Page:Wives and mothers in the olden time.djvu/22

6 the virtues of one whom all the world honours, who is held in veneration hy the whole Church ; whom the choirs of virgins unite to mourn, and for whom the poor cease not to weep.’

And after this preface, setting forth the great features in this life of self-sacrifice, which combined all that faith, love, and heroism could inspire, St. Jerome adds: Noble by birth, still more noble in sanctity; once powerful, through her great wealth, and then more illustrious in the poverty of Jesus Christ; of the race of the Gracchi and the Scipios; the heiress of Paulus Emilius, from whom she derived her name of Paula ; the direct descendant of that famous Martia Papyria, the wife of the Persian conqueror, and mother of Scipio Africanus she preferred Bethlehem to Borne, and the humble roof of a poor cottage to a gilded palace.

The life and the soul of St. Paula are contained in these words : a complete immolation of herself for the sake of a greater love. All her pride as a Roman matron, and all her riches, were laid at the feet of Jesus Christ. She thus gave the most admirable example of nobleness of mind and of moral strength ; while her per fection was attained not only by a voluntary renuncia tion of all that the world counts dear, but by the purification of weary and protracted suffering, by many and bitter tears, and by the practice of almost super human charity.