Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

III

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.