by Jerome
(Letter 108 to Eustochium)
Paula the elder was born into a noble Roman family in 347. She was the mother of four daughters and one son. Widowed in about 380, she decided to follow Marcella’s example and lead an ascetic life, first in Rome and then, after coming under the influence of Jerome who acted as her spiritual advisor and intellectual mentor, in Palestine where she moved in 385 when he left Rome. Paula visited the desert monks in Egypt and the sites of many of the events of the Old and New Testaments in Palestine. Together with Jerome she settled with her daughter Eustochium at Bethlehem where they founded monasteries for men and women. She spent the rest of her life in supervising the women’s monastery and in studying Hebrew and the Scriptures. She also used her wealth to finance Jerome’s projects and supported him in his work. She was renowned for her great virtue and was regarded as particularly saintly for putting up with Jerome as he had a difficult personality: Palladius in the Lausiac History records the view of one holy man who commented that ‘Paula who looks after Jerome will die first and be set free at last from his meanness. Because of him no holy person will live in those parts. His bad temper would drive out even his own brother.’ She is mentioned by Palladius in chapters 36 and 41; and Jerome sent her his Letters 30, 33 and 39 (on the death of her daughter Blesilla) while they were in Rome, and she is mentioned in 32, 45, 47, 54, 60, 66 (on the death of Paula’s daughter Paulina), 77, 99, 102, 107 and 127. She and Eustochium are the authors of Letter 46 in Jerome’s correspondence. He also dedicated several of his commentaries on books of the Old Testament to her. Paula died on 26 January 404.
See headnote to The Life of Marcella.
Jerome’s Letter 108 was written after Paula’s death in 404 to console her daughter Eustochium.
1 If all my bodily limbs were to turn into tongues and if every limb could speak with a human voice, I would still be unable to give a proper account of the virtues of the holy Paula. She was of noble birth but much more noble in her holiness. Now she is more distinguished by the poverty she adopted in imitation of Christ than she was by her wealth when young. She, who was a member of both the Gracchi and the Scipio families, the heir of Paulus whose name she bears, a true descendant of Maecia Papiria, the mother of Africanus, preferred Bethlehem to Rome and exchanged a house adorned with gold for a rough shack. We do not grieve that we have lost such a woman; instead we give thanks that we had her, or rather that we have her – for all things live in God and whatever is given to the Lord is still reckoned as part of the family. It is true that we have lost her but the heavenly home has gained her; as long as she remained in the body she was absent from the Lord, and with a voice full of grief she used to complain, saying, ‘Woe is me, that my journey is prolonged, I have lived with the inhabitants of Cedar, my soul has travelled much.’1 Is it surprising that she complained that she was living in the dark – for that is the meaning of Cedar – given that the world is mired in evil? ‘And its light is like its darkness; and the light shines in darkness and the darkness did not overwhelm it.’2 And so she would often repeat these words, ‘I am a stranger and a traveller as were all my ancestors’,3 and also ‘I long to be released and to be with Christ.’4 Whenever she was suffering from the illness that ravaged her poor body, which she had brought on herself by her unbelievably austere lifestyle and by even more extreme fasting, she would repeat these sayings: ‘I punish my body and enslave it so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified’, and ‘it is good not to eat meat or drink wine’, and ‘I humbled my soul in fasting’, and ‘You have turned my bed in my illness’, and ‘I have lived in misery while I was pierced by a thorn.’5 When experiencing the pricks of pain which she endured with marvellous patience, she would say, as if looking up at the heavens opening for her, ‘Who will give me the wings of a dove and I will fly and be at peace?’6
2 I call on Jesus as my witness as well as his holy angels and the particular angel who was this admirable woman’s guardian and companion, that I am not being ingratiating or flattering: I was a witness to everything I tell you and anything I say is less than she deserves, she who is praised by the whole world, admired by priests, longed for by many virgins and wept for by large numbers of monks and poor people. Does the reader need a summary of her virtues? She left her friends and family poor, but she was even poorer. It is hardly surprising that she acted in this way with regard to her relatives and her small household – including those servants and serving maids whom she treated rather as brothers and sisters – given that she left the virgin Eustochium (for whose consolation this little book is written), her daughter, dedicated to Christ, far from her noble family and rich only in faith and grace.
