Saint Paula of Rome

However, the age came when the brilliant patrician had to receive a husband from the hand of her parents, and add to all the advantages of her birth and qualities the luster of an illustrious alliance. She married a young Roman of Greek origin, called Toxotius, who belonged through his mother to the old Julian family, which boasted of tracing its lineage back to Aeneas. Toxotius did not share the faith of his young wife. However, he does not appear to have been unworthy of the young Christian he had married, and the extraordinary affection that Paula always had for him, and the inconsolable grief with which she mourned him, show that their union was one of those that the world calls happy. God blessed this union. Four daughters were born successively to Paula. The eldest, called Blaesilla, seemed endowed with all the most lively and amiable gifts of the spirit; a frail and delicate health, but a rich and beautiful nature, which from her earliest childhood gave every hope, in the hands of a mother like Paula, for the charms of the intellect and the qualities of the soul. Paulina, the second, also had a most happy nature, but quite opposite to that of Blaesilla. It was not, like the latter, a flame; but, with fewer brilliant flashes of wit and less lively spontaneity of character, she gave all the signs of an exquisite common sense, of a sure judgment, and she promised to have in solidity everything her older sister had in brilliance. As for the third, called by a graceful name borrowed from the Greek, Eustochium (rule, uprightne Eustochie Third daughter of Paula, she accompanied her to the East and succeeded her. ss), a sweet, modest, reserved, and shy child, one would have said she was a flower hiding its perfume within itself; but this perfume was sweet, and looking at her closely, one could already suspect in this young soul treasures that would astonish on the day of their blossoming. The fourth was called Rufina. Paule, at this time of her life, did not know how to sufficiently protect herself from the luxury and softness of her time. She passed, like all patrician women, through the streets of Rome, carried by her slaves in a gilded litter; she would have feared to set foot on the ground and touch the mud of the streets; the weight of a silk dress burdened her delicacy; a ray of sunlight that might have slipped through the thick curtains of her litter would have seemed like a fire to her. She used, like women of her rank, what she would one day have to reproach herself for so much; she did not deny herself the delights of the bath, which played such a large part in Roman life; she spent, according to common custom, the winter in Rome, the summer in some villa, where the countryside, friends, and a select library shared her day. However, in the midst of this very luxury, Paula, although still far from the virtues she would one day practice, was known and respected as a woman of irreproachable dignity of bearing and conduct. Not a voice was ever raised in Rome against her virtue. On the contrary, she was cited as a Roman of the old stock, recalling those women of old who had been, by their severe chastity, the honor of the republic, and when one wanted to offer a model in this respect to the young patricians of the time, one named Paula. There was undoubtedly the pride and dignity of the old Roman blood; but there were above all the inspirations and superior views of faith. It was under this surer guard of the Christian spirit that Paula passed through all this opulence, fatal to so many others, without perishing in it; and if, in these brilliant and happy years, the young wife of Toxotius did not always have sufficiently present in her mind the maxim of the apostle, which is to use worldly things as not using them, to lend oneself to the world and not give oneself to it; if it happened that she tasted too much of these dangerous enjoyments and vanities, there was in the trials that soon followed a large compensation for this softness, and in the austerity of her penance an overabundant expiation. Paula was not only a woman of intact reputation and severe honor: to this trait of virtue, both Roman and Christian, Saint Jerome adds a second, exclusively Christian; she was, he says, "the sweetest and most benevolent woman to the little ones, to the plebeians, to the slaves." The natural elevation of her soul, and even more the grace of Jesus Christ and the work of virtue, had entirely preserved her from the dryness and haughtiness, the impatience and disdain that the pride of blood and wealth engenders in hard or small souls; she had this necessary complement of nobility and beauty, this sign of natural distinction and superior merit, kindness; and these were, with austere honor, the two traits that formed by their contrast the charm of her physiognomy. One can conceive how a woman of this character and virtue had to fulfill the delicate duties imposed upon her by the mixed society in which she lived. Her relationships were of two kinds: she was linked with the women most eminent for piety in the Church; the first Christian women of Rome, such as Marcella and Titiana, were her intimate friends. She also had relationships with the pagan part of the patriciate, whom she received in her home and by whom she was received. It was all that was most considerable in Rome and also most pagan. Relations with such a society obviously required much reserve, dignity, and propriety; it was above all the duty of Christian women, then as today, to be among unbelievers, by the amiability of their intercourse and the superiority of their virtues, the living demonstration of their faith. They thus paved the way to the truth for more than one soul, more effectively than by controversy, and it is permissible to believe that they were often responsible for much, without appearing to be, in the recruits that Christianity was constantly making within the patriciate. In her domestic hearth, Paula was the happiest of wives and mothers. Her young family grew up joyfully around her, giving the most beautiful hopes. Toxotius, however, had a regret. He would have liked an heir to his name, and he did not have one. This desire was finally granted; a fifth child was born to Paula who was a son, and who received like his father the name of Toxotius.

Paula was only thirty-one years old when God sent her the great trial of widowhood. This unexpected blow that came to surprise her in the midst of all her happiness was terrible for her: it was the moment God chose to shatter everything in this unexpectedly opened tomb. Paula was at first drawn in and powerless against this pain, to the point that her life was feared for. Nothing could stop her tears. Never was a husband more mourned; never did a blow penetrate more deeply into her soul. By breaking all the shackles that held her back in the ordinary paths and prevented her from rising to great virtues, God was making a call to her that she was free to follow, but after which, whether heeded or ignored, her life was to be fixed forever. Widowhood is a sacred thing. Independently of what faith discovers in it of supernatural merit, there is upon the widow who is truly a widow the triple consecration of sorrow, fidelity, and virtue. The virgin is faithful only to God and to herself; the widow is, in addition, faithful to the one she loved and lost: it is for him also that she henceforth keeps the integrity of her heart, making of his dear memory a cult and a life; and such is the nuance that distinguishes the widow from the virgin, two admirable creations of Christianity, two flowers born on the same stem and which mingle their perfumes in the Church without confusing them. If there is something purer in the virgin, there is something more august and touching in the widow, because sufferings and tears and sacrifice have passed that way. Paula understood what God wanted of her; reclaiming the freedom of her soul and withdrawing from the world, she resolved to walk generously in the path where God was calling her. She fortunately found around her examples, a society, souls who had entered the same path, and who were for her an excitement and a help: this society had its center on the Aventine; it was formed of widows or virgins belonging to the first families of Rome, and who were then giving to the Church, under the eyes and under the impulse of Pope Damasus, a great spectacl e of virtue pape Damase Pope who ordained the two brothers and sent them on a mission. .

There was suddenly an admirable blossoming of virtues in her soul. The transformation was sudden and complete. A kind of abyss was dug between her and the world; but this rupture was only a deeper flight into God. It was a second freedom and a new need that widowhood brought her. Feeling that nothing could ever fill the immense void that had just opened within her; seeing that everything breaks and flees from us here below, that God alone does not escape, and that in Him one finds everything, she threw herself back toward God with a kind of passion so ardent and a joy so full that one would have said that the death of Toxotius, so mourned by her, was in her eyes only a deliverance. And this love into which she now plunged herself entirely, while it brought her true and solid consolations, created in her soul marvelous ascensions, admirably indicated by Saint Jerome.

