at least
may be said for him: there was nothing in the treatment which he
received from those who professed to be Christians to hold his faith to
their religion. One only had befriended him, and she was regarded as a
heretic. The historians of the time endeavor to picture Julian as
leading a crusade of persecution against Christianity. Theodoret speaks
of his "mad fury"; but inasmuch as he is constrained to recount stories
which rather illustrate the triviality of the mind of the historian than
the cruelty of the persecutor, it is evident that the glory of martyrdom
was not won to any considerable extent under Julian. We are inclined to
think that one of these narratives exemplifies the latter's patience
more than any other of his characteristics. There was a woman named
Publia, who had become the prioress of a company of virgins. One day
these women, seeing the emperor coming, struck up the psalm which
recites how "the idols of the nations are of silver and gold," and,
after describing their insensibility, adds "like them be they that make
them and all those that put their trust in them." Julian required them
at least to hold their peace while he was passing by. Publia did not,
however, pay the least attention to his orders, except to urge her choir
to put still greater energy into their chaunt; and when again the
emperor passed by she told them to strike up: "Let God arise and let his
enemies be scattered." At last Julian commanded one of his escort to box
her ears. "She however took outrage for honor, and kept up her attack
upon him with her spiritual songs, just as the composer and teacher of
the song laid the wicked spirit that vexed Saul."

Before we leave this brief reference to the secular matrons of the early
Church in order to turn our attention to the sacred virgins, it is
necessary to summon the testimony of Jerome. This learned and eloquent
Father is the great authority on the women of his time. Only those vowed
to celibacy enjoyed his highest approbation; yet he had many friends
among the married ladies of Rome. Jerome was a satirist. His pen was
caustic when it dealt with persons or matters that did not meet his
approval. He was the Juvenal of his age, but he wrote in prose, and not
for the sake of satire, but as the champion of orthodoxy and virginity.
Many of his writings are in the form of letters to ladies who were his
friends. The one to Eustochium, the daughter of Paula, is the most
striking of all. In this epistle Jerome sets forth the motives which
should actuate those who adopt the monastic life. It also gives us a
vivid picture of Roman society as it then was--the luxury, profligacy,
and hypocrisy prevalent among both men and women. This letter was
written at Rome in the year 384. "I write to you thus, Lady Eustochium
(I am bound to call my Lord's bride 'lady'), to show you by my opening
words that my object is not to praise the virginity which you follow,
and of which you have proved the value, or yet to recount the drawbacks
of marriage, such as pregnancy, the crying of infants, the torture
caused by a rival, the cares of household management, and all those
fancied blessings which death at last cuts short. Not that married women
are as such outside the pale; they have their own place, the marriage
that is honorable and the bed undefiled. My purpose is to show you that
you are fleeing from Sodom and should take warning by Lot's wife." Such
is the tone and tenor of Jerome's correspondence with the women of his
acquaintance. Among many other things, he cautions Eustochium not to
court the society of married ladies, and not to "look too often on the
life which you despised to become a virgin!" Many glimpses are given of
the characteristics of that life which was to be so carefully avoided.
The pride of those who are the wives of men in high position, and also
their delight in troops of callers, are noticed. They are pictured as
they are carried about the streets in gorgeous litters, with rows of
eunuchs walking in front. Their dress is mentioned: red cloaks, robes
inwrought with threads of gold, and creaking shoes. Jerome is even so
unsparing as to refer to those who "paint their eyes and lips with rouge
and cosmetics; whose chalked faces, unnaturally white, are like those of
idols; upon whose cheeks every chance tear leaves a furrow; who fail to
realize that years make them old; who heap their heads with hair not
their own; who smooth their faces, and rub out the wrinkles of age; and
who, in the presence of their grandsons, behave like trembling
school-girls." Some of Jerome's strictures are suggestive of modern
feminine habits. Speaking of Blaesilla, after she had become a widow and
was determined to persevere in that estate, he says that in days gone by
she had been extremely fastidious in her dress, and had spent whole days
before her mirror endeavoring to correct its deficiencies. Her head,
"which had done no harm, was forced into a waving head-dress." But all
this is changed. Now "no gold and jewels adorn her girdle; it is made of
wool, plain, and scrupulously clean. It is intended to keep her clothes
right, and not to cut her waist in two."

Eustochium, as a professed virgin of the Church, is warned not to trifle
with verse, nor to make herself gay with lyric songs. "And do not, out
of affectation, follow the sickly taste of married ladies who, now
pressing their teeth together, now keeping their lips wide apart, speak
with a lisp, and purposely clip their words, because they fancy that to
pronounce them naturally is a mark of country breeding."

