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Basilica of St. Mary Major (Relics of St. Jerome)

Saints & Tombs Not Applicable
Rome, Italy 5th century Feast day: September 30

A church holding relics of St. Jerome.

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The Story

The Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome, the great fifth-century Marian church of the West, is also honored by tradition as the resting place of St. Jerome, the Church's foremost biblical scholar and a Doctor of the Church. Jerome was born around 347 at Stridon in Dalmatia. Brilliant, ascetic, and famously fiery, he served as secretary to Pope Damasus I, who commissioned him to revise the Latin text of the Scriptures. Jerome settled in Bethlehem in 386, living in a cell near the grotto of the Nativity, where he spent decades producing the Vulgate — the Latin translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek that shaped Western Christianity for over a millennium. He died at Bethlehem in 420 and was buried near the Nativity grotto. According to medieval tradition, Jerome's remains were later translated from Bethlehem to St. Mary Major — a fitting home, since the basilica guards the relic venerated as the crib of Bethlehem, and Jerome had lived and died beside the place of Christ's birth. The relics were long associated with the basilica's Crib chapel; their precise location within the church, however, is no longer identified with certainty, a point the basilica's own historians acknowledge. Pilgrims who come to St. Mary Major therefore honor Jerome's memory alongside the Bethlehem relics he lived near in life. His feast is celebrated on September 30, and his maxim endures as a summons to every generation: 'Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.'

Church Recognition

St. Jerome is venerated as a Doctor of the Church with a memorial on the General Roman Calendar on September 30; the translation of his relics to St. Mary Major, a papal major basilica, rests on medieval tradition, and their exact location within the basilica is no longer identified.

Catholic Teaching

Jerome's life testifies to the Church's teaching that Sacred Scripture is the soul of theology (CCC 131–133), while the veneration of his memory and relics reflects the communion of saints (CCC 946–962; 1674).

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Practical

Additional Information

Pilgrims visiting St. Mary Major venerate the Bethlehem Crib relic beneath the main altar and honor St. Jerome's traditional association with the basilica; his feast is September 30, and the basilica's dedication is celebrated on August 5.

Go Deeper

See the basilica's official website at https://www.basilicasantamariamaggiore.va, St. Jerome's prologues and letters, Pope Francis's 2020 apostolic letter Scripturae Sacrae Affectus on St. Jerome, and CCC 131–133 on Scripture in the life of the Church.

Doctors of the Church

Location

Visit the official website ↗ See it on the interactive map →

In the Area

Other sacred sites within 40 miles.