The first degree to which she rose was a new and greater love for prayer. She felt herself powerfully and gently inclined toward it. Indeed, the more a heart closes itself to the earth, the more it opens itself to heaven. Having renounced the joys of worldly life, Paula tasted all the more those of an assiduous commerce with God. Thus, her prayer extended far into the night, and more than once the sun surprised her kneeling and still praying. Her great happiness was to go to the oratory of the Aventine to sing psalms with the virgins of Marcella. The Holy Scripture became her daily meditation. Thus, while great sorrows only obscure certain souls and cover them as if with darkness, they had on the contrary filled Paula's soul with more light, and had unveiled to her a wider and more radiant horizon of eternity. By these lights that now illuminated her, her love of God and of heavenly things growing every day, her soul rose to a second degree, namely: an exquisite delicacy of conscience, an extraordinary desire for an absolute purity of heart. In such a beautiful disposition, to manage for herself a freer flight toward God and to keep for herself a heart more intact and better defended, not only did she surround herself with a severe guard, but she also embraced with heroic courage the most austere practices of Christian mortification. All the delicate habits of the past, all the comforts of life were suppressed. This patrician no longer slept on anything but hairshirts thrown on the bare ground, and rivaled in abstinences and fasts with the ascetics of the desert. In this fervor, the memory of her less perfect life of the past and of the concessions made to the world filled her with confusion and pain and opened in her a source of tears. And these tears, the fruit of such pure love of God, mingling with those that the ever-living memory of Toxotius also made her shed, just as these two affections had mingled and confused themselves in her soul, from this double source of weeping flowed incessantly with such abundance that they tired her eyes to the point of making her sight feared for. Even the night did not stop them, as if Paula, says Saint Jerome, had taken for her part literally this word of the Psalmist: "I will bathe my bed every night with my tears, I will water my couch with my weeping."

These holy rigors did not only raise Paula to an admirable purity of soul, they had another fruitfulness still; they ignited in her, as always happens, an ardent flame of charity: her heart, at the same time that it turned thus toward the love of God, found another sublime outpouring in the love of the poor. And certainly, the field open to her activity was vast; for, in the midst of this people-king who found it beneath its dignity to work, the misery was frightful. All her income went into alms. Her charity knew no measure and did not know how to stop; and never did a poor person return from her empty-handed. She gave everything, and when she had nothing left, she borrowed in order to be able to give again, sometimes putting herself in the necessity of borrowing again to repay her loans. Not content with lavishing everything she had, she did more; she did not fear to make herself importunate for the poor and to put at their service the relationships that her birth and her great name had given her in Rome: an apostle of charity, just as she was its model.

Paule had already been devoting herself for two years, as we have just said, with her holy friends, to the practice of these generous virtues, and was giving the patrician society these beautiful examples of edification, when suddenly a piece of news spread through Rome that brought the most vivid joy to the small cenacle of the Aventine, and to the whole group of generous women who had entered into the same movement. The West was to have its great council just as the East had had its own. Pope Damasus had summoned all the Catholic bishops to Rome for the year 382, and venerable bishops from the East, whose virtues were renowned, were expected. Paule and her friends did not fail to take advantage of the three months that the holy bishops remained in Rome. They could not tire of seeing and hearing them; Paule especially, who had the good fortune of having Epiphanius in her palace, pressed the venerable bishop every day with her piously curious questions. She wanted to know everything about the admirable life of the Fathers of the desert. Epiphanius and Paulinus recounted in detail all the wonders they had seen. These accounts filled Paule with rapture. It was in these daily conversations with Paulinus and Saint Epiphanius that she felt the first inspiration of the design she was one day to execute arise in her soul. Upon hearing of the Anthonys and the Hilarions, of the wonders of the Thebaid, and of those women and virgins who vied in austerities on the banks of the Nile with the solitaries, her disgust for Rome and the world, already so deep within her, grew in such proportion, and the attraction toward a life even higher than the one she was leading—that life which the Fathers of the desert had created for themselves and whose ideal had just appeared to her so closely—seized her so vividly that there were moments when, losing the memory of her house, her possessions, her children, and her family, she would have wanted to leave at once, if it had been possible, forever into the solitude of the Anthonys and the Pauls.

Paule and Marcella and their holy friends greatly desired to get in touch with the companion of the two Eastern bishops who had remained i n Rome, Sain saint Jérôme Father of the Church and author of the original biography of Saint Asella. t Jerome, and to profit, at the same time as the Pope, from the insights of this austere and learned monk who carried, so to speak, the desert on his face, and in whom they sensed a necessary support for their way of life, which was already so contested, and an incomparable master in Christian science and life. Jerome decided to give readings and explanations of the holy books on the Aventine. He soon recognized what disciples he had in these highly cultured women. "What I saw in them," he wrote later, "of spirit, of penetration, at the same time as ravishing purity and virtue, I could not say." Understanding then what he could do with souls so disposed, and how far they could go with a guide who knew how to lead them, he resolved not to fail in such a work; and nothing is more touching than the familiarity full of confidence and respect, the illustrious and pure friendship, that formed between them and him; their astonishing ardor, their admirable docility in following the direction of this great master, and the active solicitude, the devoted care of the austere monk, to reveal to them the treasures of the Holy Books and to support them in their heroic life.

Paule found so fully in this divine source of Scripture everything her soul needed—consolations, strength, light—that she immersed herself in it, so to speak, with that energy and courage she brought to everything, and all the more now that she could have a solution to the difficulties that the sacred text constantly presents. She discovered there, delighted, things she had not perceived before. Understanding that the true golden key to this treasure of the Scriptures is the language in which they were written, she wanted to read them in that language, and was not afraid of that formidable study of Hebrew which had cost Jerome so much labor. Paule attracted the gaze of Saint Jerome the most. As he saw her more and more, he admired her all the more. Her soul seemed to him even more beautiful than her mind. He perceived in her marvelous impulses and a courage that was not frightened by anything. Of all those souls whom God made him the guide of, none had more affinities and secret harmonies with his own soul and was better made to follow his strong direction; but to no other was this support more necessary. Having passed barely two years from the most opulent patrician existence to this life veiled in mourning and penance, and still under the blow of her recent grief, she particularly needed to be supported. And then, she was not alone. Jerome saw at her side this young Eustochium, a flower still so tender and delicate, and these four other children, Blaesilla, Paulina, Rufina, and little Toxotius, who had to be raised and directed: a great burden for a young mother. Finally, besides the general oppositions that were already beginning in Rome against the way of life that Paule had embraced and which were going to grow, Jerome foresaw, in the very entourage of Paule, especially on the part of the pagan members of her family, special difficulties and the storms that were soon to break out. For all these reasons, he understood that there was a beautiful work to be done there, the direction of Paule, and he devoted himself to it. It was a great thing, and very new in the world, this direction of souls created by Christianity. Saint Jerome, whatever his knowledge of the Scriptures, was an even greater master of the Christian life, and no one, by the temper of his character as by the views of his mind, was better made for this ministry of direction that was to fall to him with Paule and her holy friends, as we have seen in his life.

