Women of Early Christianity

by Alfred Brittain; Mitchell Carroll

Before we leave this brief reference to the secular matrons of the early Church in order to turn our attention to the sacred virgins, it is necessary to summon the testimony of Jerome. This learned and eloquent Father is the great authority on the women of his time. Only those vowed to celibacy enjoyed his highest approbation; yet he had many friends among the married ladies of Rome. Jerome was a satirist. His pen was caustic when it dealt with persons or matters that did not meet his approval. He was the Juvenal of his age, but he wrote in prose, and not for the sake of satire, but as the champion of orthodoxy and virginity. Many of his writings are in the form of letters to ladies who were his friends. The one to Eustochium, the daughter of Paula, is the most striking of all. In this epistle Jerome sets forth the motives which should actuate those who adopt the monastic life. It also gives us a vivid picture of Roman society as it then was--the luxury, profligacy, and hypocrisy prevalent among both men and women. This letter was written at Rome in the year 384. "I write to you thus, Lady Eustochium (I am bound to call my Lord's bride 'lady'), to show you by my opening words that my object is not to praise the virginity which you follow, and of which you have proved the value, or yet to recount the drawbacks of marriage, such as pregnancy, the crying of infants, the torture caused by a rival, the cares of household management, and all those fancied blessings which death at last cuts short. Not that married women are as such outside the pale; they have their own place, the marriage that is honorable and the bed undefiled. My purpose is to show you that you are fleeing from Sodom and should take warning by Lot's wife." Such is the tone and tenor of Jerome's correspondence with the women of his acquaintance. Among many other things, he cautions Eustochium not to court the society of married ladies, and not to "look too often on the life which you despised to become a virgin!" Many glimpses are given of the characteristics of that life which was to be so carefully avoided. The pride of those who are the wives of men in high position, and also their delight in troops of callers, are noticed. They are pictured as they are carried about the streets in gorgeous litters, with rows of eunuchs walking in front. Their dress is mentioned: red cloaks, robes inwrought with threads of gold, and creaking shoes. Jerome is even so unsparing as to refer to those who "paint their eyes and lips with rouge and cosmetics; whose chalked faces, unnaturally white, are like those of idols; upon whose cheeks every chance tear leaves a furrow; who fail to realize that years make them old; who heap their heads with hair not their own; who smooth their faces, and rub out the wrinkles of age; and who, in the presence of their grandsons, behave like trembling school-girls." Some of Jerome's strictures are suggestive of modern feminine habits. Speaking of Blaesilla, after she had become a widow and was determined to persevere in that estate, he says that in days gone by she had been extremely fastidious in her dress, and had spent whole days before her mirror endeavoring to correct its deficiencies. Her head, "which had done no harm, was forced into a waving head-dress." But all this is changed. Now "no gold and jewels adorn her girdle; it is made of wool, plain, and scrupulously clean. It is intended to keep her clothes right, and not to cut her waist in two."

Eustochium, as a professed virgin of the Church, is warned not to trifle with verse, nor to make herself gay with lyric songs. "And do not, out of affectation, follow the sickly taste of married ladies who, now pressing their teeth together, now keeping their lips wide apart, speak with a lisp, and purposely clip their words, because they fancy that to pronounce them naturally is a mark of country breeding."

In another place the Father of asceticism says: "To-day you may see women cramming their wardrobes with dresses, changing their gowns from day to day, and for all that unable to vanquish the moths. Now and then one more scrupulous wears out a single dress; yet, while she appears in rags, her boxes are full. Parchments are dyed purple, gold is melted into lettering, manuscripts are decked with jewels, while Christ lies at the door naked and dying. When they hold out a hand to the needy they sound a trumpet; when they invite to a love-feast they engage a crier. I lately saw the noblest lady in Rome--I suppress her name, for I am no satirist--with a band of eunuchs before her in the basilica of the blessed Peter. She was giving money to the poor, a coin apiece; and this with her own hand, that she might be accounted more religious. Hereupon a by no means uncommon incident occurred. An old woman, 'full of age and rags,' ran forward to get a second coin, but when her turn came she received, not a penny, but a blow hard enough to draw blood from her guilty veins." Rome had always successfully withstood the rhetorical lashings of her censors; had it not been for this power of resistance, the castigations of a Jerome surely would have sufficed to hold the natural frivolity of the women of his time at least within the bounds of modesty.

The moral influence of Jerome illustrated the danger of insisting on perfection with the result of falling below the average of possible attainment. In his letters to Paula, Eustochium, Marcella, and Asella, women who delighted him by manifesting an astounding resolution in mortifying the flesh, he continually laments those who, professing to have made an offering of their virginity to Christ, were in reality a scandal to the Church.

