and fortunes from 1300 to 1600 and charts how culture-- popular and elite, secular and sacred, pietistic and scholarly-- celebrated those aspects of Jerome's life that best suited its own purposes.

An award-winning book that traces the saint's changing images and charts how various cultures celebrated those aspects of Jeromes life that best suited its own purposes.

Saint Jerome (his Latin names, Eusebius Hieronymus, derive from the Greek and mean "devout" and "of sacred name") (fig.1) was born around A.D. 345 of the well-to-do Christian parents at Stridon, in Dalmatia, a town so efficiently sacked by the Goths (in 379 perhaps, after they had shattered the imperial army at Adrianople) that we can be fairly sure only that it was in what army is today Yugoslavia and within comfortable reach of Aquileia, the large commercial, military, and administrative port at the head of the Adriatic. Saint Jerome in the Renaissance Copyright Contents Illustrations Preface & Acknowledgments 1 The Historical Jerome 2 From History to Legend 3 The Cult 4 Divus litterarum princeps 5 Hieronymus redivivus: Erasmus and St. Jerome 6 Between Protestants and Catholics 7 The Translator of the Vulgate Bible: A Sixteenth-Century Controversy Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index