However, Eustochium persevered on her path. "This flower of virgins," as Saint Jerome calls her, continued to blossom under the hand and heart of her mother. In vain she saw her two older sisters shine in rich finery, wearing gold necklaces and jewels; her taste for the virginal life became more and more pronounced. Faced with such a spontaneous, deep, and persevering attraction, Paula did not hesitate, and at an unknown time, perhaps even before the arrival of Saint Jerome, she had presented her to Pope Damasus so that she might receive the veil of virgins. The pious child had returned to her mother's palace happier and more radiant in her flammeum and brown robe than Blaesilla was on the day she entered the palace of the young Furius, in that brilliant wedding attire so soon changed into a mourning dress. Eustochium's action had a great impact in Rome and redoubled the irritation of Paula's family. Hymetius, disturbed by the marriage plans he dreamed of for his niece, and embarrassed by the smiles and jokes of Praetextatus and his other pagan friends, was deeply wounded. But Paula was delighted with her daughter's disposition and growing fervor. Despite her youth, none among the virgins of the Aventine surpassed Eustochium in assiduity to prayer and the chanting of psalms, and in the ardor to follow Saint Jerome in that meadow of the Scriptures he had opened to them: even the study of Hebrew did not frighten her; and Saint Jerome had conceived for this child, as for her mother, a singular respect and devotion. However, this joy of Paula's was mingled with keen anxieties for the future. For, in addition to the opposition she already encountered in her family, she saw a storm forming, not only against her, but against the entire movement of monastic life that had been taking place in Rome for some time, and into which Jerome was calling crowds of patrician women. It was the internal struggle of the family and the public struggle of the world against the religious life that were beginning.

At the news of the conversion of Blaesilla, Paula's eldest daughter, the anger of the entire pagan and worldly part of Paula's family reached its peak; Hymetius especially raged with harsh words against his sister-in-law and treated Jerome as a seducer. The entire patriciate, and even the people, shared this emotion. People began to be frightened by this progress of monastic ideas. Paula, having begun to traverse the poor districts of Rome with more solicitude than ever, accompanied no longer only by Eustochium, but by Blaesilla, joyful to associate this doubly cherished daughter with the sweetness of charity, saw her alms, already so considerable, grow even more; and, her income, however vast, no longer sufficing for her, she went so far as to sell parts of her patrimony to increase her resources. And when, to moderate these holy prodigalities, people spoke to her of her children, she would say: "What better patrimony can I leave them than the inheritance of the blessings of Jesus Christ?" not considering the maintenance of her immense fortune in all its opulence an advantage comparable for her children to the treasure of heavenly graces she hoped to merit for them through alms that left them, moreover, still quite rich. But these high views of a living faith, this superior trust in God, could not be to everyone's taste in her family, and the murmurs that her charities had long aroused finally brought on a storm. A violent scene took place between her and Hymetius. The latter lost his temper and harshly reproached his sister-in-law for forgetting her duties as a mother and stripping her children. It was then that Paula, to silence all these reproaches and regain more freedom, decided, in a heroic inspiration, on a great act, unfortunately recounted in too brief a manner by Saint Jerome. "Already dead to the world before dying," he says, "she distributed all her goods among her children."

This great act accomplished, she began to speak without mystery, and to announce loudly her plan to leave for the Orient and the Holy Land. Such an announcement caused another great stir in her family. They were exasperated. They thought that if she once went to the Orient, she would stay there; they also foresaw that Blaesilla perhaps, and Eustochium certainly, would accompany her. Hymetius, in his spite, believed that a decisive effort had to be made, and that everything would be saved if they managed to recapture Eustochium for the world. With this in mind, a plot was organized by him to shake the young girl's vocation, and his wife was tasked with executing it. Under a pretext that Saint Jerome does not state, they obtained Paula's permission to have Eustochium taken to her aunt, who showered her with caresses. Then suddenly, at a certain moment, Eustochium found herself surrounded by slaves; they took away her veil and her wool dress, they unfolded and braided her hair in the fashion of worldly young girls, they painted her face and eyes, they made her put on magnificent silk dresses; then they presented her thus adorned to all the society gathered at Hymetius's home, and everyone vied with each other to exclaim over her graces and beauty, and to pity her for the violence that, they said, her mother was making her endure. They hoped that these finery and the poison of these praises and words would reach the young girl's heart; they were mistaken. Eustochium, sweet and calm, suffered it all; then, when evening came, she put back on her brown dress and returned quietly to her mother's house.

The generous young girl, as well as her sister Blaesilla, were only the more strengthened in their way of life. Their fervor redoubled. In spite of everything, the two sisters continued, joyful and valiant, their way of life, laughing at obstacles, and protesting that nothing could shake them. Paula, Blaesilla, and Eustochium advanced each day more and more in the life of sacrifice and immolation. The generous love of God consumed all three of them equally; the Holy Scripture was more than ever their delight, and Jerome could not keep up with the work demanded of him, especially by the ardent Blaesilla. It was she, too, who now pressed most for this great journey to the Orient, which her mother and sister had long nourished the desire for. The time seemed to have come to carry out this design; but God had, for Blaesilla at least, other thoughts: the death of Blaesilla, which occurred unexpectedly in the midst of all these plans for pious pilgrimages, cam mort de Blésille Eldest daughter of Paula, whose early death precipitated the departure to the East. e to strike Paula again at the most sensitive point of her soul and reopen all her wounds.

Blaesilla's disappearance left a void in her heart that nothing could fill. Her eyes sought her, saw her everywhere; but she was nowhere. Everything reminded her of her memory, but nothing brought her back. Thus,

In the immense sadness that this loss left her, Rome became more unbearable than ever. She needed what is usually needed in great sorrows: a great diversion. The journey to the Orient, suddenly halted by this unforeseen death, and although it had lost a great charm for her since Blaesilla would no longer be part of it, could alone distract this broken soul through powerful emotions; and piety and sorrow now united to advise it. The very oppositions she encountered in her family were for her one more reason to undertake it. Paula's decision was therefore irrevocably taken. Her heart had too much need to seek, near the places where the Savior had died, an outpouring for her sorrow and her piety, and the inner attraction that drew her there was too powerful.

When the preparations for the departure were finished, she went, with Eustochium and the companions of their great journey, to the shore where a ship awaited them. At the moment of saying goodbye to her children and her relatives, "her bowels were torn," Saint Jerome tells us; "it seemed to her that her limbs were being torn away; but she fought against this torture, and her heroism had this admirable quality: that it triumphed over a great love. One saw her, in this supreme struggle, leaning, so as not to faint, on the tender and courageous Eustochium, companion of her sacrifice and her departure. Meanwhile, the ship cut through the waves and reached the open sea, and all the passengers fixed on the coast that long and final look so dear to all those who see their homeland fleeing behind them. Paula alone turned her eyes from the shore, for fear that her heart would break at the sight of those whose presence tore her soul."

