es are held in Latin to this day, and
St. Jerome's translation of the Bible, called the Vulgate, is the
version still in use.

Here you see St. Jerome depicted sitting in his own study, reading
to prepare himself for his great undertaking; and what a study it is!
You must go to the National Gallery to enjoy all the details, for the
original painting is only 18 inches high by 14 inches broad, and the
books and writing materials are so tiny that some are inevitably lost
in this beautiful photograph. The study is really a part of a monastery
assigned to St. Jerome himself, his books, manuscripts, and other such
possessions. He has a pot of flowers and a dwarf tree, and a towel
to dry his hands on, and a beautiful chair at his desk. He has taken
off his dusty shoes and left them at the foot of the steps.

The painter of this picture, must have had in his mind a very happy
idea of St. Jerome. Others have sometimes painted him as they thought
he looked when living in a horrible desert, as he did for four years.
But at the time this picture was painted, about the year 1470, St.
Jerome in his study was a more usual subject for painters than St.
Jerome in the desert. One reason of this was that in Italy, in the
latter half of the fifteenth century, St. Jerome was considered the
patron saint of scholars, and for the first time since the fall of
the Roman Empire, scholars were perhaps the most influential people
of the day.

[Illustration: ST. JEROME IN HIS STUDY
From the picture by Antonello da Messina, in the National Gallery,
London]

Of course you all know something about the remarkable revival of
learning in the fifteenth century, which started in Italy, spread
northward, and reached England in the reign of Henry VIII. Before the
fifteenth century, Italians seem to have been indifferent to the
monuments around them of ancient civilization. Suddenly they were
fired with a passion for antiquity. They learnt Greek and began to
take a keen interest in the doings of the Greeks and Romans, who in
many ways had lived a life so far superior to their own. Artists studied
the old statues, which taught them the beauty of the human figure.
The reacquired wisdom of the ancients by degrees broke down the
medieval barriers. There was born a spirit of enterprise into the world
of thought as well as into the world of fact, which revolutionized
life and art. The period which witnessed this great mental change is
well known as the Renaiss