2.

 No need to remind you, Venerable Brethren, that Jerome was born in Stridonia, in a town "on the borders of Dalmatia and Pannonia";[⁵] that from his infancy he was brought up a Catholic;[⁶] that after his baptism here in Rome[⁷] he lived to an advanced age and devoted all his powers to studying, expounding, and defending the Bible. At Rome he had learned Latin and Greek, and hardly had he left the school of rhetoric than he ventured on a Commentary on Abdias the Prophet. This "youthful piece of work"[⁸] kindled in him such love of the Bible that he decided - like the man in the Gospel who found a treasure - to spurn "any emoluments the world could provide,"[⁹] and devote himself wholly to such studies. Nothing could deter him from this stern resolve. He left home, parents, sister, and relatives; he denied himself the more delicate food he had been accustomed to, and went to the East so that he might gather from studious reading of the Bible the fuller riches of Christ and true knowledge of his Savior.[¹⁰] Jerome himself tells us in several places how assiduously he toiled:
An eager desire to learn obsessed me. But I was not so foolish as to try and teach myself. At Antioch I regularly attended the lectures of Apollinaris of Laodicea; but while I learned much from him about the Bible, I would never accept his doubtful teaching about its interpretation.[¹¹]