Editing Jerome (section)

=== Historical and hagiographic writings ===
'''Jerome as a historian'''

Jerome's most famous work of historical writing was the ''[[Chronicon (Jerome)|Chronicon]]'', a translation, reworking, and continuation of the ''[[Chronicon (Eusebius)|Chronicon]]'' of Eusebius. Written in Constantinople around 380 it became an influential text in Latin Christendom even though it is not without errors.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Burgess |first=R.W. |date=2002 |title=Jerome explained: an introduction to his Chronicle and a guide to its use |journal=The Ancient History Bulletin |volume=16 |pages=1–32}}</ref> In his other works he evoked historical events and used history as an example and source of argument. Even though Jerome engaged in historical writing, he did not consider himself bound by the rules of historians and his output in this domain has to be judged accordingly.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Fafinski |first=Mateusz |date=2025 |title=The ends of history? Jerome, Geruchia, and the Rhine crossings |journal=Early Medieval Europe |language=en |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=71–93 |doi=10.1111/emed.12752 |issn=1468-0254|doi-access=free }}</ref> 

==== Description of vitamin A deficiency ====
The following passage, taken from Jerome's ''Life of St. Hilarion'' which was written {{Circa|392|lk=no}}, appears to be the earliest account of the [[etiology]], symptoms and cure of severe [[vitamin A deficiency]]:<ref name="Vitamin" />
{{blockquote|From his thirty-first to his thirty-fifth year he had for food six ounces of [[barley bread]], and vegetables slightly cooked without oil. But finding that his eyes were growing dim, and that his whole body was shrivelled with an eruption and a sort of stony roughness (''impetigine et pumicea quad scabredine'') he added oil to his former food, and up to the sixty-third year of his life followed this temperate course, tasting neither fruit nor pulse, nor anything whatsoever besides.<ref name="Vitamin">{{cite journal |author=Taylor, F. Sherwood |author-link=F. Sherwood Taylor |title=St. Jerome and Vitamin A |journal=Nature |volume=154 |pages=802 |date=23 December 1944 |issue=3921 |doi=10.1038/154802a0|bibcode=1944Natur.154Q.802T |s2cid=4097517 |doi-access=free }}</ref>|author=|title=|source=}}