The decay of the empire and fall of Rome in Saint Jerome's Letters and lives of the hermits

Abstract

Although, before A.D. 410 nothing may have been further from Jerome's mind than the imminence, indeed the possibility, of the capture and fall of Rome, the Letters put before us facts and details which are a faithful echo of the growing,despondency and of the current pessimism concerning the fate of the Empire as a whole. The moral corruption which Jerome sees around him seems to be only, one aspect of the troubled state of affairs which, was weakening the fabric of the imperial edifice. There is nothing to dispel the atmosphere of imminent danger, and the thought of recent and continued failure at home and abroad hangs upon everybody's mind.