“O desert, enamelled with the flowers of Christ! O solitude, where those stones are born of which, in the Apocalypse, is built the city of the Great King! O retreat, which rejoicest in the friendship of God! What doest thou in the world, my brother, with thy soul greater than the world? How long wilt thou remain in the shadow of roofs, and in the smoky dungeons of cities? Believe me, I see here more of the light.”

At the end of five years he was driven from his solitude by the persecution of the Eastern monks; and lived successively in Jerusalem, Antioch, Constantinople, Rome, and Alexandria. Finally, in 385, he returned to the Holy Land, and built a monastery at Bethlehem. Here he wrote his translation of the Scriptures, and his Lives of the Fathers of the Desert; but in 416 this monastery, and others that had risen up in its neighborhood, were burned by the Pelagians, and St. Jerome took refuge in a strong tower or fortified castle. Four years afterwards he died, and was buried in the ruins of his monastery. ↩