ABSTRACT
In the centuries following his death in c.420, Jerome’s sainthood and pre-eminence as a Biblical scholar and ascetic theologian generally were taken for granted by Christians. 1 As history gradually gave way to legend, he became an object of pious devotion, and an enormously popular cult in his honour proliferated starting in the early medieval period. 2 But before there was a cult of Saint Jerome, before there even was a “Saint” Jerome, there was Eusebius Hieronymus Stridonensis, a provincial of obscure lineage from the virtually unknown town of Stridon on the border of Pannonia and Dalmatia. 3
