This illustrious pattern of widows surpassed all other Roman ladies in
riches, birth, and the endowments of mind. She was born on the 5th of
May, in 347. The blood of the Scipios, the Gracchi, and Paulus AEmilius,
was centred in her by her mother Blesilla. Her father derived his
pedigree from Agamemnon, and her husband Toxotius his from Iulus and
AEneas. By him she had a son called also Toxotius, and four daughters,
namely, Blesilla, Paulina, Eustochium, and Rufina. She shone a bright
pattern of virtue in the married state, and both she and her husband
edified Rome by their good example; but her virtue was not without its
alloy; a certain degree of the love of the world being almost
inseparable from honors and high life. She did not discern the secret
attachments of her heart, nor feel the weight of her own chains: she had
neither courage to break them, nor light whereby to take a clear and
distinct view of her spiritual poverty and misery. God, compassionating
her weakness, was pleased in his mercy to open her eyes by violence, and
sent her the greatest affliction that could befall her in the death of
her husband, when she was only thirty-two years of age. Her grief was
immoderate till such time as she was encouraged to devote herself
totally to God, by the exhortations of her friend St. Marcella, a holy
widow, who then edified Rome by her penitential life. Paula, thus
excited to set aside her sorrow, erected in her heart the standard of
the cross of Jesus Christ, and courageously resolved to walk after it.
From that time, she never sat at table with any man, not even with any
of the holy bishops and saints whom she entertained. She abstained from
all flesh meat, fish, eggs, honey, and wine; used oil only on holydays;
lay on a stone floor covered with sackcloth; renounced all visits and
worldly amusements, laid aside all costly garments, and gave every thing
to the poor which it was in her power to dispose of. She was careful in
inquiring after the necessitous, and deemed it a loss on her side if any
other hands than her own administered relief to them. It was usual with
her to say, that she could not make a better provision for her children,
than to secure for them by alms the blessings of heaven. Her occupation
was prayer, pious reading, and fasting. She could not bear the
distraction of company, which interrupted her commerce with God; and, if
ever she sought conversation, it was with the servants of God for her
own edification. She lodged St. Epiphanius and St. Paulinus of Antioch,
when they came to Rome; and St. Jerom was her director in the service of
God, during his stay in that city for two years and a half, under pope
Damasus. Her eldest daughter Blesilla, having, in a short time after
marriage, lost her husband, came to a resolution of forsaking the world,
but died before she could compass her pious design. The mother felt this
affliction too sensibly. St. Jerom, who at that time was newly arrived
at Bethlehem, in 384, wrote to her both to comfort and reprove her.[1]
He first condoles their common loss; but adds {230} that God is master,
that we are bound to rejoice in his will, always holy and just, to thank
and praise him for all things; and, above all, not to mourn for a death
at which the angels attend, and for one who by it departs to enjoy
Christ: and that it is only the continuation of our banishment which we
ought to lament. "Blesilla," says he, "has received her crown, dying in
the fervor of her resolution, in which she had purified her soul near
four months." He adds, that Christ seemed to reproach her grief in these
terms: "Art thou angry, O Paula! that thy daughter is made mine? Thou
art offended at my providence, and by thy rebellious tears, thou dost
offer an injury to me who possess her."[2] He pardons some tears in a
mother, occasioned by the involuntary sensibility of nature; but calls
her excess in them a scandal to religion, abounding with sacrilege and
infidelity: adding, that Blesilla herself mourned, as far as her happy
state would allow, to see her offend Christ, and cried out to her; "Envy
not my glory: commit not what may forever separate us. I am not alone.
Instead of you I have the mother of God, I have many companions whom I
never knew before. You mourn for me because I have left the world; and I
pity your prison and dangers in it." Paula afterwards, completing the
victory over herself, showed herself greatly superior to this weakness.
Her second daughter Paulina was married to St. Pammachius, and died in
397. Eustochium, the third, was her individual companion. Rufina died
young.
The greater progress Paula made in spiritual exercises, and in the
relish of heavenly things, the more insupportable to her was the
tumultuous life of the city. She sighed after the deserts, longed to be
disincumbered of attendants, and to live in a hermitage, where her heart
would have no other occupation than on God. The thirst after so great a
happiness made her ready to forget her house, family, riches, and
friends; yet never did mother love her children more tenderly.[3] At the
thought of leaving them her bowels yearned, and being in an agony of
grief, she seemed as if she had been torn from herself. But in this she
was the most wonderful of mothers, that while she felt in her soul the
greatest emotions of tenderness, she knew how to keep them within due
bounds. The strength of her faith gave her an ascendant over the
sentiments of nature, and she even desired this cruel separation,
bearing it with joy, out of a pure and heroic love of God. She had
indeed taken a previous care to have all her children brought up saints;
otherwise her design would have been unjustifiable. Being therefore
fixed in her resolution, and having settled her affairs, she went to the
water side, attended by her brother, relations, friends, and children,
who all strove by their tears to overcome her constancy. Even when the
vessel was ready to sail, her little son Toxotius, with uplifted hands
on the shore, and bitterly weeping, begged her not to leave him. The
rest, who were not able to speak with gushing tears, prayed her to defer
at least her voluntary banishment. But Paula, raising her dry eyes to
heaven, turned her face from the shore, lest she should discover what
she could not behold without feeling the most sensible pangs of sorrow.
