St. Jerome and the Lion

Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.”
– Revelation 5:5

There’s a story (likely a legend echoing the earlier Roman tale of Androcles and the lion) that one day in his study, St. Jerome (c. 342-420), hard at work translating the Holy Bible into Latin, had a visit from a lion. The lion had a splinter in its paw and begged the saint to remove it, which Jerome did, after which man and beast became inseparable.

Being a cat lover, I would very much like to have a lion as a friend, although not as a pet. I’ve seen videos of a South African “lion whisperer,” who raised some abandoned lion cubs and stayed friends with them over the years, so that when he walks out into the veld and calls for them, they come running and jump up to put their paws on his shoulders and lick his face.

So, the story about Jerome and the lion could be true.

Many artists have depicted the scene, although, in earlier centuries, some of them did so without ever having seen a lion, and those lions resemble cats, dogs, or gargoyles. However, there were Asiatic lions in the desert in Israel when Jerome was living there, although by the time he was working on the Vulgate in Bethlehem, lions would have been a rare sight indeed.

But it could have happened. Because God was surely at work in Jerome’s life, and maybe Jerome liked cats, and, as a reward for his sanctity, the Lord decided to give him the very biggest one.

In many Renaissance and later paintings, Jerome is shown in his cardinalitial regalia, but that’s an anachronism. The cardinalate did not become a Church office until nearly three centuries after Jerome went to heaven. Memento mori images figure in some portraits of Jerome, as in the skull in Caravaggio’s St. Jerome Writing (above).

In one of the earliest paintings of him, by Pinturicchio, the saint is half-naked, contemplating a crucifix that he has affixed to a branch of a small tree. On a rock to Jerome’s left is another book that I’d like to think is his notebook. To his right is a nicely bound codex of the Hebrew Scriptures, perhaps. Or, more likely, it’s a “first edition” of the Vulgate. In any case, it’s slightly covered by his red cardinal’s hat.

And next to the hat is the lion, who looks out at us warily. Or maybe it’s a look of worry, because Jerome holds a rock in one hand, which he has been using to mortify his flesh. (So says the tradition.) His other hand gestures towards the open notebook as he gazes at the radiating image of Christ, fides quaerens intellectum. The lion hopes we’ll pass by quietly and allow the saint to get on with his holy work.

My favorite painting of the saint and the big cat is St. Jerome in His Study by Niccolò Antonio Colantonio. Its composition is rich in detail. Here is Jerome

intent on removing a thorn from the paw of a melancholic and docile lion with a sort of scalpel. The wooden shelves behind him are crowded with a formidable still life of books, letters, scrolls, hourglasses, scissors, sealing wax, knotted cloths, ribbons, and writing instruments, carefully described and struck by the light. His cardinal’s hat is prominently displayed on a table, and mice below, in the shadows, are gnawing on the papers that have fallen to the floor.

This suggests that, whether or not he kept a lion, Jerome would certainly have benefited from having a housekeeper. But at least Colantonio gives him a very regal lion.

This is all fanciful. But Jerome is truly among Catholicism’s (and the world’s) greatest scholar-evangelists. Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus – we call him Jerome – had been the confidential secretary to Damasus I, pope from 366 to 384, and it was Damasus who tasked him to do a thorough revision of the Bible – both Testaments.

Jerome was the man for the job. A convert to Christianity, he had previously lived a life of indulgence not unlike the young St. Augustine. (The two men, contemporaries, would become what these days we call frenemies. In the end though, they were doctrinally reconciled and unified.) And like Augustine, Jerome was well trained in Latin and Greek. But needing to have Hebrew and Aramaic, he went to Israel and hired tutors for both. He’d spent time in Syria before coming to Bethlehem, and some of his Jewish teachers were Christian converts and some not.

The process was exhausting and expensive, and he labored for decades: 15 years alone on the Hebrew Scriptures! He kept revising till the end of his life, and he was never shy about lamenting (to Augustine, among others) the burdens it put on his back and his eyes.

Finally, the British Catholic novelist Rumer Godden, whose novels Black Narcissus and In This House of Bredeare remarkable stories of women in the cloistered life, wrote a sweet 1961 book (in verse) for children (illustrated by Jean Primrose), St. Jerome and the Lion. Sad to say, the book is currently out of print. The inside of the dust jacket of my first-edition copy bears the original price – $2.50. I purchased it on eBay for $50.00. (I indulge myself that I may spoil my grandchildren.) Maybe the publisher will reissue it. Anyway, the book ends this way:

Jerome is with the saints, and I am sure that
by God’s will,
though the hat and the Bible were left behind,
the lion is with him still.

A children’s book about Jerome may seem frivolous, but by my reading of the lives of the saints (and thinking of our Lord’s words in Matthew 18:3 about becoming like children), sanctity is often accompanied by child-like guilelessness. And all cats go to heaven.