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?

More: https://x.com/catholicpods/status/2014047494934610213?s=46&t=IydJ-X8H6c0NM044nYKQ0w