Paula stopped in Cyprus to see Saint Epiphanius, whose words, three years earlier, in casting into her soul the first sparks of the flame that consumed her today, had had such a decisive influence on her life. The venerable bishop awaited her on the shore, happy to return to her some of the noble hospitality he had received from her in Rome. As soon as Paula caught sight of him, she threw herself, deeply moved, at his feet, shedding many tears. Epiphanius, seeing her tired from such a crossing, and reserved for even greater fatigues in the long journey she was undertaking, wished for her to remain a few days in Salamis to rest. Paula wanted to take advantage of her stay on the island to visit all its monasteries, and to see up close this life that she was going to study at its source in the East; and wherever she went, she marked her passage with pious generosity. Ten days passed thus in pious excursions and long conversations with Epiphanius; then she re-embarked, and arrived quickly at Seleucia, and from there, going up the Orontes, finally landed at Antioch, where the former companion of Saint Epiphanius in Rome, the venerable Bishop Paulinus, received her with the same joy and respect as the bishop of Salamis, and it was at his home that Paula found the admirable guide that Providence had reserved for her for her pilgrimage to the holy places, Saint Jerome, whom Paulinus had taken in with all his companions upon their arrival from the West.

After some time spent in this city, the departure was organized, and the entire pious caravan, which included Saint Jerome and his friends, followed the Roman road that skirted the entire coastline of Syria, Phoenicia, and Judea. The first city of Judea she encountered was Sarepta, in the ancient tribe of Asher, then Tyre, Ptolemais, the fields of Megiddo, Caesarea, the plain of Sharon, Antipatris, the ancient Lydda, then called Diospolis; turning back a little, she visited the famous Joppa, Emmaus,

Bethoron, the site of a city razed to the ground, called Gabaa, and arrived in Jerusalem. The proconsul of Palestine, who knew her family well and had been warned of her arrival, had sent an escort to meet her at the city gates to receive her with honor and lead her to a lodging he had prepared for her at the praetorium. But with a feeling of profound Christian delicacy, Paula stubbornly refused the palace offered to her and went to lodge with her entire retinue in a modest house not far from Calvary; then, without giving herself time to rest from her fatigues, she prepared to visit the holy places. She first entered the Church of the Cross; but, entirely absorbed in the thought of the great mysteries that these places recalled, she barely gave a glance to the splendor of the basilica. The cross of the Savior was what her eyes and her heart sought above all. When the sacred object had been exposed before her, the faith and love that filled her soul overflowed, so to speak, and threw her into a kind of rapture. She prostrated herself with her forehead in the dust, adoring the sacred wood, or rather the Christ attached to this wood, whom her vivid faith saw as if He were present. She could not tire of contemplating this spectacle and representing to herself one by one all the circumstances of the Passion. After this long adoration, she went into the Church of the Sepulcher: there her emotion was even greater. When she had penetrated to the very rock that had received the inanimate body of the Savior, she could not contain herself, and, falling to her knees, she burst first into tears and long sobs. Then she was seen approaching the stone, covering it with kisses, ardently pressing her lips to it, as if she were drinking there, to quench the thirst of her soul, from long-desired waters. "What tears she shed on this stone, what groans she uttered there, what pain she testified to there," says Saint Jerome, "all of Jerusalem was a witness to it, and you too, Lord, who gathered at your divine feet this rain of her tears." The Christians of Jerusalem who witnessed this spectacle were deeply edified by this admirable piety. From Calvary, Paula went to Zion. "She wanted to see everything," says Saint Jerome, "and one could not tear her away from one holy place except to lead her to another."

After having visited and venerated all the holy places of Jerusalem, the pilgrims thought of traveling through the Holy Land itself. They first visited Bethlehem; Paula, at the sight of the manger, gave free rein to her soul and cried out: "Hail, O Bethlehem! You are truly the h ouse of Bethléem Place of the birth and anointing of David. bread, since you have given to the earth the bread that came down from heaven; hail, O Ephrata! You are indeed a fruitful land, since the fruit of your fertility is a God." Entering then into a sweet meditation, she began to review in her memory the passages of the Prophets relating to the birth of the Savior. "Is it really true?" she cried; "what! I, a miserable woman, a sinner, God has deigned to allow me to place my lips on the manger where his Son was born, to pour out my prayers in the grotto where the Virgin mother gave birth to him!" After these words, no longer able to hold back the flood of her tears, she let them flow abundantly; and finally, the love of Our Lord taking victorious possession of her entire soul, she felt born within her, like a heavenly inspiration, the thought of fixing her residence there, near the holy and dear grotto, and never leaving it; and she was heard to cry out, with an inexpressible accent, applying to herself the oath of the Prophet: "Well, from now on this is the place of my rest, for it is the cradle of my God. I will dwell there, because the Lord has chosen it. It is there that my soul will live for him." She stopped; then, looking at Eustochium, she finished the verse: "And my race will serve the Lord there." Such were the holy emotions of Paula in the grotto of Bethlehem.

The cry that had just escaped her lips: "This is the place of my rest," was not a vain word, the fruit of a passing emotion, but a serious resolution that arose in her soul under the profound and sweet impression of the mysteries of Bethlehem, and which was to be fulfilled. We will see, in fact, Paula, when she has finished her pilgrimages, return to Bethlehem, and be unable to separate herself from it anymore; she will live and die there with Eustochium. Jerome also will end his life there; and, in the course of ages, the pilgrim who visits Bethlehem will see, a few steps from the grotto of the Savior, another grotto that will be called the grotto of Saint Jerome, and there two tombs, which will be one the tomb of Paula and her daughter, and the other that of their holy friend.

From Bethlehem, Paula went to the Tower of Ader or of the Flock, to Gaza, to Bethsur, in the valley of Eshcol or of the Cluster, and in that of Hebron, which was, after Jerusalem, the most venerated place in the Holy Land. This excursion finished, the pilgrims returned to Jerusalem through the fields of Tekoa, homeland of the shepherd and prophet Amos; but they did not rest there for long, and did not delay in resuming their journey to Jericho and the Jordan. They went there by passing through the Mount of Olives and the village of Bethany. What diverse emotions all these places still promised! The pious caravan crossed the valley of Jehoshaphat, crossed the Kidron, and, climbing the hill, headed toward the Garden of Agony. Paula prayed for a long time, kneeling on this stone soaked with the bloody sweat of the Son of God. But the tears she shed there were succeeded by a sweeter and almost triumphant feeling when, after rising, she saw shining in the air, at the summit of the Mount of Olives, that cross ignominiously planted formerly on the other side of the city on Calvary. This cross surmounted the Church of the Ascension, built by Saint Helena, at the very place from which Our Lord had ascended back to heaven.

After having crossed the small village of Bethphage, where the colt had been taken on which Our Lord mounted to make his entry into Jerusalem, Paula arrived at Bethany, a place loved by the Savior. She entered with pious tenderness into the dwelling where Jesus had so often received hospitality, where Martha had served him, where Mary had sat at his feet, listening to his divine word: Mary, who poured at his feet, a few days before his death, in the house of a Pharisee, this perfume of great price. Paula remained for some time in this house, all perfumed by her vivid faith with the fragrance of Magdalene. She also wanted to see, a few steps from there, the tomb of Lazarus. From Bethany she went to Jericho. The day after her arrival, anticipating the dawn to avoid the heat of the day, she set out again toward the Jordan. At the sight of it, she cried out: "See the wonder: this element of water, which once drowned the human race in the flood, is now the one which, purified by the contact of the Son of God, regenerates us in baptism." Such were the vivid emotions and the holy enthusiasm of Paula on the banks of the Jordan. Thus she felt the diverse impressions of the diverse places she visited; her soul, like a harmonious harp, resonated according to the breath and the memories that touched it. After having thus explored Judea, Paula visited Samaria, Galilee, Nazareth, the Lake of Tiberias, Capernaum, all these places, center of the preaching and theater of the principal miracles of Jesus Christ.

