Parables Lost

‘Who’s the man in red? The one in the hat, holding the book?’ The question was addressed to me by a former colleague as we wandered off piste at London’s National Gallery following a private view of one of its special exhibitions. The figure in question was, of course, St Jerome, the fourth-century Illyrian convert to Christianity. And the book? The Vulgate, his translation into Latin of much of the Greek and Hebrew Bible, which became the standard text of the medieval church. I say ‘of course’, but – of course – it can no longer be taken for granted that cultivated products of a western education – and my companion was certainly that – will know who St Jerome was and what he did.