Paula of Rome

Paula of Rome (AD 347–404) was an ancient Roman Christian saint and early Desert Mother. A member of one of the richest senatorial families which claimed descent from Agamemnon, Paula was the daughter of Blesilla and Rogatus, from the great clan of the noble Furii Camilli. At the age of 16, In 382, she met Jerome, who had come to Rome with Epiphanius and Paulinus of Antioch. Born in Dalmatia, Jerome had studied in Rome as a youth and had traveled to Germany and Aquileia, and for some years had lived in the East as an ascetic and scholar.

While on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and Egypt, with Jerome and her daughter, Eustochium, she visited monks and other ascetics including Paulinus of Nola, Melania the Elder, Rufinus of Aquileia and Isidore the Confessor. She then settled in Bethlehem and established a monastery for men and a convent for women and a hostel for pilgrims. including her daughter Eustochium and Jerome himself. Paula could undertake this voyage due to her widow status which left her a significant fortune, and the important fact that she had given birth to a healthy male heir and that two of her daughters had married aristocrats, allowing her exemption from remarriage and giving her what a researcher called "ascetic freedom".

Saint Paula with her nuns, 17th century. Painting of André Reinoso in Monastery of the Hieronymites, Lisbon, Portugal. Once completed, Paula's convent (nuns monastery) and Jerome's monastery were strictly segregated by gender during manual labor and meals, but practiced prayer in the same locale. Additional separation, within the nun monastery, included three different communities of women based on social rank who were divided in separate living quarters. With this, she also practiced a strict fasting regimen, abstinence, and pursued a destitute lifestyle "to preserve a singular attachment to God" as stated by Jerome.

Jerome made explicit in his letter how Paula, through these practices, became a recognized figure in the Christian community. At one point, in traveling to Nitria, she was earnestly received by renowned monks from Egypt, and once her death arrived on 26 January 404, her funeral was noted as having a significant portion of the population of Palestine arrive in her honor. An amorous relationship between Jerome and Paula was suggested as having occurred.

Palladius, a contemporary of Jerome, believed that Paula was hindered by Jerome: "For though she was able to surpass all, having great abilities, he hindered her by his jealousy, having induced her to serve his own plan."

What is known is that Paula financed Jerome's translation of the bible into Latin, now known as the Latin Vulgate bible and he dedicated many of his commentaries and books to her.

When Jerome died in late 419 or early 420, he was buried beneath the north aisle of the Church of the Nativity, in Bethlehem, near the graves of Paula and Eustochium.

Medieval interpretations An anecdote told of Jerome, of 12th-century origin, tells that Roman clergy hostile to Jerome planned to have him expelled from the city by planting a woman's robe next to his bed. When Jerome awoke in the middle of the night to attend the service of matins, he absentmindedly put on the female robes. He was thus accused of having had a woman in his bed. This story acknowledges, while at the same time discrediting as a malicious slander, Jerome's relationship with women, such as he is presumed to have had with Paula.

Chaucer played upon the relationship between Jerome and Paula when he writes the Wife of Bath's Prologue. Chaucer has the Wife visit the same pilgrimage sites as did Paula, and has her constantly cite not classical authors, but Jerome.

Dietrick also maintains that Paula "co-labor[ed] with Jerome", being a "woman of fine intellect, highly trained, and an excellent Hebrew scholar," who "revised and corrected Jerome's work" and takes case with the "Churchmen" attributing the Vulgate solely to Jerome, while this fundamental work would have never taken shape without Paula's contribution. whose publishing and public activity career started in the 1960s and peaked in the 1970s, wrote in 1988 about Paula in a popular Christian history magazine, speaking of how she paid Jerome's living expenses, and agreeing with several points from Dietrick and Zahm.

However, W.H. Fremantle, who wrote the Jerome chapter of the classical Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (NPNF) series, published in 1892 and including all of Jerome's surviving letters to Paula and Eustachium, does not mention Paula's or Eustochium's name even once in Jerome's biography under "The Vulgate", and only mentions two members of the next generation of "virgins", the younger Paula and Melania, as those who attended to him during his last years.

The famous 108 written by Jerome at the death of Paula and addressed to Eustochium, while including a biography of his late friend, focuses on what Jerome conceives as Paula's main merits, her ascetic lifestyle and Christian values, but does not mention their working relationship.

Paraphrasing Horace, Jerome writes that "I have built" (to her memory) "a monument more lasting than bronze." Catholic scholar John Augustine Zahm interprets Jerome as alluding here to his entire life-work, "but above all[...] the Vulgate" as Paula's monument.

Veneration

Saint Paula of Rome has been venerated by the Holy Roman Catholic Church since her death in 404 AD, her feast day is January 26, the date of her death, typically considered by the Catholic Church as the day of a saint’s entrance into Heaven. In 2022, Saint Paula was officially added to the Episcopal Church liturgical calendar with a feast day together with her daughter, Saint Eustochium, on 28 September.