Returned from these pilgrimages, and happy with the holy emotions that her heart had felt there, all filled moreover with this interior joy, superabundant, but profound and contained, that she had tasted since her departure, Paula prepared to leave for Egypt. The caravan arrived happily at the mountain of Nitria. But the news of her arrival had preceded Paula in these deserts, and the bishop of Heliopolis, a city on the banks of the Nile, to which the convents of Nitria belonged, had gone there to receive the noble stranger, surrounded by a numerous crowd of cenobites and anchorites. He first led the pious troop to the church located at the top of the mountain; then, with that cordial and simple hospitality which is still today the virtue of the solitaries of the East, the travelers were installed in the buildings erected outside the convents and intended for strangers, they were brought water and linens to wash their feet and dry them, and fruits of the desert to refresh themselves; after which they were allowed to visit the convents and the solitaries. Seized with respect before these heroes of penance, these athletes of all the battles of the soul against miserable passions, some of whom had struggled hand-to-hand with the demons themselves in person, and seemed to have reconquered, as a thousand wonderful stories recounted, the ancient empire of innocent man over nature, Paula prostrated herself before them and kissed their feet, believing she saw Jesus Christ in each of them, and addressing in her thought these homages to Our Lord, whom these Saints represented to her; then she listened avidly to the stories of the solitude, and inquired in detail about the way of life of the Fathers. It was a very simple and very free life, at the same time as very holy and very austere: ambitious to reduce their flesh to servitude and to penetrate the secrets of divine things, they united action to contemplation. Their days were divided between work and prayer. One saw them occupied in breaking up the soil, in felling trees, in fishing in the Nile, in milking their goats, in weaving the mats on which they were to die. Others were absorbed by the reading or meditation of the Holy Scriptures. The monasteries, as a Saint says, were like a hive of bees: each one had in his hand the wax of work, and in his mouth the honey of the psalms and prayers. After having seen the cenobitic life in Nitria, Paula went to the desert of the Cells, to see the anchoritic life there; then to the desert of Scetis.

After these pilgrimages, which had lasted almost an entire year, Paula returned to Bethlehem, where letters from Rome awaiting her upon her return from Egypt informed her of the death of her youngest daughter. But, as always happens in the trials that God sends, a grace was hidden in this sorrow: Providence, which wished to keep Paula in the holy places, seemed to take care, in order to soften her final struggles, to detach the ties itself that she would have had to break. She no longer needed anything but solitude, to weep and to pray. This austere and pure life, seen closely by her in the deserts of Egypt, was the only thing that answered the powerful attractions she felt. The holy places, moreover, exerted a sovereign influence over her; she could not tear herself away from them. To meditate on the Christian mysteries in the very places where they had been accomplished, and on the divine Scriptures under the sky that had inspired them—she could no longer see any other possible life for herself. The voice of God made itself heard with a force that left no room for resistance.

She therefore resolved to build immediately near the Savior's manger two monasteries: one for women, where she would live with Eustochium and the colony of widows and virgins who had followed her from Rome, ready to go wherever she would lead them, and another for men, for Jerome and his friends. The location chosen for Jerome's monastery was to the right of the Church of the Nativity, on the north side, in a place somewhat removed from the public way; a path, which branched off the road starting from the tomb of King Archelaus, led to it; Paula's was placed at some distance from there, and as if hidden on the slope of the hill, almost at the bottom of the valley. Some ruins in the midst of the greenery still indicate its place today. But, while waiting for the monasteries to be built, she went to settle with her companions in a small, secluded house, and she established Jerome and his own, who were fewer in number, in an even more modest dwelling. Then, on both sides, they began the kind of life they proposed to observe in the monasteries: a life of work, study, and prayer.

Paula had returned with more happiness than ever to the reading of the Holy Books, while actively overseeing the construction of the monasteries. From time to time, she would walk with Eustochium and her companions on the hills or in the fields of Bethlehem, singing psalms, and she tasted with extreme joy the beauties of this picturesque nature, to which she was very sensitive. She also made frequent visits to the manger, to the holy places of Jerusalem, and to the convent on the Mount of Olives.

In the midst of the occupations and spiritual joys of her new life and her new residence, Paula did not forget those she loved on earth and from whom the vast space of the seas separated her in vain. The thought of Rome constantly visited her soul. She herself was not forgotten there. Her pilgrimages, her resolution to settle in the holy places, were the daily conversation of her children, of the virgins of the Aventine, and of all Rome. An active correspondence was established from then on between Rome and Bethlehem, and it never ceased.

Meanwhile, the works undertaken by Paula were advancing, and the monasteries were rising little by little on the hill of Bethlehem, but too slowly for her liking. There was a church or chapel in each of them; and we even know that the patron saint given by Paula to the church of her monastery was Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a young martyr of the last persecutions, very famous in the East, who offered her daughters the example of all virtues at once—virginity, knowledge, and heroism—and of whom Bethlehem kept a touching tradition. The completed buildings were each surrounded by an enclosure of high walls and equipped with a tower. All these buildings were crowned by the foundation of a hospice for pilgrims, which was built right next to the church of Bethlehem. At the end of three years, the monasteries, the church, and the hospice were all finished. It was time. The humble house that had provisionally sheltered the swarm of virgins gathered around her was no longer enough to contain them. Their number had increased greatly. The great name of Paula had attracted them from various regions; some were simple commoners, others belonged to rich or noble families; among the latter, some had arrived with numerous servants: Paula had only admitted them after having them send all these people away: it was the true solitary life, with its austerity and poverty, that Paula intended to found in her monasteries. She was in great impatience to enter them.

Following the example of the cenobitic establishments she had visited on the banks of the Nile, Paula divided her daughters into three groups, and as if into three monasteries, each having at its head an abbess or mother. The virgins were thus separated for work and meals; but they all gathered for psalmody and prayer in their chapel of Saint Catherine. At the joyful chant of the Alleluia, which was the signal, they all ran from their cells for the Collect or meeting; Paula was always the first, or among the first. She waited, before beginning the prayer or psalmody, for all the sisters to have arrived: not to leave everything as soon as the Alleluia had sounded, to delay by one's negligence the sweet moment of common prayer and the singing of God's praises, was a great shame, and this shame was a sharp goad, the only one Paula wished to use here, thinking with reason that, for exercises that essentially require promptness and cheerfulness, it was better to expect everything from piety and the heart than from constraint. They gathered early in the morning, then at the third hour, at the sixth, at the ninth, and finally in the evening, to sing the psalms, and, in the middle of the night itself, when everything was silent and asleep, the voices of Paula's daughters rose again to repeat the beautiful hymns of the Prophet of Bethlehem. They sang the entire Psalter every day. All the sisters were obliged to know it by heart, and had, in addition, to learn something of the Holy Scripture each day. On Sunday, the community went to the church of Bethlehem, each group led by its mother, and returned in the same order. Upon returning, the distribution of work for the week took place. It was usually clothes to be made for the monastery or for the poor of the region, of whom Paula's monastery soon became the providence. Each sister had her task. Moreover, inside the monastery, no one could have a servant, but had to serve herself and serve the community. All the sisters wore the same costume indiscriminately, patricians or commoners, which was of wool, and they used linen only to wipe their hands. The enclosure was absolute and all communication with the outside strictly forbidden. Such was, in its entirety, the Rule of Paula's monastery. She displayed, in the government of this monastery, all the great sides of her nature: an admirable mixture of energy and sweetness, and a rare discernment of spirits and characters. This word of the Apostle: "What will you? shall I come unto you with a rod, or in love, and in the spirit of meekness?" was Paula's rule; and the strength necessary to apply it constantly, this mastery over oneself so necessary to those who command others, was her virtue.