In another place the Father of asceticism says: "To-day you may see
women cramming their wardrobes with dresses, changing their gowns from
day to day, and for all that unable to vanquish the moths. Now and then
one more scrupulous wears out a single dress; yet, while she appears in
rags, her boxes are full. Parchments are dyed purple, gold is melted
into lettering, manuscripts are decked with jewels, while Christ lies at
the door naked and dying. When they hold out a hand to the needy they
sound a trumpet; when they invite to a love-feast they engage a crier. I
lately saw the noblest lady in Rome--I suppress her name, for I am no
satirist--with a band of eunuchs before her in the basilica of the
blessed Peter. She was giving money to the poor, a coin apiece; and this
with her own hand, that she might be accounted more religious. Hereupon
a by no means uncommon incident occurred. An old woman, 'full of age and
rags,' ran forward to get a second coin, but when her turn came she
received, not a penny, but a blow hard enough to draw blood from her
guilty veins." Rome had always successfully withstood the rhetorical
lashings of her censors; had it not been for this power of resistance,
the castigations of a Jerome surely would have sufficed to hold the
natural frivolity of the women of his time at least within the bounds of
modesty.

The moral influence of Jerome illustrated the danger of insisting on
perfection with the result of falling below the average of possible
attainment. In his letters to Paula, Eustochium, Marcella, and Asella,
women who delighted him by manifesting an astounding resolution in
mortifying the flesh, he continually laments those who, professing to
have made an offering of their virginity to Christ, were in reality a
scandal to the Church.

Paula was a Roman lady of the highest rank and greatest wealth. The
genealogy of her father ascended through the highest names in Grecian
history; her mother, Blassilla, numbered the Scipios and the Gracchi
among her ancestors. Paula was Cornelia reincarnated in the fourth
century of Christianity; the only differences are that the former
maintained a chaste widowhood inspired by fuller hopes than earthly
renown, and instead of entertaining men of learning at Misenum she
studied Hebrew with Jerome in a squalid cave at Bethlehem. This devout
lady had much to resign in order that she might enter upon a life of
poverty. One of the most magnificent houses of Rome was hers, and she
drew her revenues from the city of Nicopolis, the whole of which she
owned. She was born in the year 347, ten years after the death of
Constantine. At the age of seventeen she was married to Toxotius, who
was a descendant of the illustrious Julian family. She was the mother of
five daughters and one son. It seems likely that she owed her conversion
to Christianity to the holy Marcella, one of that circle of ascetic
women to whom the letters of Jerome were addressed. Until the time of
her husband's death, the life of Paula in her magnificent palace on the
Aventine was similar to that of other wealthy Roman ladies, except that
her means enabled her to excel all others in elegance. On her
conversion, and as the best proof of its reality, in the estimation of
those days, she distributed a quarter of her immense estate to the poor.
The ideas then prevalent would not permit her to deem herself an earnest
Christian unless she entirely relinquished her habits of luxury. This
she did, and devoted herself to the care of the indigent and the nursing
of the infirm. Her piety would not even allow her sufficiently to
sustain her bodily strength for these noble labors. She lived on bread
and a little oil, on many days denying herself even that until after
sunset. Her dress was the rough garb of the slave; her couch was a mat
of straw, covered with haircloth.

There was, however, one enjoyment which Paula allowed herself: she was
one of a circle of ladies, all ascetics like herself, who were devoted
to the study of literature. There was Marcella, who was the first of the
highborn Roman ladies to embrace the monastic life, and of whom Jerome
gives this account: "Her father's death left her an orphan, and she had
been married less than seven months when her husband was taken from her.
Then, as she was young and highborn, as well as distinguished for her
beauty and her self-control, an illustrious consular named Cerealis paid
court to her with great assiduity. Being an old man, he offered to make
over to her his fortune so that she might consider herself less his wife
than his daughter. Her mother Albina went out of her way to secure for
the young widow so exalted a protector. But Marcella answered: 'Had I a
wish to marry and not rather to dedicate myself to perpetual chastity, I
should look for a husband and not an inheritance; and when her suitor
argued that sometimes old men live long while young men die early, she
cleverly retorted: 'a young man may die early, but an old man cannot
live long.' This decided rejection of Cerealis convinced others that
they had no hope of winning her hand."

Marcella may indeed be termed the prioress of the community of ascetics
which gathered in her house and in that of Paula on the Aventine hill.
She studied Hebrew with Jerome, and became so proficient in Scriptural
exposition that, after the latter's departure for the Holy Land, even
the clergy would bring to her for solution such questions as were too
difficult for them. When Alaric and his Goths sacked the city of Rome,
the prayers and the evident holiness of Marcella induced the barbarians
to spare her life and the honor of the virgin Principia, who dwelt with
her, and they even left her house unmolested.

Another shining light in that Aventine circle was Asella, who had been
dedicated to the Church from her tenth year. Her fastings may be said to
have been almost unintermittent, so that Jerome thought it was only by
the grace of God that she survived until her fiftieth year without
weakening her digestion. "Lying on the dry ground did not affect her
limbs, and the rough sackcloth that she wore failed to make her skin
either foul or rough. With a sound body and a still sounder soul she
sought all her delight in solitude, and found for herself a monkish
hermitage in the centre of busy Rome."

Among the good women of that day were also Albina and Marcellina, who
were the sisters of Saint Ambrose. Marcellina