These brief outlines indicate the character and position of a few of
the best-known women who gathered about Marcella. Some of them lived
with her; others came from time to time, or were constant attendants
at the Bible readings and prayers. Saintly women, and worldly ones
who were doubtless eager to flock to the little chapel in a palace
that represented to them a great name, if not a living faith, had
been going in and out for some years before St. Jerome came from the
East at the summons of Pope Damasus, and was invited by Marcella to
stay at her house, after the manner of famous divines of all ages. It
is to this most interesting and learned of the early fathers that we
are indebted for the blaze of light that was thrown upon the Church
of the Household. It was also to this group of consecrated women that
St. Jerome owed the inspiration and the intelligent criticism that led
him to give the world some of the works on which his greatest fame
rests. The circle that listened to his persuasive eloquence, born of
a keen intellect, an ardent imagination, a passionate temperament, and
an exalted faith, was not an ignorant one. Most of these ladies spoke
Greek and were familiar with Greek letters. Some had learned Hebrew,
which was not included among the fashionable accomplishments of the
day. A few were women of brilliant ability and distinct individuality,
who could not live in the world without leaving some trace of
themselves. The discriminating mind of Marcella exercised itself on
every new problem. “During the whole of my residence at Rome she never
saw me without asking some question about history or dogma,” said St.
Jerome. “She was not satisfied with any answer I might give; she never
yielded to my authority only, but discussed the matter so thoroughly
that often I ceased to be the master and became the humble pupil.” It
would have been better for him if he had given more heed to her gentle
voice when she tried to temper his bitterness and restrain his unruly
tongue. We have another proof of the solid fiber of her intellect
in the fact that she was consulted on Biblical matters by Roman
ecclesiastics, even by the Pope himself; indeed, it was her counsel
that led Pope Anastasius to condemn the heresies of Origen in the synod.
It may easily be imagined that the pale, slender, ascetic monk
of thirty-four, with the light of genius in his eye, the fire of
sublimated passion in his soul, and the vein of poetry running
through his nature, had a strange power over these women who lived on
moral heights quite above the heavy worldly atmosphere about them.
This spiritual exaltation has swayed women of ardent imagination ever
since the days of the apostles, and doubtless swayed them before. It
was the secret of Savonarola’s influence. Under the inspiration of
the persuasive Nicole, the earnest Arnauld, and the austere Pascal,
the great ladies of France put off their silks and jewels with their
mundane vanities, and knelt in the bare cells at Port-Royal, with the
haircloth and the iron girdle pressing the delicate flesh as they
prayed. Fénelon found his most ardent disciple in the mystic Mme.
Guyon. The pure soul of Mme. Swetchine responded to the earnest words
of Lacordaire as the Æolian harp vibrates to the lightest breath of
wind. “I cannot attach to your name the glory of the Roman women whom
St. Jerome has immortalized,” he says, “and yet you were of their
race.... The light of your soul illumined the land that received you,
and for forty years you were for us the sweetest echo of the gospel
and the surest road to honor.” It is needless to recall the power of
many spiritual men of our own race and day in leading the serious and
gay alike into paths of a rational self-renunciation. Perhaps the
little coterie in which St. Jerome found himself was more permanently
severe in its self-discipline than most of the later ones have been.
Doubtless there was a little blending of the church and the world, of
literature and prayers, of gilded trappings with the nun’s robe and the
monk’s cowl. But when these Roman women came into the devoted household
on the Aventine, they usually renounced the world very literally,
though it is not unlikely that they had a following of those who
mingled a pale and decorous piety with their worldly pleasures, as did
many of the priests whom St. Jerome attacks with such biting sarcasm.
Then this monk of many dreams and visions, with his halo of saintship,
was fresh from the hermits and cenobites of the Thebaid. The even-song
that went up from countless caves and cabins under the clear Egyptian
sky still lingered in his ear as he expatiated on the paradise of
solitude. Forgetting in his zeal the violent moral struggles he had
passed through himself, he appealed to them in impassioned words to
immolate every natural affection on the altar of a faith that invited
them to a life of prayer and meditation far from the tempting delights
of a sinful world. It was under this teaching that the ascetic spirit
grew so strong as to call out the indignation of the pagan society of
Rome. People of the fourth century were as fond of gossip as are the
men and women of to-day, and no more charitable. Malicious tongues were
whispering evil things of the gifted and famous monk who exercised so
pernicious an influence over the wives and daughters of illustrious
Roman citizens, inciting them to fling away their fortunes for a dream
and seclude themselves from the world to which they belonged. He had
spent three years in an atmosphere that must have been grateful to
his restless and stormy spirit. But now he found that he was bringing
reproach upon those he most revered and loved, so in the summer of 385,
when Pope Damasus died, and his occupation was gone, he bade farewell
to his friends, and went back to the East, leaving a letter to Asella
in which he bitterly denounces those who had dared to malign him. Of
Paula he says that “her songs were psalms, her conversations were of
the gospel, her delight was in purity, her life a long fast.” Yet his
enemies had presumed to attack his attitude toward the saintly woman
whose “mourning and penance had touched his heart with sympathy and
veneration.”
But his pleadings for a life of penitence and sacrifice had not been in
vain. A few months later Paula carried out a plan which had been for
some time maturing, and followed him, with her daughter Eustochium and
a train of consecrated virgins and attendants. The power of religious
enthusiasm was never shown more clearly than in this able and learned
matron, who had all the strength of the Roman character together with
the mystical exaltation of a Christian sibyl. That she was a woman of
ardent emotions is evident from the violence of her grief at the death
of her daughter and her husband. But in spite of her family affections
she was firm in her purpose to leave home and friends for a life of
hardship in the far East. The tears of her youngest daughter, Rufina,
who begged her to stay for her wedding day,--which, alas! she never
lived to see,--were of no avail. Her little son entreated her in vain.
The words of St. Jerome were ringing in her ears. “Though thy father
should lie on the threshold, trample over his body with dry eyes, and
fly to the standard of the cross,” he had said. “In this matter, to be
cruel is the only true filial affection.”
Several years before, Melania, a widow of twenty-three, had sailed away
to the Thebaid, on a similar mission. She too had passed through great
sorrows. With strange calmness and without a tear, she had buried her
husband and two sons in quick succession, thanking God that she had no
longer any ties to stand between her and her pious duties. And for this
hardness St. Jerome had applauded her, holding her up as an example to
her sex! She too had turned away dry-eyed and inflexible from the tears
of the little son she left to the tender mercies of the pretor. Did
Mme. de Chantal recall these women, centuries after, when she walked
serenely over the prostrate body of her son, who had thrown himself
across the threshold to bar her departure from her home to a life of
spiritual consecration and conventual discipline under the direction of
St. François de Sales?
We cannot follow the wanderings of these fourth-century pilgrims among
the hermits of the desert and the holy places of Syria. They were among
the first of a long line of women who have given up the luxuries and
refinements of life for a hut or a cave in the wilderness, and a bare,
hard existence, illuminated only by the “light that never was on sea
or land.” Melania established a convent on the Mount of Olives, with
Rufinus as the spiritual director, and here it is probable that Paula
visited her before settling finally near the Cave of the Nativity at
Bethlehem, where she built three convents, a hospital, and a monastery,
which was superintended by St. Jerome. It was here that the rich
descendant of the Scipios, who had gone from a palace to a cell, gave
herself to prayer and menial duties, while she scattered her fortune
among the poor.