The greatest authority of Paula to maintain obedience and fervor was that of her example and her virtues. One saw her, with Eustochium, the first everywhere, at work and at the harsh practices of penance, as at psalmody and prayer. And such was her profound humility that he who, knowing only her great name, had asked to be shown her in the midst of her community, would not have been able to believe that it was she, and would have exclaimed upon seeing her: "No, that is not Paula; that is the last sister of the monastery." The austerity of Paula was such that she never yielded, even when her health was weakened and ruined, to the youngest and most able-bodied sisters, regarding abstinence and fasting. But as much as she was hard on herself, she was tender toward the sisters when they were sick. Saint Jerome renounces describing her kindness to them, her assiduity, her attention, her eager and delicate care. She then forced them to take wine and meat, although she had never wanted to do so herself. Her bed was haircloth spread on the bare ground, and she never wanted, even when she was sick and fever was devouring her, any other couch for her rest; "if one can call it rest," says Saint Jerome, "nights spent almost entirely in prayer." And in these prayers, prolonged for so long, her eyes let escape fountains of tears, and these tears, at the memory of the slightest faults, flowed so abundantly that one would have thought her guilty of the greatest sins. Saint Jerome tried in vain to stop them. "We often said to her," he writes: "But spare your eyes and save them for reading the Holy Scriptures." — "Ah! what are you saying?" she replied; "I must disfigure this face, which I have so often, contrary to the law of God, covered with paint and white lead. I must subdue this body that I have nourished in delights. I must drown these long laughs of the past in eternal tears. I must replace the delicate linens and silk dresses with the hard haircloth. I have too long wanted to please the world; I now want to please God."

There was another point where Jerome tried uselessly to moderate Paula's ardor, and that was in the pious prodigalities of her charity. After the death of this holy woman, he reproached himself for it; but at the time, faced with the considerable and daily increasing burdens of the monasteries, he believed he should temper Paula's zeal with counsels of prudence. Not that Paula really lacked it; on the contrary, she had, Saint Jerome tells us, a marvelous industry in multiplying her alms through her skill in distributing them; but her resources were limited and her charity was not: she did not know what it was to stop or to refuse a request. Seeing her, therefore, throw without counting the aid in clothing, in food, in money, to the indigent not only of Bethlehem but of the whole region, open her hospice to all pilgrims without exception, and exhaust with her own resources even the entire patrimony of Eustochium, Jerome believed he should intervene and moderate these immeasurable alms. And he tried to do so with the help of the words of the Gospel or the Apostles.

Paula listened to his words with respect, and yet she always found an answer, reserved and short, but peremptory, to these difficulties. "You fear," she said to him, "that my resources will be exhausted. No, no, I will always have enough credit; and if I ask, I will easily find someone who will give. But these unfortunates, if I fail them, what will become of them?" And to the texts cited by Jerome, she opposed with sweetness the beautiful words of the Holy Books on alms: "As water quencheth a flaming fire, so alms atone for sins. — Give alms and this fire of charity will purify all your sins. — Make unto yourselves friends of the mammon of iniquity; that when you shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting dwellings." She took pleasure in repeating these words, which seemed to her clearer and more decisive than the most beautiful reasonings. Then, rising to the height of the greatest Christian ideas, she spoke with such a lively faith of the love of God, who considers as done to himself what is done to the poor, and of the happiness of resembling, through real poverty and effective stripping away, Jesus Christ, that Saint Jerome no longer had the courage to insist, and, conquered by admiration, let her follow her heroic inspirations at her will.

The silence and peace of Paula's monasteries were soon disturbed by the appearance of Origen ism, which origénisme Set of doctrines attributed to Origen, opposed by Barsanuphius. the Bishop of Jerusalem supported; Paula suffered without a murmur the rigors deployed against her monasteries by this heretical bishop, awaiting the day when the injustices of men would give way to the justice of God; and, although her own inclination might have led her there, her high reason made her absolutely avoid all dogmatic controversy. The more noise was made around her, the more she withdrew into prayer and tears, and the sweet meditation of the Holy Scriptures, closing her ears to vain disputes, leaving it to those whose duty it was to fight for doctrine, and, as Christian women should always do when their belief is attacked, remaining on the serene Tabor of her faith, her gaze toward heaven, and the clouds beneath her feet. Jerome, moreover, had traced for her a rule of conduct that was very simple, and at the same time very protective; it was to hold invariably, in all these controversies, to the anchor of the Roman faith, and to let the waves of polemics agitate around her, without being troubled by their tumult. Heresy did not leave her in this peace: a conquest like hers would have been too great a triumph not to be attempted; but having been unable to break Paula in her faith, it took revenge by unleashing itself against her. Her great virtue, moreover, was too offensive to be spared. Raised to heights where poor humanity rarely climbs, it was good, according to the very expression of Saint Jerome, that the trial should come to remind her of her mortal condition. Sometimes envy attacked her directly; her slightest actions, her slightest words were disparaged and turned into ridicule. Sometimes she was enveloped in the attacks of which Jerome was the object. They went even further: they turned her very virtues, her mortification, her charities against her.

Nothing showed better than these trials all the work that grace had done in this soul: the solidity, the sincerity of her virtue; her unalterable serenity, her heavenly sweetness, her entire possession of herself, the annihilation in her heart of all the old Roman and patrician pride; her incomparable humility, her infinite patience, and above all the faith, which was the root in her of all these virtues, and which raised her and fixed her in those superior and tranquil regions where the clouds do not rise, and where, in the light of God, all the things of this earth disappear in their smallness. Thus envy unleashed itself in vain on the outside; nothing disturbed her recollection, her silence, and her profound peace in God on the inside. Never a word, not even a sign that indicated the slightest emotion: this lively nature seemed to have lost even that sensitivity which still makes the most detached souls suffer, the firmest spirits and those best made to judge at their true value the real inanity of the things that bruise us so much in life. Her assiduous meditation on the holy books bore these marvelous fruits. Scripture, it was there, Saint Jerome tells us, that she drew her light, her consolation, and her strength. It was there the armor always ready that covered and protected her. While the old hermit bounded like a wounded lion under the attacks of slander, and by turns was indignant or groaned, and sometimes even felt his constancy and courage waver, Paula, always calm and peaceful, restrained him, or consoled him, by bringing to his lips the honey of the Holy Scriptures, the sweetness of which filled her soul.

