The article tries first to present St. Hieronymus, or St. Jerome, in the Slovene consciousness, as evidenced by rare philological sources. Coincidental sources from older periods
and dialectal versions of Hieronymus' name: Heron (Heruon), Ronko or Rone, Jeruman,
testify that awareness of him in the past was much more alive than it is today. Testimony
that recourse to St. Hieronymus was much more alive in the past than it is today was rescued
just before falling into oblivion by the third, ethnological section. Today only the church
calendar retains the memory of him with faint reminders of former celebrations beside
succursal churches dedicated to St. Hieronymus (Petkovec, Čelje, Bošamarin /near Koper/,
Topolovec, Tabor above Vransko) and pilgrimages (Nanos, Koritnice near Knežak, Petkovec,
Topolovec), and in Ljubljana, the Hieronymus Mass in Latin has been revived every year
on September 30 at the Emona baptistery.
There is no Slovene or weather proverb connected with St. Hieronymus, although his name
day was once marked in wine-growing regions every year as the time by which the grapes
were supposed to be harvested. Pilgrims in Koritnice near Knežak and in Celje near Ilirska
Bistrica were very impressed by the fact that Vipava grapes were available at pilgrimage
churches of St. Hieronymus.
The central section is the richest, with an ancient fairy tale and a variety of stories, which are
little treasures, memoirs, beliefs and intercessions, in which a pre-Christian mythological layer
can be seen under the Christian blanket infiltrated by the modern phenomena. Throwing gifts
into the water actually means giving to water, and sweets are an obvious proof of modern
social culture, since they were formerly unknown. In fact, the collected folklore field material
did not help to resolve the question of the place (and date) of Hieronymus' birth.
In addition to the two still vital pilgrimage churches of Hieronymus in Notranjska (Koritnice,
Čelje), it is surprising that there is also a church dedicated to St. Anton Puščavnik, and
at Tabor near Vransko, an altar to St. Anton Puščavnik was added in the church of St. Jerome
and the informants shamelessly but rightly state that believers formerly more often, and today
in general, turned to St. Anton than to St. Jerome.
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