Page:A Dictionary of Saintly Women Volume 2.djvu/147

Rh show his letters to "the indefatigable Marcella."

It was about 383 that Paula's eldest daughter Blcesilla became a widow, after seven months of a not very happy mar- riage. She was young, beautiful, rich, and a universal favourite, and she in- tended to enjoy the unbounded liberty then accorded to widows. Her conduct was without reproach, but she was far from sharing her mother's taste for asceticism and self-denial, so that Paula was not free from anxiety lest her daughter should fall into habits of fri- volity or even worse. Bhesilla had a fever, and when the physicians despaired of her life, Christ appeared to her and bade her arise and serve Him. She recovered and resolved to devote to Him the life He had newly granted to her. She put on the coarse brown gown of the poorest class, she slept on the bare floor, she fasted rigorously, she spent her days in works of mercy and her nights in prayer. She had always been delicate, and this sudden change of habits completely shat- tered her health and brought her to the grave in four months, at the age of twenty. Her mother, nearly frantic with grief, made her the most magnificent funeral; but all Rome was indignant; they accused Paula and Jerome of caus- ing her death, by encouraging an asceti- cism which her delicate frame was unable to endure; they raged against Jerome and said:"'Why do we tolerate these monks! Let us throw them into the river!" They even affected to misunder- stand the friendship of Jerome and Paula, and accused them of blameable inter- course. The horror of this accusation no doubt combined with other causes to decide Paula to leave Rome for the East, a step she had long contemplated. St. Jerome, from the Holy Land, wrote to condole with her grief, but reminded her that Blcesilla now belonged entirely to the Lord, to Whom Paula had vowed herself; he urged her to spurn every obstacle that detained her in Rome and to devote herself exclusively to the service of God and to visit the birthplace of the Saviour and the scenes of His labours and death.

Her second daughter Paulina was married to St. Pammachius, who has been called the most Christian of the nobles and the most noble of the Christians of Eome. Eustochium, whose tastes were those of Paula, only, if possible, more strongly marked, was anxious to accompany her on her journey, but there remained still her youngest daughter Eufina, now twelve, and her only son Toxotius, about ten. It grieved the mother's heart to leave them, but their relations wished to keep them more in that walk of life to which their rank and fortune entitled them, than in the ways in which Paula would lead them. Jerome represented it as her duty to break every tie that bound her still to the life she was going to leave.

In 385 the decisive step was taken. Paula and Eustochium left Italy, fol- lowed to the ship by Paula's brother and a crowd of friends and relations, some admiring, some weeping, some re- proaching them. Paula was calm until the ship began to bear her away and she saw her two children Toxotius and Eufina with streaming eyes stretching their little hands towards her in a last appeal, which wrung her heart but did not alter her resolve. They touched at Cyprus, where their old friend St. Epiphanius received them joyfully and showed them the monasteries there. Thence they pro- ceeded to Antioch, where Jerome met them. When they reached Jerusalem, Paula and Eustochium went rapturously to the sites of the incidents in sacred history. At her monastery, on the Mount of Olives, they visited, who was destined in after years to be estranged from Paula by the fierce quarrel that arose between Jerome and Eufinus, their respective friends and directors.

Paula and Eustochium travelled all over the Holy Land, suffering great fatigues and privations, but upheld under all diOicultics, by the intense delight of identifying the localities of all those stories which their long study of holy writ had engraven on their memories. They returned to Beth- lehem and built two convents, one for Jerome and one for themselves; and when they had settled in the latter, Paula built two others for holy nuns,