It sometimes happened that people carried their insolence to the point of throwing insults in her face. Without answering a single word, Paula was content to sing in her soul with the Psalmist: "When the sinner stood against me, I was silent; I held back all response on my lips." One day, someone came to tell her directly that the excess of her virtues made her pass for mad, and that it was said in Jerusalem that her brain needed to be treated; Jerome was indignant against the insolent person; but Paula was content to reply with her habitual sweetness: "Yes, we are fools for Jesus Christ; but that folly is wiser than the wisdom of men."

And she added, addressing Jerome: "Does the Savior not say to his Father in the psalm: 'You know my folly?' And do we not read in the Gospel that his relatives wanted to bind him as a madman? Did the Jews not also call him a Samaritan, one possessed by a demon? Should we be treated better than him? Did he not tell us that the world hates us, because we are not of the world?" And then, turning her whole soul toward God: "O my God," she cried, "you know the secrets of the heart. It is for you that we are mortified all day long, and regarded as sheep destined for the slaughter. But you are, Lord, our help, and I do not fear what man can do to me." It is thus that Holy Scripture provided her with an answer to everything, and that the trial made all the treasures of humility, sweetness, and strength, of great faith and holy hope that her austere and studious life, that her mortifications and her tears had silently amassed, gush from her heart.

The persecution exercised against the monasteries of Paula and against Jerome continued. The Bishop of Jerusalem having obtained from the governor a decree of banishment against the monks, Jerome straightened up at this blow in all his indignation. "What!" he cried at this news, "a bishop who has been a monk threatens and strikes monks with exile! He does not know, then, that this race is not accustomed to yielding to fear, and that, when the sword is presented to it, instead of pushing it away with the hand, it offers its head. But for a monk, who has no other homeland than heaven, is the whole world not a place of exile? No, there is no need for expenses, for an imperial rescript, and for running to the ends of the earth. Let him touch us with the tip of his finger, and we will leave. To the Lord belongs the earth and all that it contains. Christ is not a prisoner in any place." Thus, tired of these struggles, he wanted to leave immediately, without waiting for the execution of the rescript. He therefore came, with this thought, to find Paula, and there was a touching scene between her and him. "Let us leave," said Jerome, "and let foolish envy triumph. Jacob fled from Esau, and David from Saul." Paula certainly had no less than Jerome this superior detachment, independent of things and places and of all earthly ties; but, being gentler and consequently stronger in the face of trial, knowing that one flees it in vain, and that it reaches us everywhere, held back moreover by her invincible love for the holy places, and unable to consent to separate herself voluntarily from her dear Bethlehem, she gave him this beautiful answer: "Yes, you would be right, and we would do well to flee, if the demon did not fight everywhere against the servants of God, and were not to precede us wherever we went; if I did not have, moreover, this dear bond of the holy places, and if I could hope to find another Bethlehem somewhere." She then added with her habitual sweetness: "We are hated, we are crushed; why not simply oppose patience to hatred, humility to arrogance? We are given slaps; why not turn the other cheek?" Then, seeking as always her light and her strength in the Holy Scriptures, she continued thus, says Jerome: "Did the Apostle Saint Paul not write: 'Overcome evil with good'? Were the Apostles not happy to suffer ignominy for the name of Jesus? And the Savior himself, did he not endure everything until death, and until the death of the cross? If Job had not fought and triumphed, he would not have received the crown of justice, and he would not have heard from the very mouth of the Lord this word: 'Do you think that I have tested you for anything other than to make your virtue shine forth?' Thus the Gospel proclaims happy those who suffer persecution for justice." And finally, taking refuge in the impregnable asylum of her conscience: "When conscience tells us that our sufferings are not the consequences of our sins, we are very sure that the afflictions of this century are only the material for eternal rewards." Thus Paula supported and calmed the impetuous Jerome. The delicacy and serenity of this beautiful soul, raised to those heights of the light and love of God where the storms of this world do not reach, softened, as if by a penetrating charm, the movements of this heart, which was ulcerated even more by the pains it brought upon Paula than by what it suffered itself.

In the meantime, a sinister rumor, which traveled through the East with the speed of lightning, came to cast terror among the solitaries. It was said that the Huns had flooded the East, and were threatening Jerusalem. Arabia, Phoenicia, Palestine, and Egypt were seized with terror. On all sides, preparations for defense were being made in haste; Tyre was cutting its isthmus and isolating itself from the continent; Jerusalem was repairing its walls, too neglected during a long peace. In this peril, Paula, to save her monasteries from the insults of the barbarians, had only one course of action to take: flight. She therefore decided, not without a great tearing of the heart, to leave Bethlehem, and withdrew, taking her virgins, and Jerome his monks, to the shores of the sea, at Joppa, ready to embark as soon as the barbarians appeared. A certain time passed in these alarms. But, the Huns having suddenly turned back without having crossed the Lebanon, Paula brought her daughters back to her monastery with a joy equal to her past terrors.

It was towards the end of the year 403 that Paula felt the onset of the illness that would be her last. When the imminence of the danger was recognized, all in the monastery were dismayed. Eu stochium, Eustochie Third daughter of Paula, she accompanied her to the East and succeeded her. in particular, was inconsolable. Her love for her mother, which had always been so touching, showed in these final moments all the ardor and energy that her heart contained. She would yield to no one the sweetness of caring for her, and she moved everyone to tears with her devoted care and the delicate attentions of her filial piety. She was there, night and day, at the bedside of the sick, offering her food, making her bed, and finally performing all the duties of a nurse, distressed whenever a hand other than her own had served her. One saw her running distraught from her mother's bed to the Manger, and there, weeping and sobbing, asking the Lord, with all the ardor of her soul, not to deprive her of such company, or at least not to let her live after her mother, and to allow them both to be placed in the same tomb.

But these tears and prayers could not delay the moment marked by God. "Paula," said Saint Jerome, "had, as the Apostle says, finished her course and kept her faith for God; the hour was about to strike for her to receive the crown, and to follow the Lamb wherever He goes. She had had the sacred hunger for justice, she was about to be satisfied, and already, joyful, she could sing: All that we have heard of the city of the God of virtues, we are now about to see. She had wept enough; the moment of eternal joy had come. She had worn the hairshirt enough; it was time to put on the robe of glory and to cry out: You have torn off the sackcloth of my penance, and you have clothed me with gladness. She had eaten her bread like ashes enough, and mixed her drink with her tears; it was time to go and feed in eternity on the bread of angels, and to repeat forever these words: Taste and see how sweet the Lord is." The strength of the sick woman was consumed, and she had only a few days left to live. She suffered with admirable patience and a celestial serenity.

