Early Christianity

 Up to the third century, educated people wrote Greek.  That includes scripture.  It also seems that Carthage was the center of the church, like we would consider Rome.  Up to the third/fourth century it would not have been Rome.  The Caesars in Rome outlawed Christianity.  Even the famous, Hippolytus, who lived in Rome, wrote in Greek.  

As the peoples across the Mediterranean--Rome, and the Roman empire, became more knowledgeable of Christianity, they wanted the texts in their own language--Latin.  More and more "Bibles" in Latin were written, read, and spread.  There wasn't one, official, book.  Only with Jerome, 400 AD, was a common, Latin text of Scripture published, known as the Vulgate.  Latin was the common language--or the vulgar language.  There was a lot of written works for the 70 people, who were compiling the Bible, to choose.  There were writings from the Apostolic Fathers, such as Barnabas, the Didache, letters from popes and other leaders.  

One of the 70 compilers of our Bible was Epenetus.  He was a companion of Paul in Asia-Minor Romans 16: 5.  His center of comfort, however, was Carthage.  He is known as Epenetus of Carthage and is considered a saint.

                                            From Greek Orthodox Church of America.

St. Jerome

The Thunderer
by Phyllis McGinley

God’s angry man, His crotchety scholar,
Was Saint Jerome,
The great name-caller,
Who cared not a dime
For the laws of libel
And in his spare time
Translated the Bible.

Quick to disparage
All joys but learning,
Jerome thought marriage
Better than burning;
But didn’t like woman’s
Painted cheeks;
Didn’t like Romans,
Didn’t like Greeks,
Hated Pagans
For their Pagan ways,
Yet doted on Cicero all his days.

A born reformer, cross and gifted
He scolded mankind
Sterner than Swift did;
Worked to save
The world from the Heathen;
Fled to a cave
For peace to breathe in,
Promptly wherewith
For miles around
He filled the air with
Fury and sound.

In mighty prose
For almighty ends,
He thrust at his foes,
Quarreled with his friends,
And served his Master,
Though with complaint.
He wasn’t a plaster
Sort of saint.

But he swelled men’s minds
With a Christian leaven.
It takes all kinds
To make a heaven.

St. Jerome: Father and Doctor of the Church

St. Jerome: Father and Doctor of the Church: September 30 is the feast of St. Jerome, a Father and Doctor of the Church. Translator of the Bible into its official Latin version.  He has a reputation of being a grouch, but he had many women friends.  He probably was a gentleman grouch.  By that I mean, he watched his "p's and q's" around women.  And he just may have enjoyed                                 their company.  Click on this link from the blog                                Catholic Fire.

The Friar Solves a Mystery

The story in the Catholic Herald, would make a great movie.  A book  would be a classic who-done-it.

Fr Marius Zerafa, OP,  a Maltese Dominican and former museum director, helped retrieve a painting of St. Jerome, stolen from the co-Cathedral of St. John in Valletta on New Year's Eve 1984.

For two years after the heist, nothing was heard about the picture. It had simply vanished. Then one day Fr Marius was approached by a young man who handed him a tape and a Polaroid picture of the painting of St Jerome. Over the next eight months he would work ceaselessly towards retrieving the lost painting.

“They gave me a password,” he says. “And indicated that I wasn’t to speak to the police. They wanted half a million Maltese lire for the painting.”

At the time Fr Marius was director of the Museums in Malta and had set up the National Museum of Fine Arts in Valletta.

Today, the Dominican art historian lectures about sacred art at the Angelicum in Rome, hears Confessions at Santa Maria Maggiore during his holidays, paints, sculpts, does some restoration work and continues to be the chairman of the Archdiocese of Malta’s Commission for Sacred Art. He is full of life and curiosity. His snow-white hair stands on end in marked contrast to his tan, the mischievous twinkle in his eyes is barely hidden by the bottle-thick 1970s-style glasses he sports. Fr Marius is a born storyteller; he has lived through a lot and seen a great deal.

Back in 1986, after the first note was delivered, Fr Marius was worried because he thought the gang might be in cahoots with the police, so he took the injunction not to report the theft seriously. He says he struggled to raise interest in the case either among the country’s ministers or the monsigniori in the local curia. He started getting daily phone calls about St Jerome. Then, in the art thief’s equivalent of chopping off a hostage’s fingers, the gang started sending Fr Marius little pieces of the precious painting. In his efforts to keep the band of thieves talking to him and give them the impression that he was interested in buying the painting back he started negotiating down the price to a quarter-of-a-million Maltese lire.

Was he frightened?

“Well, yes and no,” he says. “I was terribly relieved because after two years we thought that we had lost it. What worried me was that at one time I got a parcel and thought there was a bomb inside but there wasn’t one. And I was worried that they would come to Confession to me because that would have made it difficult.”

If they had come to him, he would have been bound by the seal of the confessional, he says, and would have had difficulty retrieving the painting from them.

After eight months Fr Marius, with the help of a technologically minded young man, managed to trace the calls to a small shoe factory on the island where the thieves were operating. He got hold of their work books and finally passed the information on to the police. It was his first contact with the authorities. A week later he chose August 4, the traditional day on which the Feast of St Dominic is celebrated in Malta, to be the day on which the painting would be retrieved.

The police arrived with helicopters and cars at the arranged meeting place and they retrieved the Caravaggio and arrested the gang members. It emerged that the gang had paid £5,000 to have Fr Marius kidnapped during the exchange.

The members of the Caravaggio gang were never brought to justice. They started a constitutional case against the police because of illegal phone tapping. Of the two men accused, one had possibly been given an overdose and died, while the other died as the case dragged on in court.

The painting was quite damaged as a result of the heist, but was spoiled even more while it was stored by the police. The painting suffered because it had been cut from the stretcher and was rolled up. Fr Marius travelled to Rome in an old military plane without seats to have the painting restored there. He says that it is now in a perfect condition.