3 Let us then hasten along the path of this narrative. I will leave others to delve into the past, back as far as her cradle and her baby toys, so to speak; I will leave them to talk about her mother Blesilla and her father Rogatus, of whom one is the descendant of the Scipios and the Gracchi, while the other is said to go back to Agamemnon from whom he traces his wealthy and noble family line, distinguished through all of Greece down to the present day – the same Agamemnon who destroyed Troy after a ten-year siege. But I will only praise what is peculiar to her, what pours forth from the purest spring of her holy mind. When the apostles asked our Lord and Saviour what he would give them, seeing that they had left everything for his name’s sake, he told them they would receive a hundred times more in the present and eternal life in the future. This teaches us that there is nothing admirable in possessing wealth but only in rejecting it for Christ’s sake and that we should not be swollen with pride in the privileges we have acquired but should consider them of no value in comparison with faith in the Lord. Truly, the Saviour has given to his servants, both male and female, in the present what he promised. For the woman who despised the admiration of one city is now a world-famous celebrity; when she lived in Rome she was known to no one outside the city, but when she lived hidden away in Bethlehem she won the admiration of people in barbarian and Roman lands alike. Is there any country whose people do not visit the holy places? Who found anything more wonderful in the holy places than Paula? And just as the most precious stone sparkles among many jewels and as the sun’s rays outshine and obscure the lesser fires of the stars, so Paula outdid the virtues and powers of all by her humility. She became the least among all so that she might be the greatest of all; the more she humbled herself, the more Christ raised her up. She hid but failed to conceal herself. By trying to escape admiration she won admiration which follows virtue like a shadow; abandoning those who seek it she sought those who despise it. But what am I doing? Allowing myself to get bogged down in details, I am failing to keep to the order of the narrative or observe the rules of writing.
4 Born into such an illustrious family, Paula married Toxotius whose family line goes back as far as Aeneas and the Julian family. That is why Toxotius’ daughter, the virgin of Christ, is called Julia Eustochium after Julius whose name derives from the great Iulus. I mention this not because there is anything to admire in those who have such things but because it is admirable if people consider them of no value. People who are attached to the world look up to those who are powerful because they have such privileges, but we praise those who despise them for the sake of the Saviour. Rather perversely we despise people for having such things but praise the same people for rejecting them. Born from such ancestors, as I said, Paula gave birth to five children, thus proving her fertility and fidelity first to her husband, then to her closest relatives and to the whole city for whom her life was a spectacle. Her children were Blesilla, on whose death I consoled her mother Paula at Rome; Paulina, who left a saintly and admirable husband, Pammachius, both as the heir to her proposed way of life and to her possessions, to whom we sent a small book to console him on her death; Eustochium, who is now a most precious necklace of virginity and of the church in the Holy Land; and Rufina, whose premature death devastated her mother’s loving heart; and finally Toxotius. After he was born Paula stopped having children, thereby proving that she did not wish to continue for long in her role as wife, but was just obeying her husband’s wishes because he wanted a male child.
5 When her husband died she herself nearly died of grief, and yet she devoted herself to serving the Lord in such a way that she almost seemed to have longed for her husband’s death. How can I mention all the riches of her large, aristocratic and once wealthy household which were sold and given to the poor? How can I describe that woman’s heart which was so compassionate to all, spreading kindness even to people she had never seen? Was there a poor person who was not wrapped in her clothes as he lay dying, was there any bedridden person whom she did not support at her own expense? She would eagerly seek out such people all over the city and would feel that she had lost out if any weak and hungry person was living off someone else’s food. In effect she was robbing her children and when her relatives rebuked her for doing so, she said that she was leaving them Christ’s mercy which was a better thing to inherit.
