Primary source · Latin
The Life of Malchus the Captive Monk
Jerome · c. AD 390–391
What this text is
Jerome's short masterpiece of monastic storytelling — the monk captured by Saracens, his chaste 'marriage' in captivity, and the lioness at the cave's mouth — told from the lips of Malchus himself in old age.
Profile of Jerome of Stridon →
Public-domain translations
Working translation (from the Latin)
I asked the old man how he had come there; and he said: I was a monk, and fleeing my monastery I was taken by the Saracens... we escaped through the desert, and a lioness at the cave's mouth kept the door against our pursuers.
Manuscript witnesses
Jerome corpus manuscripts
6th c. onwardAmong the earliest and most copied of Jerome's opuscula.
Patrologia Latina, vol. 23 (Migne)
1845Standard pre-critical text.
Provenance
Bethlehem; from the recollections of an old man Jerome knew at Maronia
Editions & scholarship
Critical editions and standard translations behind the text above.
- Jerome's Vita MalchiChrista Gray, 2015Critical edition, translation, and commentary (Oxford).
- Early Christian LivesCarolinne White, 1998English translations of Jerome's monastic lives (Penguin Classics).