# Birth of St Jerome (c. 347)

URL: https://allhistories.com/croatia/timeline/347-birth-of-st-jerome
Location: Stridon (location disputed)
Themes: Key Events

Jerome, in Latin Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, was born around 347 into a Christian family in the town of Stridon, which he himself described as lying on the border between Dalmatia and Pannonia. The town was destroyed by the Goths during his lifetime, and its exact location remains disputed; places proposed include sites in Istria, Lika, Slovenia and western Bosnia. Jerome was educated in Rome, lived as a hermit in Syria and became secretary to Pope Damasus I, who in 382 asked him to revise the Latin translations of the Gospels. Settling in Bethlehem from 386, he produced a new Latin translation of most of the Bible, much of it directly from Hebrew, which became known as the Vulgate. He also wrote biblical commentaries, letters and historical works, and died in Bethlehem in 420. The Vulgate became the standard Bible of the Latin Church for more than a thousand years. Jerome is venerated as a Doctor of the Church, and in Croatia he was long regarded as a national patron. Medieval Croatian Glagolitic priests even credited him with inventing their alphabet, and the Pontifical Croatian College of St Jerome in Rome bears his name. At this point in the timeline (c. 347), no ruler of the Croatian lands is recorded in this dataset; the region was home to prehistoric and Illyrian peoples or ruled from Rome and Constantinople.

## Why it matters
Jerome, born in the Croatian lands, produced the Vulgate and became a symbol of Croatian Christian identity.

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — Jerome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerome)
- [Wikipedia — Stridon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stridon)
- [Croatian Encyclopedia (Hrvatska enciklopedija)](https://www.enciklopedija.hr/)
- [Wikipedia — Illyrians, Greeks And Rome (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalmatia_(Roman_province))