6 Being a member of a family that was high-ranking in worldly terms and very aristocratic, she had to endure visits and crowded receptions but she could not bear these for long. She deplored the high esteem in which people held her and would hurry to get away from those who wanted to pay her compliments. When the bishops had been summoned from east and west by letters from the emperor to deal with certain disputes between the churches, she was introduced to two admirable men, both bishops of Christ: Paulinus, the bishop of Antioch, and Epiphanius of Salamis (now called Constantia) in Cyprus.7 She offered Epiphanius hospitality in her own house and even though Paulinus was staying in someone else’s house, she treated him as kindly as if he were staying with her. Inspired by their virtues she began to spend every moment planning to leave her country. Disregarding her home, her children, her family, her possessions and everything connected with her worldly life, she was keen to go alone (if that could ever be said of her) and unaccompanied into the desert inhabited by men like Antony and Paul.8 And when winter was over at last and the sea routes were open again, allowing the bishops to return to their churches, she sailed with them in her prayers and longing. To cut a long story short, she went down to the harbour accompanied by her brother, her relatives and, what is more significant, her children. The sails were already stretched taut and the ship was being rowed out to deeper waters, when little Toxotius, standing on the shore, stretched his arms out to her, begging her to stay, while Rufina, who had already reached a marriageable age, implored her mother with tears rather than words to wait until she was married. But Paula remained dry-eyed, her gaze fixed on heaven, and her love of God was stronger than her love for her children. She denied that she was a mother to prove herself Christ’s servant. She suffered profound torment and felt that she was being torn limb from limb as she fought against the pain, proving herself more admirable than everyone else because she overcame such a powerful love. Among the cruel hardships suffered by prisoners of war at the hands of the enemy, there is nothing more cruel than the separation of parents from their children. Though it is against the laws of nature, she endured this with complete faith – indeed she sought it out joyfully. No longer considering her love for her children important in comparison with her greater love for God, she was content to take Eustochium as her only companion on her voyage and in her new way of life. As the ship ploughed a furrow through the sea, all her fellow passengers were looking at the shore, but Paula turned her gaze away so as not to see her family, the sight of whom caused her great pain. No woman, it has to be admitted, has ever loved her children as much as she did. Before she set off she had given them all she had, disinheriting herself on earth so that she might gain her inheritance in heaven.
7 On the way she stopped at the island of Pontia which is well known as the place of exile of the celebrated lady Flavia Domitilla9 who under the Emperor Domitian was banished for being a Christian. Here Paula went to visit the cells in which Flavia had spent a long period of martyrdom. Then she hurried swiftly on to Jerusalem, eager to visit the holy places. But the winds were not favourable and progress was slow. Between Scylla and Charybdis she entrusted herself to the Adriatic Sea and crossed over a still pond, so to speak, to Methone where she rested for a while and ‘stretched her limbs, crusted with brine, on the shore, then past Malea and Cythera and the Cyclades dotted over the sea and those straits blossoming with many islands’.10 After passing Rhodes and Lycia she at last saw Cyprus where she knelt before the holy and venerable Epiphanius. She stayed with him for ten days not to rest, as he believed, but to serve God, as events proved. For she went around visiting all the monasteries in that region, and as far as her resources allowed she left substantial provision for the brothers who had been drawn there from all over the world by their love for the holy Epiphanius. After this she made the short crossing over to Seleucia and from there she went up to Antioch, where she was detained for a while by the affection of the holy confessor Paulinus. Then, in the middle of winter, this noble woman who used to be carried by eunuch litter-bearers now set out seated on an ass.
8 I will not give an account of her journey through southern Syria and Phoenicia – for I do not intend to write a travel guide – but will only mention those places recorded in Holy Scripture. After leaving Beirut, a Roman colony, and the ancient city of Sidon, Paula entered Elijah’s little tower on the shore at Zarephath, where she worshipped the Lord our Saviour, and then crossing the sands of Tyre on which Paul once knelt,11 she arrived at Acco, now known as Ptolemais. Crossing the plains of Megiddo which witnessed the murder of Josiah,12 she entered the land of the Philistines. After admiring the ruins of Dor, once a very powerful city, and the tower of Strato which had conversely been an insignificant place until Herod, king of Judea, called it Caesarea in honour of Caesar Augustus, she saw Cornelius’ house,13 now a Christian church, and the little house of Philip and the room of his daughters, the four virgins who had the gift of prophecy.14 Next she came to Antipatris, a small town half in ruins which Herod named after his father, and then to Lydda (later Diospolis), famed as the place where Dorcas was restored to life and Aeneas was healed,15 and not far from there Arimathea, the village Joseph came from16 – the man who buried the Lord – and Nob, once a city of priests and now the tomb of those who were slain,17 and also Joppa, the port to which Jonah fled18 and (to mention something from the mythology of the poets) which witnessed the chaining of Andromeda to the rock.
