Page:Wives and mothers in the olden time.djvu/25

Rh Agnes’, were all of noble patrician families. Those families whom Christianity had conquered, and who had shed their blood so generously in the hour of persecution, had become in the fourth century the examples of every virtue. St. Jerome, in his letters, gives us a glimpse of some of them. Such was the illustrious family of the Anicia, who gave as many consuls to Rome as saints and martyrs; from whom, in later days, sprang St. Benedict and St. Gregory the Great ; and who, at the time of which we are speaking, possessed women of the noble stamp of the mother and grandmother of the Virgin Denietria Christians who cried with joy when their daughters or grand-daughters, on the very eve of con tracting a wealthy marriage, came and threw themselves at their feet, declaring that they wished to devote their future lives not to an earthly but to a heavenly spouse. The family of St. Paula was one of those senatorial patricians which had embraced the true faith. It is, however, certain that there were still some Pagans among them ; as, for example, one Gracchus, a near relation of Paula s, w r ho was Prefect of Borne under Gratian. This mixture in Roman families was not to be wondered at ; for it was in the heart of the nobility that the greatest resistance was made to Christianity ; and it was not uncommon in the fourth century to meet with the painful contrast which we find in our own troubled times, though from different causes, that is, to see under the same roof the worshippers of Jupiter and the adorers of Jesus Christ; the father and the son being Pagans, and the mother and daughters Christians.

Rome, in fact, in those days presented an extra ordinary contrast, which must have greatly struck the young Paula when she was old enough to look about her.