It is not likely that Marcella had any thought of the vital
significance of a step that opened a new field to women, which absorbed
their talents and energies for ten centuries, sometimes for good,
sometimes for ill, and still holds a powerful attraction for certain
temperaments. She belonged to one of the noblest families of Rome, and
had led the life of the more serious of the rich patricians of her
time. Her mother was the Albina who had entertained Athanasius many
years before, and shown great interest in his ascetic teachings. He
held up solitude and meditation as an ideal, and no doubt his words,
which she must have heard discussed afterward, made a strong impression
on the imagination of the thoughtful child. They came back with a new
force later, when she lost her husband a few months after marriage. In
spite of much criticism, she retired from a world which no longer had
any attractions for her, gave away her jewels and personal adornments,
put on a simple brown robe, and gave herself to religious and
charitable work. At first she sought seclusion in her country villa,
but she was of too active and wholesome a temperament for a life of
solitary brooding and introspection. It was after the early days of her
grief were passed that she opened her palace on the Aventine, and made
it a center for the devotional women of Rome.
There was nothing in the life she planned to tempt her ambition. Nor
did she abdicate the world and its pleasures on account of the waning
of her charms. She was still in the fullness of life, young, beautiful,
rich, and much sought in marriage by men of the highest rank and
position. In her persistent refusal of their brilliant offers she met
with great opposition from her family, who evidently preferred the
ascetic life for some one outside of their own circle. But she was a
woman of strong, vigorous intellect and firm character, as well as
fine moral aims and religious fervor. Born to lead and not to follow,
she was never the reflex of other minds. We find in all the known acts
of her life the stamp of a distinct and well-poised individuality. If
she started on a new path, it was through the reaction of a pure and
conscientious nature from a society in which the virtues seemed dying,
the need of an outlet for emotions suddenly turned upon themselves, and
the going out toward humanity of the unsatisfied longing of motherhood.
To this quiet but palatial retreat on the Aventine--which tradition
places not far from the present site of Sta. Sabina--many women fled
from the gay world of splendor and fashion. They were mostly rich
and high-born; some were widows, who consecrated a broken life to
the service of God and their fellow-men; a few were devoted maidens.
The oldest of the little group was Asella, a sister of Marcella, who
had been drawn from childhood to an ascetic life. She dressed like a
pilgrim, lived on bread and water with a little salt, slept on the bare
ground, went out only to visit the graves of the martyrs, and held it a
jewel in her crown that she never spoke to a man, though she evidently
did not object to receiving letters from the good St. Jerome. He speaks
of her as “an illustrious lady, a model of perfection,” and says that
no one knew better how to combine “austerity of manner with grace of
language and serious charm. No one gave more gravity to joy, more
sweetness to melancholy. She rarely opened her mouth; her face spoke;
her silence was eloquent. A cell was her paradise, fasting her delight.
She did not see those to whom she was most tenderly attached, and was
full of holy ardor.” But hardships and low diet seem to have agreed
with this saintly woman, as she was well, in spite of them, through a
long life, in which she won praises from good and bad alike. Lea is a
dim figure at this distance, but she was spoken of as “the head of
a monastery and mother of virgins,” who died early and was greatly
honored for her goodness, her humility, her robe of sackcloth not too
well cared for, her days of fasting, and her nights of prayer.
More noted was Fabiola, a member of the great Fabian family, who had
been divorced from a vicious husband and made a second marriage which
seems to have lain heavily on her tender conscience when she became a
widow shortly afterward. Indeed, she went so far in her remorse as to
stand in the crowd of penitents at the door of the Lateran on Easter
Eve, clad in coarse sackcloth, unveiled, and weeping, with ashes on her
head and hair trailing, as she prostrated herself and waited for public
absolution. It is said that bishop, priests, and people were alike
touched to tears at the humiliation of the young, gay, and beautiful
woman, the idol of a patrician society. But her religious enthusiasm
was more than a sudden outburst of feeling. This pale devotee gave
her large fortune to charity, built the first Christian hospital,
gathered from the streets the sick, the maimed, and the suffering, even
ministering with her own hands to outcast lepers. Her charities were
boundless, and extended to remote islands of the sea. St. Jerome calls
her a heroine of Christianity, the admiration of unbelievers. But her
intellect was clear and brilliant, and her close questionings spurred
him to write of many things which would otherwise have been left
in darkness. In her later days she surprised him one evening in the
convent at Bethlehem, where she was visiting her friends, by reciting
from memory a celebrated letter in praise of a solitary and ascetic
life which he had written to Heliodorus many years earlier. It was the
letter which had brought so much censure on the austere monk, as it
sent great numbers of noble women and many men into the ranks of the
hermits and cenobites.