Resuming her journey Paula visited Nicopolis – formerly Emmaus – where the Lord was recognized as he broke the bread and where he dedicated the house of Cleopas as a church.19 Then she set off again and went up to Lower and Upper Bethhoron, cities founded by Solomon and later destroyed by several devastating wars. There she could see on her right Ajalon and Gibeon where Joshua, son of Nun, gave orders to the sun and moon when he was fighting against the five kings and where he condemned the Gibeonites to be hewers of wood and drawers of water because of the deceitful way they had obtained a treaty.20 In the city of Gibeah, which had been razed to the ground, Paula stood for a while remembering its sin and the concubine torn to pieces and the six hundred men from the tribes of Benjamin saved for the sake of the Apostle Paul.21
9 To cut a long story short: with the abandoned mausoleum of Helen (who as the queen of Adiabene had helped the people with corn during a period of famine) on her left, she entered Jerusalem, a city with three names – Jebus, Salem and Jerusalem – which was restored by Aelius (later Emperor Hadrian) as Aelia, out of the ruins and ashes into which it had sunk. And although the proconsul of Palestine, who had been a close friend of Paula’s family, had sent his attendants on ahead and told them to prepare his official residence for her, she chose to stay in a simple little room. She went round all the places with so much passion and enthusiasm that if she did not hurry on to the next one, she could not be dragged from the one she had just visited. Throwing herself down in front of the cross she worshipped it as if she could see the Lord hanging here. Going into the tomb of the resurrection she kissed the stone the angel had removed from the entrance to the tomb and licked the very place where the Lord’s body had lain,22 as if she were thirsting for the waters she had longed for in faith. The whole of Jerusalem and the Lord to whom she prayed bear witness to all the tears she shed there, all the sorrowful sighs she uttered. Leaving Jerusalem she went up to Mount Sion, which is translated as ‘citadel’ or ‘watch tower’. David had long ago taken this city by storm and rebuilt it.23 Of the city that was stormed it is written: ‘Woe to you, city of Ariel (in other words ‘lion of God’ for it was once the most powerful city) which David has taken by storm’,24 while of the city that had been rebuilt it is said: ‘Its foundations are on the holy mountains; the Lord loves the gates of Sion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.’25 He does not mean those gates we see today, smashed into dust and ashes, but the gates against which hell cannot prevail, through which the crowds of believers enter to reach Christ. There Paula was shown a column supporting the church portico, stained with the Lord’s blood, to which it is said that Christ was tied and then whipped. She was also shown the place where the Holy Spirit came down upon more than a hundred and twenty souls, so that the prophecy of Joel might be fulfilled.26
10 Then after distributing her money to the poor and to her fellow servants as far as her limited resources allowed, she travelled on to Bethlehem. On the right-hand side of the road she stopped at the tomb of Rachel, where Rachel gave birth to Benjamin, not Benoni (in other words ‘son of my sorrow’) as his mother had called him as she lay dying,27 but, as his father prophesied in the spirit, ‘son of my right hand’. Then she entered the Saviour’s cave. Here she saw the virgin’s room and the stable in which the ox knew its owner and the donkey its master’s crib, so that what is written by the same prophet might be fulfilled: ‘happy is he who sows upon the waters where the ox and the donkey tread’.28 There I myself heard her swear that she could see with the eyes of faith the baby wrapped in swaddling bands and crying in the manger, and the Magi worshipping God, and the star shining above them, as well as the virgin mother, the attentive foster-father, the shepherds arriving at night to see the Word that was made: already at that moment they were realizing the opening words of St John’s Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the word and the word was made flesh.’29 She was also convinced she could see the babies slaughtered, Herod in a rage, and Joseph and Mary fleeing to Egypt. Mingling tears with her happiness she said, ‘Greetings, Bethlehem, house of bread, in which was born the bread that came down from heaven. Greetings, Ephrathah, most fertile and fruitful land, whose fertility is God. It is with regard to you that Micah once prophesied: “And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrathah, are you not the least of the thousands of Judah? Out of you will come forth for me one who will be the leader of Israel whose origin is from the beginning, from the days of old. Therefore you will give them up until the time when she will give birth to them. She will give birth and the rest of his brothers will turn to