However, the illness was making frightening progress. Already death had chilled her extremities and part of her limbs; only a slight beating of her heart indicated that Paula was still breathing, but she breathed only for God, and one could hear her murmuring faintly verses from her favorite psalms: "Lord, I have loved the beauty of your house and the place where your glory dwells. How beloved are your tabernacles, O God of virtues! I have chosen to be lowly in the house of my God, rather than to dwell in the tents of sinners." The Bishop of Jerusalem and all the bishops of Palestine, as well as a large number of priests, monks, and virgins, had rushed to witness the spectacle of this holy death. The monastery was filled with them. Paula, completely absorbed in God, heard and saw nothing around her; one noticed only, by the slight trembling of her lips, that she continued to converse gently with God. Some questions were put to her; she did not answer. Jerome then, approaching her, asked her why she was silent and if she was in any pain. She replied to him in the Greek language: "Oh! no, neither pain nor regret. I feel, on the contrary, an immense peace." After these words, she remained again in her silence. Her finger, which she kept constantly on her lips, did not cease to trace the sign of the cross there. Finally, the agony began, her breathing became harsh and labored, and suddenly she was seen to open her eyes; from the midst of the shadows of death, a sudden brightness, the last reflection of the soul on this body it was about to leave, shone on her face, and her gaze seemed to fix itself as if on a celestial apparition: it was indeed one. One understood by her response that Our Lord was calling her to Him; for she was heard to cry out, full of joy: "The flowers have appeared on our earth, the time to gather them has come"; and again: "I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living." She expired with these words. It was January 26 of the year 401, under the sixth consulship of the Emperor Honorius. Paula had lived fifty-six years, eight months, and twenty-one days, of which five years were in Rome after her widowhood, in the holy profession of religious life, and twenty in Bethlehem, near the manger where the Son of God was born.

Eustochium was inconsolable at the death of her mother; to the grief she felt were added for the timid virgin two great anxieties, which her humility alarmed beyond measure, namely the spiritual government of her community, a preoccupation she had never had as long as Paula lived; and the burden of these two monasteries of which she became the sole resource, and which she had to sustain.

After having governed her monastery holily, Eustochium fell asleep gently in the Lord in 419, and was buried, according to her desire, in her mother's tomb: so constantly and tenderly united in life, they were to be so also in death. The Church celebrates her feast on September 26.

Saint Paula is represented prostrate in or before the grotto of Bethlehem; kneeling before the holy manger, in the company of Saint Jerome and Saint Eustochium her daughter; embarked on a ship that is weighing anchor while a child, her son Toxotius, seems to call her from the shore with his tears; shedding tears herself for her own, for her heart was as good as it was great: but generosity prevailed over tenderness; venerating or embracing the instruments of the Passion; her most ordinary costume is that of a nun carrying a book: it is claimed that she is the founder of the Hieronymites.

[APPENDIX: CULT AND RELICS.]

The funeral of Paula was triumphal. Before lowering her into her tomb, she was transported from the monastery to the Church of the Manger, to be exposed there, face uncovered, to the veneration of the faithful. The bishops made it a point of honor to carry her body. An immense crowd had rushed from all the cities of Palestine; the monks and virgins had hastened to leave their deserts and retreats; but the most beautiful and royal pomp was the procession of the indigent who wept for their provider and their mother.

The Saint remained exposed for three days in the church, without death having made any change in her features. Her body was then deposited in the church, in a grotto adjoining that holy grotto of the Manger that she had loved so much, where her tomb is still seen today.

Saint Jerome engraved on her sepulcher the following inscription: "The daughter of the Scipios, the Paulli, the Gracchi, the illustrious blood of Agamemnon, rests in this place. She bore the name of Paula. She was the mother of Eustochium. The first in the senate of Roman matrons, she preferred to the splendors of Rome the poverty of Christ and the humble fields of Bethlehem."

He also engraved at the entrance of the sepulchral grotto, on the rock, this epitaph which reproduced in other terms the same contrast, and furthermore showed its sublime source: "Do you see this grotto carved into the rock? It is the tomb of Paula, inhabitant of the heavenly kingdom. Her brother, her relatives, Rome, her homeland, her riches, her children, she left everything for the grotto of Bethlehem: she is buried there. It is there also, O Christ, that your manger is, and that the Magi came to offer you their mystical gifts, O God-Man!"

The feast of Saint Paula has always been celebrated solemnly in the cathedral of Sens, which has possessed her relics since Charlemagne. This emperor had asked the bishops and abbots to give him relics to adorn the cathedral he had just built in Aachen. Everyone hastened to comply with his desires, and Charlemagne received so many beautiful relics that he himself was Charlemagne Emperor of the Franks and uncle of Saint Folquin. able to give some to his friends.

No church, neither in Rome, nor in Palestine, nor elsewhere, prides itself on possessing her body. The Senonian liturgy confirms her cult and the presence of her relics at the cathedral since the highest antiquity; Saint Paula, since the arrival of her relics, has been adopted as patroness by the city of Sens. The inventories of 1095, 1192, 1239, and 1571 confirm the presence of the relics of Saint Paula in the treasury. Here is the last inventory which was made by Nicolas Pellevé, Cardinal-Archbishop of Sens, one of the signatories of the Council of Trent, and which analyzes all the previous inventories:

"Nicolaus miseratione divina sacrosanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ presbyter cardinalis de Pelleve, archiepiscopus Senonensis, Galliarum et Germaniæ Primas... notum facimus quod in hoc loco reposita sunt multorum sanctorum et sanctarum pignora gloriosa.

"Ræ autem literis et actis publicis mandanda posteris curavimus, ut omnes tam præsentes quam posteri diligenter sciant et attendant, quanta cum devotione et reverentia Deo et sanctis ejus assistore deocant...

"Sed hæc sacra pignora a Carolo Magno (812) et aliis patribus huic ecclesiæ donata sunt et primum ab archiepiscopo qui Magnus vocabatur (et erat ejus/neveu de Caroli magni consubrinus), accepta esse notis certissime constitit per acta publica in capuis inventa, quæ ab anno Domini 1095 exercuta absque lituris integra ad nos usque pervenerunt.

"Quo tempore primum (1095) a venerabili archiepiscopo Richerio, regnante Philippo rege, visitata et thecis argenteis distincta et recondita sunt... Longo post tempore venerabilis antistes et archiepiscopus Guydo capuis novis restauravit anno Domini 1192 in crastino Assumptionis Beatæ Mariæ...

"At vero venerabilis antistes Gallerus anno Domini 1239 gloriosa pignora singulis thecis reponenda curavit. Nos vero sanctorum illorum patrum vestigiis insistere volentes, hæc tam sancta pignora, quanto potuimus honore et reverentia visitavimus et publicis decretis supplicationibus populo proponimus...

"Duodecim thecis partim argenteis, partim ligneis distinguuntur.

"Prima quæ auro et argento undique decorata est corpus sanctæ Panæ continet (cui tam honorifice Hieronymus suum senectatum commendat), etc.

"... Senonis anno Domini millesimo quingentesimo septuagesimo primo..."

Moreover, the Senonian liturgy, local chronicles, and all the authors who have spoken of the religious history of Sens confirm that the body of Saint Paula is in Sens and that it was given with the magnificent piece of the True Cross, by Charlemagne to Magnon or Mague, Archbishop of Sens, his cousin.

Every year in this diocese, the feast of Saint Paula is celebrated on January 26, under the double rite. The relics were slightly charred by a fire that consumed the cathedral of Sens in the 10th century. Even today, the reliquary of Saint Paula is preciously kept in the treasury and enclosed in a glass cabinet.

We have used, to compose this biography, the History of Saint Paula, by Abbé Lagrange, Vicar General of Orléans; the Acta Sanctorum; the Eulogy of the Saint, by Saint Jerome; and local notes concerning the relics, from Abbé Cartier, Canon of Sens.