Saint Jerome, Saint Hillary, and Saint Isadore

Ambrose of Milan was a great orator, diplomat, and preacher. The next saint under our gaze  fought with rage those who stood against him; the stories of his explosions of anger are legendary.  His scholarly work, translations, and histories caused the Christian Church to give him the title " Doctor." This person is no other than Jerome of Stridon ( modern-day Bosnia).  Jerome's spent his early life in sexual experimentation while academically studying language at Rome. Once baptized, a desire developed within him for the penitential life (Ascetic Life), and traveled to a desert in our time called Quinnasrin. This desert is in Syria, and was called Chalcis in Jerome's day.  Once back in Rome, Jerome surrounded  himself with widows, and the daughters of widows who desired to become either nuns or Consecrated Virgins. The most famous of these is Paula, considered the first nun of Christianity.

Jerome finished the Vulgate some 20 years before his death in 420 A.D., the same years the Frankish Tribes crossed the Rhine to come into Gaul. Here it was also in Gaul that Arianism thrived, and one saint in particular knocked them out some 50 years before Jerome's birth.: Saint Hillary of Potiers.  Hilary is known as the "Hammer of the Arians" and the "Athanasius of the West." A follower of Plato as a youth as well as a student of the Greek language, Hilary was well-suited to defeat orthodoxy in Greek and Latin.  We cannot do better than to listen to the narritive Father Albert Butler provides, in his World-Class and World-famous " Butler's Book of Saints. The narrative is provided by the production company Senus Fidium: 

Next, we turn our attention to Isadore of Seville (c.560-636). He was instrumental in converting the Arian Visigoths. He is known as the last great intellectual of Antiquity, and helped popularize the use of many of today's grammatical punctuation's. He was trained in the classical Liberal Arts (The Trivium and Quadrivium), which were to reappear again at the High Medieval universities.  The Trivium was the first level of study, and included Rhetoric, Logic, and Grammar. The Quadrivium was the second level of study, and included Arithmetic, Geometry, Astrology, and Music.  Again, Saint Isadore studied the subjects that had been defined by the Ancient Greeks, particularly Pythagoras and then Plato: Arithmetic was defined as Number or Quantity.  Music/Harmony was defined as Number in Time or Applied Number. Geometry was defined as Number in Space or Stationary Number.  And Astrology was defined as Number in Space and Time or Moving Number.  

Saint Isadore remains a model of work, study, and prayer. His dedication to the orthodox Faith was remarkable, and the world would do good to remember and exalt his fervor for the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.  The next page is a quick relay of daily life in the Eastern portions of the empire. Then, we turn to the lands to Britiania.