the sons of Israel.”30 For in you the leader has been born, he who was conceived before Lucifer, whose birth from the Father was before all ages. David’s line continued in you until a virgin should give birth and the rest of the people who believe in Christ should turn to the sons of Israel and gladly declare to them: “It was necessary to speak the word of God to you first but because you rejected it and judged yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we will now turn to the Gentiles.”31 For the Lord had said, “I have only come for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”32 At that time the words of Jacob were fulfilled concerning him: “The prince from Judah will not fail nor the leader from his thighs, until he comes to whom it has been entrusted and he himself will be the expectation of the peoples.”33
‘David swore a good oath and fulfilled his vow correctly when he said, “I will not enter into the dwelling of my house, or go up to my bed, or grant sleep to my eyes and slumber to my eyelids and rest to the temples of my head, until I find a place for my Lord, a dwelling for the God of Jacob.”34 Immediately afterwards he explained what he wanted, seeing with the eyes of a prophet the one who would come and whom we now believe has come: “See, we heard of him in Ephrathah, we found him in the wide spaces of the forest.”35 “Zoth” is of course a Hebrew word as I learned from your teachings: it does not mean “her”, in other words Mary, the mother of the Lord, but rather “him”. And so he goes on confidently, “We will go in to his dwellings; we will worship him in the place where his feet rested.”36 Am I, wretched and sinful as I am, considered worthy to kiss the manger in which the Lord cried as a baby, to pray in the cave in which the virgin who gave birth brought forth the infant God? This is where I shall rest because this is the home of my Lord. Here I will live, because my Saviour chose it. “I have prepared a lamp for my Christ. My soul will live for him and my offspring will serve him.”’37
Then she went on a little further to the tower of Eder, in other words the tower of the flock, for close to it Jacob grazed his flocks, and the shepherds keeping their watch by night were privileged to hear: ‘Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men of good will.’38 While they were watching the sheep, they found the Lamb of God whose pure and spotless fleece was moistened with heavenly dew39 in the dry places of the whole world and whose blood, when smeared on the door-posts,40 forced the destroyer of Egypt to flee and who took away the sins of the world.
11 Without delay she continued her journey along the old road leading to Gaza, which means the ‘power’ or ‘wealth’ of God: there she meditated in silence on how the Ethiopian eunuch, who prefigured the Gentiles, changed his skin and, while reading the Old Testament, discovered the refreshing waters of the Gospel.41 Then Paula turned to the right, and from Bethsur she came to Eshcol which can be translated as ‘bunch of grapes’:42 it was from this place that the inspectors carried an amazingly large bunch of grapes, thereby indicating that it is a most fertile area and a type of him who said: ‘I have trodden the winepress alone and of the people there was no one with me.’43 A little further on she entered Sarah’s little room and saw Isaac’s cradle and the traces of Abraham’s oak, under which he saw the day of Christ and was glad.44 Then she rose and went up to Hebron, that is Kiriath-arba, in other words the town of the four men, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the great Adam, who the Hebrews believe were buried there according to the book of Joshua.45 But most people think that the fourth man was Caleb, and they point out his tomb on one side. She did not want to go to Kiriath-sepher, in other words the ‘bond of letters’, because she rejected the letter that kills and had found the spirit that gives life.46 She chose instead to admire the upper and lower springs which Othniel, son of Kenaz, son of Jephunneh, received in exchange for the southern land and his arid estates:47 from these streams he irrigated the field which was dry in the Old Testament, foreshadowing the fact that the people who had been sinners would find redemption in the waters of baptism. On the next day, soon after sunrise, she stood on the heights of Kiriath-barucha, in other words ‘the town of blessing’, to which Abraham followed the Lord. From there she looked down on the vast wilderness and the land that had once been Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zaboiim. She looked long at the vineyards of balsam in Engedi and at Segor, ‘the three-year-old heifer’ (which was previously called Bala, translated as Zoar, in other words ‘the little one’ in the Syriac language). She was reminded of Lot’s cave and with tears in her eyes she warned the young women who were with her to beware of wine which leads to debauchery,48 and which caused the creation of the Moabites and Ammonites.
