 In the course of commenting on Ezekiel, Jerome had tied a prophecy mentioned in its first book to Plato’s moral psychology (commentary on Ezekiel 1.7). The prophecy in question consisted of a vision of four creatures emerging from the heavens, each with four faces: those of a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle (Ezekiel 1: 4–14). In his gloss, Jerome noted that “most people” (plerique) interpreted this vision with reference to Plato’s tripartite division of the soul in the Republic: the human face representing reason, the lion’s face the spirited part, and the ox’s face the appetitive part (cf. Plato, Republic, 436b–441b). What did the eagle represent? According to Jerome, it represented that “spark of conscience” (scintilla conscientiae) which makes us aware of our sinfulness when reason, spirit or desire become disordered. Medieval manuscripts refer to this psychological property as synderesis (or sometimes synteresis):