Defending St. Jerome’s honor

By Thomas V. Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | Jan 21, 2026

I’ve noticed that whenever St. Jerome comes up in popular Catholic discourse, he is very frequently said to have been “grumpy”, bad-tempered, habitually angry, mean. I’m not sure when this view first proliferated, but it would seem that the only two things many modern Catholics think they know about St. Jerome’s life is that he translated the Bible and that he was a real piece of work. It is common to hear that he would never have been considered a saint if ancient standards were as high as those of the canonization process today.

The level of nonsense commonly talked about St. Jerome’s supposed “anger problem” is quite astonishing. You can find countless articles claiming that Jerome himself admitted to having a terrible temper; no evidence for this is ever given. One recent piece at National Catholic Register described Jerome as “returning defeated to the confessional again and again” because of his sins of anger, which is rather odd considering that “confessionals” (and more to the point, the practice of regular confession for venial sins) did not exist in the ancient Church.

Another by a priest at Aleteia claimed, without evidence, that Jerome became a hermit specifically to solve his anger problem. Actually, it was first to repent of the worldly lifestyle of his youth, and then because he was driven out of Rome by vile slanders. But he receives no sympathy even in that dark moment of his life: a book says that St. Jerome “made so many enemies in Rome by his nasty criticisms”—this is how the author refers to the fact that the saint rightly rebuked the immorality and luxury of the Roman clergy, which was so bad that the Emperor himself made a law to curb it.

Nor have I been able to find any evidence for the frequent claim that St. Jerome beat himself with a stone specifically because of anger (he does, though, refer to suffering temptations of the flesh).

The basis for these claims about this great Father of the Church is his use of invective in his writings. There are, admittedly, a few moments in Jerome’s writings we might find regrettable*—I have in mind some derogatory comments he made about St. Ambrose. Yet even in that case, St. Jerome had a legitimate objection to the flouting of St. Paul’s teaching forbidding new converts to be ordained as bishops, which is exactly what happened to the catechumen of Milan.

But to accuse a saint of sin because he used invective against heretics who denied the virginity of Mary? Invective was common in disputes with heretics back then—should St. Jerome receive greater censure because his barbs had the virtue of being memorable? One old article in Catholic Culture’s own library complains that “An opponent, whose name was Vigilantius, Jerome adorns with the title of ‘Dormitantius’”. Are we really going to say that using a hilarious pun to call a heretic “sleepy” is some beyond-the-pale slur?

We may express sorrow, as St. Augustine did to St. Jerome, at the breakup of the friendship between Jerome and Rufinus, but Augustine himself said he did not put Jerome in the wrong there. Rufinus was rather a devious little slanderer.

One can discuss one or two particular moments where St. Jerome may have been at fault, but the whole popular “angry Jerome” meme has gotten out of hand, to the point of being seriously impious. We already disagree with the saints quite freely enough today without impugning them morally as well. Perhaps we have forgotten that these are sacred figures. Any moral critique of them, at least let us say in their “mature” period, ought to involve some fear and trembling. Even if we are certain we have detected a real fault, we ought not use it to make the saint into an object of fun, lest we be punished like Ham, the son of Noah.

In many people making these comments, one indeed senses glee at taking a saint down a notch. Other authors, meaning no malice toward the Hermit of Bethlehem but innocently taking the meme as established fact, half-heartedly attempt to draw an edifying lesson—“see, if even Jerome could become a saint, so can anyone, ha ha”—but even this, if based on a misconception about Jerome, falls into the modern trap of trying to make saints relatable by downplaying their heroism.

The claim that St. Jerome’s greatness lies merely in the conjectured repentance of sins which, these narratives tell us, he never really conquered in this life is not a sufficient fig leaf on a portrayal whose rhetorical weight tends to invalidate his sanctity. The Church upholds the saints as models of heroic virtue, which consists in definitively trampling one’s vices underfoot, not the mediocre recidivism of you and me.

I want to ask the authors of these popular articles (most of whom have done no research, but just repeat what they heard somewhere else): How about you take a moment to ask yourself whether this reputation is entirely merited, or whether there might be some context to understand why St. Jerome said what he said? Even if there are one or two instances where you think he was in the wrong when dealing with a fellow saint, does that give you license to accuse him of a persistent vice, in terms of which you interpret his every word? Do you exaggerate the perceived sin or imperfection due to your own modern softness? Do you take into account St. Jerome’s life experiences, the tempests of slander and controversy he continued to endure even after he left the world for a hermit’s life? How would you know, from texts written 1600 years ago, whether in a given instance the author was overcome by passionate anger, or was rather giving an appropriately stinging rebuke to sin (the fittingness of which he, as a saint, would be more qualified to judge than you)?

We live in a time when the wicked run free in the Church without so much as a harsh word from rightful authority, let alone just punishment. Even open, defiant heretics are not excommunicated because it would be too “divisive” and “uncharitable”—in fact we are just uncomfortable on a rocking boat. A famous conservative bishop recently suggested that the prophet Elijah was “demoted” by God in favor of Elisha because he had gone too far in ordering the execution of the priests of Baal. Perhaps we modern Catholics are not the best judges of zeal and righteous anger.

---

*St. Jerome’s testiness in his early correspondence with St. Augustine is even more excusable given the misunderstandings that arose because Augustine’s initial letters—in which he took issue with St. Jerome’s entire Bible translation project—were not delivered directly to Jerome as intended. Instead, they were spread around elsewhere, so that Jerome only heard that some young guy he didn’t know was badmouthing him to third parties, which understandably primed him to be suspicious and defensive at first when their correspondence finally began. Yet they managed to clear up the misunderstanding and had a cordial and charitable correspondence for years afterward.