12 I take my time passing through the south where the betrothed woman found her fiancé resting and Joseph drank with his brothers.49 I will return to Jerusalem, passing through Tekoa and Amos, and I will behold the shining cross of Mount Olivet from which the Saviour ascended to the father. Here every year a red cow was burned as a sacrifice to the Lord and its ashes were used to purify the people of Israel. Here, according to Ezekiel, the cherubim, after leaving the temple, founded the church of the Lord.50 Then Paula visited the tomb of Lazarus and saw the house of Mary and Martha, as well as Bethany, which means ‘the town of the priestly jawbones’, and the place where the frisky foal that served as a type of the Gentiles accepted the bridle of the Lord and offered its back, covered with the apostles’ soft garments, for him to sit on.51 From there she took the direct route down to Jericho, thinking of the wounded man in the Gospel, of the cruelty of the priests and Levites who passed him by, of the compassion of the Samaritan, that is the ‘guardian’, who placed the half-dead man on his mule and took him to the inn of the church.52 She noticed the place called Adommim, which means ‘the place of blood’, because much blood was shed there during frequent attacks by robbers; she also saw Zaccheus’ mulberry tree, representing the good works of penitence, which allowed him to trample on his former sins of bloodshed and theft, and from which he looked upon the high lord from the height of virtues.53 Beside the road she saw the place where the blind men sat who in receiving their sight became types of the two peoples who should believe in the Lord. Entering Jericho she saw the city that Hiel founded at the cost of his first-born son Abiram and the gates of which he set up at the cost of Segub, his youngest son. She saw the camp of Gilgal and the pile of foreskins suggestive of the mystery of the second circumcision. She saw the twelve stones brought there from the bed of the river Jordan as firm foundations for the twelve apostles. She saw the spring that was once brackish and barren when it belonged to the law, but which the true Elisha seasoned with his wisdom, turning it into a well of sweet and life-giving water.54 Night had hardly passed when Paula reached the Jordan in blazing heat. She stood on the riverbank and as the sun rose she recalled the sun of justice, while the river reminded her of how the priests’ feet were dry as they stood in the middle of the river; how at the command of Elijah and Elisha the water stood still on both sides and the river offered a path; and how by his baptism the Lord cleaned the river polluted by the flood and stained by the destruction of the whole human race.55
13 It would take a long time to tell of the vale of Achor, in other words of ‘tumult and crowds’, where theft and greed were condemned,56 and of Bethel, ‘the house of God’, where Jacob slept, naked and poor, on the bare earth with a stone beneath his head.57 In Zechariah this stone is described as having seven eyes, while in Isaiah it is referred to as the cornerstone.58 Here Jacob saw a ladder leading up to heaven and above it stood the Lord stretching a hand out to those who were climbing up, but hurling down from on high those who were careless. Paula also went to Mount Ephraim to venerate the tombs of Joshua, son of Nun, and Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest. One of these tombs was built at Timnath-serah on the north side of Mount Gaash; the other at Gabaath, the town of his son Phinehas. She was quite amazed that the person who was in charge of allotting the estates had chosen for himself the rocky and rugged parts. What should I say about Shiloh where a ruined altar is still shown today and where the tribe of Benjamin anticipated Romulus’ kidnapping of the Sabine women?59 She passed through Shechem (not ‘Sychar’ as many wrongly read), now renamed Neapolis, and on the side of Mount Garizim she entered the church built at Jacob’s well, beside which the Lord sat when he was hungry and thirsty and where he was refreshed by the Samaritan woman’s faith,60 who left her five husbands (representing the five books of Moses) and the sixth whom she boasted of (namely Dositheus the false teacher), when she found the true Messiah and the true Saviour.
