Paula (d. 404), widow. Related to the noblest Roman families of the Scipios and the Gracchi, Paula was happily married until her husband died when she was thirty-two. A period of extreme sorrow, prolonged by the death of her eldest daughter Blesilla, was followed by a religious conversion, which took the form of penance expressed by an austere regime of eating, drinking, and sleeping, by the renunciation of all amusements and social life, and in generous gifts to the poor. At this point she came under the influence of Jerome and decided to leave Rome. With her daughter Eustochium and other companions she made a long pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to Egypt, where they visited the hermits; eventually they settled at Bethlehem under the direction of Jerome. They built a monastery for men and a convent for women with a guest-house for pilgrims, all of which were of modest dimensions and simply furnished. There Paula lived for the rest of her life, helping Jerome in his studies through her wealth and her knowledge of Greek, and being helped by him in other ways, including the education of her grand-daughter, Paula the younger. She died at the age of fifty-six on 26 January, on which day her feast has been kept from ancient times. A famous English 12th-century initial to Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah depicts her burial, under the church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. Jerome's epitaph letter is probably the finest he ever wrote.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- AA.SS. Ian. II (1643), 711–22: Jerome, Epistola 108 in P.L., xxii. 878 ff.; F. Lagrange, Histoire de Sainte Paule (1868); R. Genier, Sainte Paule (1917); J. N. D. Kelly, Jerome (1975)