Paula was a Roman lady of the highest rank and greatest wealth. The genealogy of her father ascended through the highest names in Grecian history; her mother, Blassilla, numbered the Scipios and the Gracchi among her ancestors. Paula was Cornelia reincarnated in the fourth century of Christianity; the only differences are that the former maintained a chaste widowhood inspired by fuller hopes than earthly renown, and instead of entertaining men of learning at Misenum she studied Hebrew with Jerome in a squalid cave at Bethlehem. This devout lady had much to resign in order that she might enter upon a life of poverty. One of the most magnificent houses of Rome was hers, and she drew her revenues from the city of Nicopolis, the whole of which she owned. She was born in the year 347, ten years after the death of Constantine. At the age of seventeen she was married to Toxotius, who was a descendant of the illustrious Julian family. She was the mother of five daughters and one son. It seems likely that she owed her conversion to Christianity to the holy Marcella, one of that circle of ascetic women to whom the letters of Jerome were addressed. Until the time of her husband's death, the life of Paula in her magnificent palace on the Aventine was similar to that of other wealthy Roman ladies, except that her means enabled her to excel all others in elegance. On her conversion, and as the best proof of its reality, in the estimation of those days, she distributed a quarter of her immense estate to the poor. The ideas then prevalent would not permit her to deem herself an earnest Christian unless she entirely relinquished her habits of luxury. This she did, and devoted herself to the care of the indigent and the nursing of the infirm. Her piety would not even allow her sufficiently to sustain her bodily strength for these noble labors. She lived on bread and a little oil, on many days denying herself even that until after sunset. Her dress was the rough garb of the slave; her couch was a mat of straw, covered with haircloth.

There was, however, one enjoyment which Paula allowed herself: she was one of a circle of ladies, all ascetics like herself, who were devoted to the study of literature. There was Marcella, who was the first of the highborn Roman ladies to embrace the monastic life, and of whom Jerome gives this account: "Her father's death left her an orphan, and she had been married less than seven months when her husband was taken from her. Then, as she was young and highborn, as well as distinguished for her beauty and her self-control, an illustrious consular named Cerealis paid court to her with great assiduity. Being an old man, he offered to make over to her his fortune so that she might consider herself less his wife than his daughter. Her mother Albina went out of her way to secure for the young widow so exalted a protector. But Marcella answered: 'Had I a wish to marry and not rather to dedicate myself to perpetual chastity, I should look for a husband and not an inheritance; and when her suitor argued that sometimes old men live long while young men die early, she cleverly retorted: 'a young man may die early, but an old man cannot live long.' This decided rejection of Cerealis convinced others that they had no hope of winning her hand."

Marcella may indeed be termed the prioress of the community of ascetics which gathered in her house and in that of Paula on the Aventine hill. She studied Hebrew with Jerome, and became so proficient in Scriptural exposition that, after the latter's departure for the Holy Land, even the clergy would bring to her for solution such questions as were too difficult for them. When Alaric and his Goths sacked the city of Rome, the prayers and the evident holiness of Marcella induced the barbarians to spare her life and the honor of the virgin Principia, who dwelt with her, and they even left her house unmolested.

Another shining light in that Aventine circle was Asella, who had been dedicated to the Church from her tenth year. Her fastings may be said to have been almost unintermittent, so that Jerome thought it was only by the grace of God that she survived until her fiftieth year without weakening her digestion. "Lying on the dry ground did not affect her limbs, and the rough sackcloth that she wore failed to make her skin either foul or rough. With a sound body and a still sounder soul she sought all her delight in solitude, and found for herself a monkish hermitage in the centre of busy Rome."

Among the good women of that day were also Albina and Marcellina, who were the sisters of Saint Ambrose. Marcellina made a public profession of virginity before a great congregation which gathered on Christmas day in the Church of Saint Peter. She received the veil from the hands of the bishop Liberius. In a work addressed to her Ambrose repeats the instructions which his sister received from the bishop at that time. The work is of no little interest, as it clearly sets forth the idea which governed the lives of professed nuns of that early date.

Paula also numbered among her companions Fabiola, a woman noble both in character and race, who, after a stormy youth, found peace in the haven of ascetic devotion. Jerome describes her life in his seventy-seventh letter. Fabiola was censured for putting away one husband and marrying again while the man whom she divorced was yet alive. Jerome's defence of her divorce shows such liberality of thought on the rights of women in this regard that part of it is worth quoting. He says: "I will urge only this one plea, which is sufficient to exonerate a chaste matron and a Christian woman. The Lord gave commandment that a wife must not be put away 'except it be for fornication, and that, if put away, she must remain unmarried.' Now a commandment which is given to men logically applies to women also. For it cannot be that, while an adulterous wife is to be put away, an incontinent husband is to be retained.... The laws of Cæsar are different, it is true, from the laws of Christ.... Earthly laws give a free rein to the unchastity of men, merely condemning seduction and adultery; lust is allowed to range unrestrained among brothels and slave-girls, as if the guilt were constituted by the rank of the person assailed and not by the purpose of the assailant. But with us Christians what is unlawful for women is equally unlawful for men." It is only in very modern times that the secular law has conformed to this just opinion, and even now the social treatment received by the sinner is guided by a view the opposite of that expressed by Jerome.