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Classical Home School Lesson: St. Jerome

Titvs Classics delivers the Latin word of the week along with questions to engage with your kids on how the word is used, what it means, and how it influences our English Language today. Sign up for our Newsletter today!

Scribit – To Write

This week’s word of the week is Scribit. It means “to write”.

St. Jerome

Who is Saint Jerome? Saint Jerome lived in modern day Croatia. He is most famous for translating the Bible into Latin. His translation is known as the Vulgate. Saint Jerome became a Christian in his adult years. He studied the classics deeply and after becoming a Christian abandoned his studies to devote his time to the study of the word of God. He moved to Antioch and Constantinople, visited Syria and he worked with Jewish Christians to translate the Bible from original Hebrew and Greek into Latin. St. Jerome’s work gave us the Bible we have today.

The Vulgate

St. Jerome created the Vulgate in 382 AD. However it was not formally adopted by the Council of Trent until 1545!The Vulgate was the official translation of the Catholic Church until 1979.What made the Vulgate special is that the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Latin, vs using the Greek Septuagint as the primary source. This was controversial at the time, but resulted in our modern day translations. Saint Jerome also wrote many defenses, prefaces, and letters regarding his reasonings behind his translations which offer further context and reliability to his translations. St. Jerome used his gift of language for the Glory of God to bring his word to new ears. His feast day is September 30.

Check out our coloring books for more Latin fun!

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