All saints change history, often in ways that are mysterious and opaque, but at times more obviously so. Such is Saint Jerome, to whom we may attribute the first truly ‘critical’ edition of the Bible, an edito typica, an official version of the Holy Word of God.
As a youth, Jerome, Hieronmyous as he would have been known, seems to have been dissiipated, indulging in the usual hedonistic student pastimes; but he would always repent, visiting the catacombs, meditating on death, eternity and the possibility of hell. A classicist, the words of Virgil would haunt him: Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa
