Jerome, Unbathed Super-Scholar

Commonplaces from Philip Schaff's History of the Christian Church, Vol. 3, pp. 967-88 (and 205-14). Concerning Saint Jerome:

"He was one of those intellectual natures, to which reading and studying are as indispensable as daily bread."

"He...[had] contempt of the natural ordinances of God, especially of marriage; and, completely reversing sound principles, he advocated even ascetic filth as an external mark of inward purity."

"Of marriage he had a very low conception, regarding it merely as a necessary evil for the increase of virgins."

"His principle in studying was, in his own words: 'To read the ancients, to test everything, to hold fast the good, and never depart from the catholic faith.'" ('Meum propositum est, antiquos legere, probare singula, retinere quae bona sunt, et a fide catholica numquam recedere')

"[Jerome] inspired several of his admiring female pupils, like St. Paula and her daughter Eustochium, with enthusiasm for the study of the sacred language of the old covenant, and brought them on so far that they could sing with him the Hebrew Psalms in praise of the Lord."

"He lamented the injurious influence of [Hebrew] studies on his style, since 'the rattling sound of the Hebrew soiled all the elegance and beauty of Latin speech.'"

"But his exegetical labours are not uniformly carried out; many parts are very indifferent, others thrown off with unconscionable carelessness in reliance on his genius and his reading, or dictated to an amanuensis as they came into his head.(1)" FOOTNOTE: He frequently excuses this 'dictare quodcunque in buccam venerit,' by his want of time and the weakness of his eyes...At the close of the brief Preface to the second book of his Commentary on the Ep. to the Ephesians...he says that he often managed to write as many as a thousand lines in one day. (!!!)