JEROME AND THE LION
Posted: 02.09.22 in Articles category
One of the recurrent themes of our monthly website articles has been the various stories told about Christian saints associated with birds and other animals. People like Francis of Assisi, St Kevin of Glendalough and the Northumbrian saint Cuthbert are people we remember today in part because of their special rapport with animals. Yet some saints are remembered because of a single incident of kindness towards an animal, particularly if that animal was feared by others who viewed it as dangerous.
Jerome was a 4th century Christian apologist and theologian best known for his translations and commentaries on the Bible. He was born in modern day Croatia to Christian parents but moved to Rome to study and eventually to Syria where he lived as a monk and hermit. He died in Bethlehem on 30 September 419 – the day celebrated as his feast day. It was in the birthplace of Jesus that Jerome encountered a lion, at least according to a medieval story. Apparently, he was at a service with fellow monks when the lion entered, causing everyone to flee. Everyone that is except Jerome who noted the beast was lame, examined its injured paw and extracted a thorn. The animal was healed, tamed, and thereafter lived with Jerome. I do not know the source of this tale, but it is likely to be of medieval origin - a hagiographic story developed for the purposes of saintly veneration. It is intriguing to note the incident allegedly took place in Bethlehem but make of that what you will as nothing else I have read about Jerome’s life claims to mirror the ministry and miracles of Jesus.
Little surprise that those monks in the story fled on seeing a lion. Today we might be keen to see them in safari parks, but these big cats are hunter predators which can kill large animals including unprotected people. They feature throughout the Old Testament including the Psalms where they have a predominantly negative image as a dangerous animal. Most of the psalms mentioning lions are attributed to David. It is unsurprising that he as a psalmist used lions as metaphors because he had personal experience of being endangered by lions in his youth. See the account from 1 Samuel 17 below where the young David offers to fight Goliath, explaining to King Saul how God would rescue him just as He did when the shepherd boy fought with lions and bears to protect his father's sheep.
David said to Saul, “Let no one lose heart on account of this Philistine; your servant will go and fight him.” Saul replied, “You are not able to go out against this Philistine and fight him; you are only a young man, and he has been a warrior from his youth.” But David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God. The LORD who rescued me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will rescue me from the hand of this Philistine.” Saul said to David, “Go, and the LORD be with you.”
David went on to become a great king of Israel, but as a political figure before and during his kingship he had plenty of enemies whom he sometimes described in allegorical terms as lions seeking to rip him apart and devour him. David referred to his enemies as such in some of his psalms, for example in verses 1 and 2 from Psalm 7:
Lord my God, I take refuge in you; save and deliver me from all who pursue me, or they will tear me apart like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me.
However, there is one psalm reference to lions which can be described as positive. The great hymn to God as Creator, Psalm 104, claims that all creation looks to God for their food and explicitly includes the lions in verse 21 who "roar for their prey and seek their food from God". God is the maker and sustainer of all living creatures including the lion. People in medieval times regaling the story of Jerome and the lion presumably recognised that truth too.