whose books a due regard for the faith is not neglected. But if she reads the works of others, let it be rather to judge them than to follow them.

13. You will answer: "How shall I, a woman of the world, living at Rome, surrounded by a crowd, be able to observe all these injunctions?" In that case do not undertake a burthen to which you are not equal. When you have weaned Paula as Isaac was weaned, and when you have clothed her as Samuel was clothed, send her to her grandmother and aunt; set this most precious of gems in Mary's chamber and put her in the cradle where Jesus cried. Let her be brought up in a monastery, let her be among companies of virgins, let her learn to avoid swearing, let her regard lying as sacrilege, let her be ignorant of the world, let her live like the angels; while in the flesh let her be without the flesh, and let her suppose that all human beings are like herself. To say nothing of its other advantages, this course will free you from the difficult task of minding her, and from the responsibility of guardianship. It is better for you to regret her absence than to be for ever trembling for her, watching what she says and to whom she says it, to whom she bows and whom she likes best to see. Hand her over to Eustochium while she is still but an infant and her every cry is a prayer for you. She will thus become her companion in holiness now as well as her successor hereafter. Let her gaze upon and love, let her "from her earliest years admire", 35 one whose language and gait and dress are an education in virtue. Let her grandmother take her on her lap and repeat to her granddaughter the lessons that she once bestowed upon her own child. Long experience has shewn her how to rear, instruct and watch over virgins; and daily inwoven in her crown is the mystic hundred 36 which betokens the highest chastity. O happy virgin! happy Paula, daughter of Toxotius, who through the virtues of her grandmother and aunt is nobler in holiness than she is in lineage! Yes, were it possible for you with your own eyes to see your mother-in-law and your sister, and to realize the mighty souls which animate their small bodies; such is your innate chastity that I cannot doubt but that you would go to them even before your daughter, and would exchange God's first decree

35 Verg., Aen., VIII, 517.

36 The parable of the sower (Matt. 13) was used to suggest that chastity in marriage is rewarded thirty-fold, faithful widowhood sixty-fold, virginity a hundredfold. Virginity is therefore intrinsically superior to marriage. Cf. Ep. 48 and Ambrose, Letter 63:7, 10.

for his second law of the Gospel. 37 You would count as nothing your desire for other children and would offer up yourself to the service of God. But because "there is a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing", and because "the wife hath not power of her own body," and because every man should "abide in the same calling wherein he was called" in the Lord, and because he that is under the yoke ought so to run as not to leave his companion in the mire, pay back to the full in your offspring what meantime you defer paying in your own person. 38 When Hannah had once offered in the tabernacle the son whom she had vowed to God, she never took him back; for she thought it unbecoming that one who was to be a prophet should grow up in the same house with her who still desired to have other sons. Accordingly after she had conceived him and given him birth, she did not venture to come to the temple alone or to appear before the Lord empty, but first paid to him what she owed, and then, when she had offered up that great sacrifice, she returned home; and because she had borne her first-born for God, she was given five children for herself. 39 Do you marvel at the happiness of that holy woman? Imitate her faith. Moreover, if you will only send Paula, I promise to be myself both a tutor and a foster-father to her. Old as I am, I will carry her on my shoulders and train her stammering lips; and my charge will be a far prouder one than that of the worldly philosopher; for while he only taught a King of Macedon who was one day to die of Babylonian poison, 40 I shall instruct the handmaid and bride of Christ who will one day be offered in the Kingdom of heaven.

37 Gen. 1:28 (Be fruitful, and multiply) for 1 Cor. 7:1.

38 Eccl. 3:5; 1 Cor. 7:4, 20.

39 I Sam. 2.

40 Aristotle and Alexander the Great.

I

Letter 108: To Eustochium

S

INTRODUCTION

EVERAL OF JEROME'S LETTERS WERE WRITTEN TO console his friends for the death of their loved ones. In

some the note of consolation and exhortation predominates, while others are obituary notices of historical value. Such are the letters about Blesilla (38-39), Nepotian (60), Paulina (66), Fabiola (77), Marcella (127) and, longest and most valuable of all, the present letter to Eustochium about her mother, Paula the elder.