Then Paula made a detour to see the tombs of the twelve patriarchs and Samaria, called Augusta by Herod in honour of Augustus, or Sebaste in Greek. There lie the prophets Elisha and Obadiah as well as the man who is the greatest of all those born of woman – John the Baptist. There she trembled at many amazing things. For she saw demons roar under various forms of torture, and in front of the tombs of the saints she saw men howling like wolves, barking like dogs, roaring like lions, hissing like serpents and bellowing like bulls. She saw others with their heads spinning round and bending backwards so that their heads touched the ground; she saw women hung upside down by their feet without their dresses falling over their faces. She pitied them all and prayed for Christ’s mercy for each of them, as tears flowed down her cheeks. And although she was by this time weak with exhaustion, she climbed the mountain on foot to visit the two caves where, at a time of persecution and hunger, Obadiah the prophet fed one hundred prophets with bread and water.61
She made a brief trip to Nazareth, where the Lord spent his childhood, to Cana and Capernaum, familiar from the miracles he performed there, to the lake of Tiberias, which was sanctified by the Lord’s boat trip on it, and to the desert wilderness where many thousands of people were fed with a few loaves and the twelve baskets of the tribes of Israel were filled with the leftover food. She climbed Mount Tabor where the Lord was transfigured.62 She saw from a distance Mount Hermon and Mount Hermonim and the broad plains of Galilee, where Sisera and his whole army were destroyed when Barak won the battle,63 and the torrent of Kishon running down the centre of the plain. She was shown the nearby town of Nain where the widow’s son was brought back to life.64 The day would come to an end sooner than my account if I were to run through all the places visited by Paula, who won great respect for her incredible faith.
14 I will pass on to Egypt, but first I will stop a while at Socoh and wet my dry lips at Samson’s spring which he produced from the large tooth in the jaw.65 Then I will feel refreshed when I visit Moresheth, which was once the tomb of the prophet Micah and is now a church. I will pass by the country of the Horites and Gittites, Mareshah, Edom and Lachish, and crossing the desert’s vast wilderness over sands so soft that they cannot hold the imprint of one’s footsteps, I will come to the Egyptian river Sior, a name that means ‘turbid’. Then I shall pass through the five cities of Egypt where the Canaanite language is spoken and through the land of Goshen and the plains of Zoan where God performed miracles, to the city of No which later became Alexandria, and Nitria, the town of the Lord, where the nitre66 of virtue washes away the dirt of large numbers of people. When Paula had seen this she was met by that holy and revered man, Bishop Isidore the Confessor, and by huge numbers of monks many of whom had been raised to the rank of priest or Levite. She was very pleased to behold the glory of God but admitted that she was unworthy of such great honour. What shall I say of men such as Macarius, Arsetes and Serapion and other pillars of Christ? Was there anyone whose cell she did not enter or at whose feet she did not kneel? She believed that in each of these holy men she was seeing Christ, and whatever she brought them she was pleased to have brought to the Lord. What wonderful passion and courage – it was hard to believe that these virtues could be found in a woman! Taking no account of her sex and her physical weakness she longed to live with her female companions, surrounded by all these thousands of monks. Indeed she might have managed this for they all welcomed her, had she not been pulled away by an even stronger desire to see the holy places. Due to the extreme heat she sailed from Pelusium to Maiuma, returning to Bethlehem so quickly that you would have thought she was a bird. Shortly afterwards she made the decision to live permanently in the holy town of Bethlehem, and so she spent three years in cramped hostel accommodation while she built cells and monasteries as well as a roadside guest house for travellers, remembering how Mary and Joseph had been unable to find a place to stay. At this point I conclude my account of the travels she made in the company of her daughter and a large number of unmarried women.
15 Now I will give a more detailed account of the goodness peculiar to her. In describing it I promise, with God as my judge and witness, that I will add nothing and exaggerate nothing as do those who are intent on flattery. In fact I will play down many things because I do not want the facts to seem incredible, nor do I want my detractors and those who are always trying to grind me down to think I am making things up or decking Paula, like Aesop’s crow, with bright feathers that belong to someone else.
