Church Father
"The greatest biblical scholar of the early Church — whose Latin translation of the Bible (the Vulgate) shaped Western Christianity for a thousand years"
Jerome was born c. AD 347 in Dalmatia. He studied in Rome under the grammarian Donatus, mastering Latin literature. After baptism he studied Greek in Trier and Antioch before a period of ascetic life in the Syrian desert. In AD 382 Pope Damasus I commissioned him to revise the existing Latin translations of the Bible. The resulting Vulgate — translated directly from the Hebrew and Greek — became the standard Bible of the Western Church. The Council of Trent declared it the authoritative Latin text. After Damasus’s death he withdrew to Bethlehem, founding a monastery and spending the last thirty-five years of his life in scholarship.
"We believe that God was born of a virgin, because we read it. That Mary was married after she gave birth, we do not believe, because we do not read it."
Ordination chain from Christ to this Father — and onward to students. Solid links cite named primary sources. Unknown means no ordainer is historically attested. Nodes with a profile are linked.
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