I

Paula came of a patrician family in Rome, and was born in A.D. 347, the daughter of Rogatus and Blesilla. She was a member of the group of Christian ladies who frequented the house of Marcella, and when her husband, Toxotius, died, she gave herself to the life of religion. This was in A.D. 379 or 380, before Jerome was in Rome. She had borne four daughters, Blesilla, Paulina, Eustochium, and Rufina, and one son, Toxotius, still a baby. Jerome affords us an unusual glimpse of the unofficial side of ecclesiastical assemblies when he relates how she "put up" Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, during the Council of Rome in A.D. 382. Jerome, who also went to Rome for the Council, did not meet her at once, for he says that he was well known in the city before he became acquainted with her family (Letter 45:3). But they soon became such intimate friends that he had eventually to defend himself from slander and make a calumniator retract his words. Paula was an enthusiastic student of the Bible, eager for a mystical interpretation of it, while her friend Marcella had a taste for textual and historical studies. During these years in Rome, Jerome addressed to her Letter 30, on the alphabetical Psalms and the

mystical significance of the Hebrew alphabet; Letter 33, which contains an important catalogue of the writings of Origen; and Letter 39, on the death of her eldest daughter, Blesilla. There is also a note thanking the girl Eustochium for her St. Peter's day presents to Jerome. Blesilla had married, only to lose her husband after but seven months of marriage. Very soon afterwards she was "converted" to the ascetic life, but died three months later. Jerome, though genuinely sympathetic, found it necessary to chide Paula for giving way to excessive grief. But was there something of a bad conscience in this excess? For it was rumoured that Blesilla had died of fasting, and her death seems to have been one of the incidents which helped to drive Jerome out of the capital. "When shall we drive these detestable monks out of Rome? Why not throw them into the Tiber?"

Jerome left the city in 385, and Paula soon followed him, taking Eustochium with her. Their journey to Antioch, with a visit to Epiphanius on the way, and their pilgrimages in the Holy Land and in Egypt, are told at some length in the present letter. By autumn 386 they had settled in Bethlehem, where Paula spent the rest of her life as head of the monastery for women which she founded. Again, many of the details of her life in it are related in this letter. Bible studies still held her attention, and besides what the letter has to say, there is something to be gleaned from the numerous prefaces to the translations and commentaries on the books of the Bible. It was at Paula's request that Jerome revised his first Psalter, producing the so-called Gallican Psalter, and that he translated Origen's Homilies on St. Luke's Gospel. Paula and Eustochium received the dedication of a good many of his biblical works, and it was to them that the celebrated "Helmeted" Preface to the Books of Kings was addressed, with its brief introduction to the Hebrew Bible and its rejection of the Apocrypha from the Canon. Paula supervised the Bethlehem convent until her death on the 26th of January, A.D. 404 at the age of fifty-six. She was succeeded by her daughter, Eustochium, to whom Jerome dedicated several of his later works; and Eustochium was succeeded by the younger Paula, daughter of the Toxotius whom his mother had left some twenty years before her death "stretching forth his hand in entreaty" on the shore at Ostia.

II

The description of the pilgrimage (§§8-14) is of special interest, not so much philologically and topographically as

psychologically and spiritually. It has not been found practicable to annotate it adequately in this volume, or even to give the hundred and more biblical references which these sections alone require. They can all be found in Hilberg's edition in the Vienna Corpus, or through the full-scale concordances and dictionaries of the Bible. To a large extent Jerome's comments on the places are taken from his own translation of a work of Eusebius of Caesarea on the place-names of Palestine, the references to which are also given by Hilberg. The derivations are frequently fanciful, but the topographical information is of some value, at least for the pilgrim routes. With Paula's pilgrimage one should compare that of Egeria, dating from much the same time. Her travel journey has come down in a mutilated form, beginning at her visit to Sinai and ending with a detailed account of the rites of Holy Week at Jerusalem. Translations of both these pilgrimages and of other early ones will be found in the first volume of the Palestine Pilgrims Text Society.

III

There is another part of this letter which calls for special notice. It is the digression against heresy in §§23-26, a digression curious in itself and in the circumstances in very poor taste. The heresy is, of course, Origenism, and even in a letter of consolation Jerome cannot restrain himself from snatching at an opportunity to attack it and to exhibit his own cleverness. To affirm Paula's orthodoxy the detail is quite unnecessary; as so often, he lets his impetuous pen run away with him. We are not told who the "cunning knave" was who approached Paula with his awkward questions, some of which might have been put by any Origenist. There are points of detail, however, which appear also in Jerome's tract against John of Jerusalem, written in A.D. 396. It is perhaps unlikely that the bishop is being directly attacked here; that would have been in execrable taste, for he attended Paula's funeral, as Jerome himself records. More probably it was one of his circle. Jerome's principal onslaught upon the Origenists, the three books against Rufinus, had also been written before the death of Paula. In the present passage he is able to appeal to the letter of Scripture and to everyday orthodox beliefs, but, though he makes some sound points, he reveals no sympathy whatsoever for those who struggle with profound and difficult problems, nor does he say positively what he thought Paul meant by a spiritual body.