Engelstoft (Hieron. Strido- nensis, interpres, criticus, exegeta, apologeta, historicus, doctor, mona- chus, Havn. 1798) ; D. v. Oolln (in Ersch and Gruber's Encjcl. sect, ii. vol. 8) ; Collombet (Histoire de S. Jerome, Lyons, 1844) ; and O. ZocKXEE (Hieronymus, sein Leben und Wirken. Gotha, 1865). The most zealous promoter of the monastic life among the church fathers was Jerome, the connecting link between East- ern and Western learning and religion. His life belongs almost with equal right to the history of theology and the history of monasticism. Hence the church art generally represents him as a penitent in a reading or writing posture, with a lion and a skull, to denote the union of the literary and anchoretic modes of life. He was the first learned divine who not only recom- mended but actually embraced the monastic mode of life, and his 206 THIRD PERIOD. A.D. 311-590. example exerted a great influence in making monanticism avail- able for the promotion of learning. To rare talents and attain- ments/ indefatigable activity of mind, ardent faith, immortal merit in the translation and interpretation of theBitle, and earn- est zeal for ascetic piety, he united so great vanity and ambition, such irritability and bitterness of temper, such vehemence of uncontrolled passion, such an intolerant and persecuting spirit, and such inconstancy of conduct, that we find ourselves alter- nately attracted and repelled by his character, and now filled with admiration for his greatness, now with contempt or pity for his weakness. Sophronius Eusebius Hieronymus was born at Stridon,^ on the borders of Dalmatia, not far from Aquileia, between the years 331 and 342.^ He was the son cf wealthy Christian parents, and was educated in Rome under the direction of the celebrated heathen grammarian Donatus, and the rhetorician Victorinus. He read with great diligence and profit the classic poets, orators, and philosophers, and collected a considerable ^ As he himself boasts in his second apology to Ruiinus: "Ego philosophus (?), rhetor, grammaticus, dialecticus, hebreeus, grsecus, latinus, trilinguis." The celebra- t-ed Erasmus, the first editor of his works, and a very competent judge in matters of literary talent and merit, places Jerome above all the fathers, even St. Augustine (with whose doctrines of free grace and predestination he could not sympathize), and often gives eloquent expression to his admiration for him. In a letter to Pope Leo X. (Ep. ii. 1, quoted in Vallarsi's ed. of Jerome's works, torn. xi. 290), he says : "Divus Hieronymus sic apud Latinos est theologorum princeps, ut hunc prope solum habeamus theologi dignum nomine. Xon quod cfeteros damnem, sed quod illustres alioqui, si cum hoc conferantur, ob huius eminentiam velut obscurentur. Denique tot egregiis est cumulatus dotibus, ut vix ullum habeat et ipsa docta Grtecia, quem cum hoc viro queat componere. Quantum in illo Romanae facundi^ ! quanta linguarum peritia ! quanta omnis antiquitatis omnium historiarum notitia ! quam fida memoria ! quam felix rerima omnium mixtura ! quam absoluta mysticarum litera- rum cognitio ! super omnia, quis