The Letters of St. Jerome (CPL 620), who died in 420 AD, are one of the great collections of ancient letters. Inquiring, it seems that Quasten’s Patrology vol. 4 (ed. Angelo di Berardino) still gives far better information than anything Google has to offer. The collection contains 154 letters, which includes letters addressed to St Jerome by other people. It also includes translations of Greek documents made by Jerome as part of the Origenist disputes. Letters 148-150 are apocryphal.
The standard critical edition was made by the Austrian Isidore Hilberg for the CSEL series (vols. 54, 55 and 56) in 3 volumes between 1910-1918, although he did not live to see it published. A fourth volume of indexes has appeared recently. The edition has some odd choices of spellings, some rejected by Jerome himself! It also does not use all of the oldest manuscripts.
No complete English translation exists. A limited number of important letters were translated by W. H. Freemantle in the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series. The first22 letters appear in the ACW series vol. 33, from 1963, but it looks as if the translators went no further.
But a complete translation does exist in French, made by Jérôme Labourt, “Jérôme: Correspondance”, in 8 volumes Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1949-63). This includes a critical text, but mainly still based on Hilberg. Labourt died before completing his work; a review of tome 7 noted the lack of notes. There are also extensive – complete? – translations in multiple volumes in Italian.
Update: See the next post here for a spreadsheet of all letters of Jerome for which an English translation exists.
Does this mean you are going to translate it?
8 volumes each of 200 pages might be a bit much for me. But I did wonder if there was anything interesting and untranslated in there.
Add a complete Spanish translation by D. Ruiz Bueno (“Cartas de San Jerónimo,” B.A.C., Madrid 1962, 2 vols.). This is bilingual, based on Hilberg and Labourt. It doesn’t have an apparatus or footnotes, but includes many substantial introductions to individual letters.
Very nice – thank you!
And… both volumes are at Archive.org
https://archive.org/details/carstasdesanjeronimoI
https://archive.org/details/CartasDeSJeronimoII
The Fathers of the Church Series from the Catholic University of America Press has released two volumes of translations of Jerome’s exegetical letters.
Volume 1 has letters 18-21, 25-30, 34-37, 42, 53, 55-56, 59, 64-65, 72-74, and 78 and volume 2 has some of the longer letters such as 85, 106, 112, 119, 120, 121, 129, 130, 140. Many of these have never been translated into English before.
https://www.cuapress.org/9780813237138/exegetical-epistles-volume-1/
https://www.cuapress.org/9780813238272/exegetical-epistles-volume-2/
Thank you for these details! I think it would be useful to draw up a spreadsheet of what actually exists already, in the NPNF, ACW, FOC, and see where we are.
There are two short dedicatory letters at the start of the Liber Pontificalis. One is supposed to be from Jerome to Pope Damasus and the other from Damasus to Jerome. Both are spurious.
Interesting – thank you!
Appreciate the mention of FOC. I’ve been trying without luck to find a translation of CXL so I’ve just requested that chapter vie inter-library loan!
Good luck!