Jerome

Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus

Lived

c. 342–420

Era

The fathers

Where

Rome and Bethlehem

Tradition

The apostolic communities

The Vulgate

A scholar of ferocious temper and equal industry who, after some years in Rome as secretary to the pope, settled in a monastery at Bethlehem and spent more than two decades translating the Bible into Latin.

Why it matters

He insisted on going back to the Hebrew for the Old Testament rather than working from the Greek as everyone else did, which Augustine thought reckless and which was right. The Vulgate became the Bible of the west for over a thousand years, and its wording shaped Latin Christianity down to the phrasing of its prayers. He also distinguished the Hebrew canon from the books that reached Latin only through Greek — a distinction that lay dormant until the Reformation made it decisive.

All the figures, from the apostolic age to the present, or the timeline they stand in.