This woman of talent and fashion, who left the gay world to become
saint, philanthropist, nurse, and pilgrim, died shortly before the
terrible days came to Rome, and its temples resounded with psalms in
her honor. Young and old sang her praises. The galleries, housetops,
and public places could not contain the people who flocked to her
funeral. So wicked Rome, in the last days of its fading glory, paid
homage to women of great virtues, great deeds, and unselfish lives.
But the most distinguished of the matrons who frequented the chapel
on the Aventine was Paula, a descendant of Scipio and the Gracchi on
one side, and, it was claimed, of Agamemnon on the other. The Romans
did not stop at myths or probabilities in their genealogies, and her
husband traced his ancestry to Æneas. But it is certain that Paula
belonged to the oldest and noblest family in Rome. She had an immense
fortune, and had passed her life in the fashionable circles of her
time. A widow at thirty-three, with five children, and inconsolable,
she suddenly laid aside the personal insignia of her rank, exchanged
cloth of gold for a nun’s robe, silken couches for the bare ground,
gaiety for prayers, and the costly pleasures of the sybarite for days
and nights of weeping over the most trivial faults, imaginary or real.
Even the stern St. Jerome begged her to limit her austerities; but
she said that she must disfigure a face she had been so wicked as to
paint, afflict a body which had tasted so much delight, and expiate her
laughter with her tears. She dressed and lived as poorly as the lowest
of her servants, and expressed a wish to be buried as a beggar. Full of
a sweet and tender humanity, however, she was no less pitiful to others
than severe to herself.
Of her four daughters, Eustochium, a serious girl of sixteen,
sympathized most with her ascetic views and was closely associated
with her life-work. She was the first patrician maiden to take the
vow of perpetual virginity. But the flower of the family was her
sister Blæsilla, “older in nature, but inferior in vocation,” said St.
Jerome. Beautiful, gay, clever, young, and a widow after seven months
of marriage, she loved things of the world and had small taste for the
austerities of her mother. She found time for study, however, as she
spoke Greek fluently and learned Hebrew so rapidly that she bade fair
to equal Paula, who liked to sing the psalms of David in the rugged
and majestic language in which they were written. But a violent fever
turned her thoughts from mundane vanities to a life of asceticism.
No more long days before the mirror, no more decking of her pretty
little person. She put on the brown gown like the others, and devoted
her brilliant youth to the same service. But so excessive were her
penances, so rigorous her fastings, and so severe her austerities, that
she died of them at twenty, asking God to pardon her because she could
not carry out her plans of devotion and self-sacrifice. Her funeral
was hardly in keeping with these plans. All the world did honor to the
beautiful, accomplished woman who had forsaken a life of elegant ease
for the hardships of a self-imposed poverty. They covered her coffin
with cloth of gold, and the most distinguished men in Rome marched at
the head of the cortège. Her untimely death brought an outburst of
indignation against the mother who had encouraged a self-denial so hard
and unnatural. But this mother had fainted as she followed her idolized
daughter to the tomb. St. Jerome dwells upon the piety, innocence,
chastity, and virtues, as well as the more brilliant qualities, of
the _dévote_ who had gone so early, but while the tears flowed
down his own cheeks, he reproved Paula for permitting the mother to
overshadow the religieuse. He adds a curious bit of consolation,
however, for a spiritual adviser who has renounced all worldly motives
and interests, when he tells her that Blæsilla will live forever in his
writings, as every page will be marked with her name. This immortality
he modestly thinks will compensate her for the short time she spent on
earth.