She sailed first to Cyprus, where she was detained ten days by St.
Epiphanius; and from thence to Syria. Her long journeys by land she
performed on the backs of asses; she, who till then had been accustomed
to be carried about by eunuchs in litters. She visited with great
devotion all the principal places which we read to have been consecrated
by the mysteries of the life of our divine Redeemer, as also the
respective abodes of all the principal anchorets and holy solitaries of
Egypt and Syria. At Jerusalem the proconsul had prepared a stately
palace richly furnished for her reception; but excusing herself with
regard {231} to the proffered favor, she chose to lodge in an humble
cell. In this holy place her fervor was redoubled at the sight of each
sacred monument, as St. Jerom describes. She prostrated herself before
the holy cross, pouring forth her soul in love and adoration, as if she
had beheld our Saviour still bleeding upon it. On entering the
sepulchre, she kissed the stone which she angel removed on the occasion
of our Lord's resurrection, and imparted many kisses full of faith and
devotion to the place where the body of Christ had been laid. On her
arrival at Bethlehem, she entered the cave or stable in which the
Saviour of the world was born, and she saluted the crib with tears of
joy, crying out; "I, a miserable sinner, am made worthy to kiss the
manger, in which my Lord was pleased to be laid an infant babe weeping
for me! This is my dwelling-place, because it was the country chosen by
my Lord for himself."
After her journeys of devotion, in which she distributed immense alms,
she settled at Bethlehem with her daughter Eustochium, under the
direction of St. Jerom. The three first years she spent there in a poor
little house; but in the mean time she took care to have a hospital
built on the road to Jerusalem, as also a monastery for St. Jerom and
his monks, whom she maintained; besides three monasteries for women,
which properly made but one house, for all assembled in the same chapel
to perform together the divine service day and night; and on Sundays in
the church that was adjoining. At prime, tierce, sext, none, vespers,
complin, and the midnight office, they daily sung the whole psalter,
which every sister was obliged to know by heart. Their food was very
coarse and temperate, their fasts frequent and austere. All the sisters
worked with their hands, and made clothes for themselves and others. All
wore the same uniform poor habit, and used no linen except for the
wiping of their hands. No man was ever suffered to set a foot within
their doors. Paula governed them with a charity full of discretion,
animating them in the practice of every virtue by her own example and
instructions, being always the first, or among the first, in every duty;
sharing with her daughter Eustochium in all the drudgery and meanest
offices of the house, and appearing everywhere as the last of her
sisters. She severely reprimanded a studied neatness in dress, which she
called an uncleanness of the mind. If any one was found talkative, or
angry, she was separated from the rest, ordered to walk the last in
order, to pray at the outside of the door, and for some time to eat
alone. The holy abbess was so tender of the sick, that she sometimes
allowed them to eat flesh-meat, but would not admit of the same
indulgence in her own ailments, nor even allow herself a drop of wine in
the water she drank. She extended her love of poverty to her buildings
and churches, ordering them all to be built low, and without any thing
costly or magnificent; she said that money is better laid out on the
poor, who are the living members of Christ. She wept so bitterly for the
smallest faults, that others would have thought her guilty of grievous
crimes. Under an overflow of natural grief for the death of her
children, she made frequent signs of the cross on her mouth and breast
to overcome nature, and remained always perfectly resigned in her soul
to the will of God. Her son Toxotius married Laeta, daughter to a priest
of the idols, but, as to herself, she was a most virtuous Christian.
Both were faithful imitators of the sanctity of our saint. Their
daughter, Paula the younger, was sent to Bethlehem. to be under the care
of her grandmother, whom she afterwards succeeded in the government of
that monastery. St. Jerom wrote to Laeta some excellent lessons[4] for
the education of this girl, which parents can never read too often. Our
saint lived {232} fifty-six years and eight months, of which she had
spent in her widowhood five at Rome, and almost twenty at Bethlehem. In
her last illness, but especially in her agony, she repeated almost
without intermission certain verses of the psalms, which express an
ardent desire of the heavenly Jerusalem, and of being united to God.
When she was no longer able to speak, she formed the sign of the cross
on her lips, and expired in the most profound peace, on the 26th of
January, 404. Her corpse, carried by bishops, and attended with lighted
wax torches, was interred on the 28th of the same month, in the midst of
the church of the holy manger. Her tomb is still shown in the same
place, near that of St. Jerom, but empty: even the Latin epitaph which
St. Jerom composed in verse, and caused to be engraved on her tomb, is
erased or removed, though extant in the end of this letter which he
addressed to her daughter. Her relics are said to be in the possession
of the metropolitical church at Sens, and the feast of St. Paula is kept
a holiday of precept in that city on the 27th of January; on which day
her name is placed by Ado, Usuard, &c., because she died on the 26th,
after sunset, and the Jews in Palestine began the day from sunset: but
her name occurs on the 26th in the Roman Martyrology, &c. See her life
in St. Jerom's letter to her daughter, called her epitaph, ep. 86, &c.
Footnotes:
1. Ep. 22, ol. 54.
2. Rebellibus lachrymis injurian facis possidenti.
3. Nulla sic amabat filios, &c. St. Heir {} epitaph. Paulae.
4. Ep. 57, ol. 7.