Paula behaved with such humility – which is the most important of Christian virtues – that anyone who saw her, who was eager to set eyes on her because of her celebrity status, could not believe that it was she but thought she was just a maid of the lowest rank. Surrounded by a large group of young girls, she was the least conspicuous of all in the way she dressed, spoke and behaved. From the time of her husband’s death until the day she died she never ate with a man, even if she knew he was holy and had attained the rank of bishop. She did not go to the baths unless she was seriously ill. She did not have a soft mattress to lie on even when suffering from a really serious fever; but she would rest on the hard ground on a bristly mat, if indeed it can be called rest when she spent days and nights in almost continuous prayer, thereby fulfilling those words from the Psalms: ‘every night I will wash my bed, I will water my bed with tears’.67 You would think that she had springs of tears inside her: she would weep for her trivial faults in such a way that you might believe her guilty of the most serious crimes. When we advised her, as we often did, to spare her eyes and to preserve them for reading the Gospels, she would say, ‘I must defile my face for I frequently used to apply make-up to it, using rouge, white lead and antimony, in contravention of God’s commands; I must mortify my body which I over-indulged; I must compensate for the years of laughter with perpetual weeping; I must exchange soft linens and expensive silk garments for the roughness of the hairshirt. I who used to please my husband and the world, now wish to please Christ.’
If among her virtues – and there were many of them – I wished to praise her chastity, my words might seem superfluous. With regard to this virtue, she was the paragon of all the married women in Rome while she lived in the world. She behaved in such a way that not even the most malicious person ever dared to make up gossip about her. No one was more compassionate than she, no one kinder towards those who lacked self-esteem. She did not seek out the powerful but neither did she despise them with an attitude of arrogant scorn, as if she herself were seeking admiration. If she saw a poor person, she would offer him support; if she saw a rich person, she would encourage him to be generous to others. Her own generosity knew no bounds: she would often borrow money to give away, so that she need not refuse anyone who asked her for a sum of money. I was wrong, I admit: I rebuked her for being excessively generous, citing these words of the Apostle Paul: ‘I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure for you, but it is a question of a fair balance so that your present abundance should help them and their abundance help your need’, and the words of our Saviour from the Gospel: ‘whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none’.68 I told her that she had to be careful for she might not always have the means to do as she wished. I put forward many similar arguments but she undermined them all, concisely and with admirable tact, calling the Lord to witness that everything she did was done for his sake. She said that she wanted to die a beggar, leaving not a single penny to her daughter; at her funeral she expected to be buried in someone else’s shroud. Finally she added, ‘If I look I can find many people who will give me things, but if that beggar were to die without receiving from me what I can give him even if I have to borrow money to do so, from whom would his soul be required?’ I wanted her to be more careful in her domestic economy, but she was more ardent in her faith than I was and clung to her Saviour with her whole soul. Poor in spirit herself she followed her Lord in his poverty, giving back to him what she had received. In the end she achieved what she wanted and left her daughter deep in debts which are still owing – in fact Eustochium will only manage to pay them back by Christ’s faith and mercy rather than by her own efforts.
16 Most women like to bestow their gifts on people who will blow their trumpet for them: giving generously to a few, they refuse to offer anything to the rest. Paula was completely free from this fault, for she distributed her money to individuals according to each individual’s need, not in order to indulge them. No poor person came away from her empty-handed. All this she was able to do not because her wealth was so huge but because of the sensible way she distributed it, always repeating these words: ‘Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy’, and ‘Just as water puts out a fire, so mercy extinguishes sins’, and ‘Make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth so that they will welcome you into the eternal homes’, and ‘Give alms and everything will be clean’, as well as the words of Daniel warning King Nebuchadnezzar to atone for his sins by giving away his money.69 Paula did not want to waste her money on stones that will pass away with earth and this age, but on living stones which roll over the earth: these are the stones from which the great king’s city is built in the book of Revelation and which, according to Scripture, will be turned into sapphire, emerald, jasper and other precious stones.70
17 But she may well share these virtues with a number of others and the devil knows that it is not in these that the highest virtue lies. That is why the devil says to the Lord after the loss of Job’s wealth, after his house has been destroyed, after his children have been killed: ‘Skin for skin, a man will give everything he has for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bones and flesh if he has not blessed you to your face.’71 We know that many have given to charity but refuse to give up any of their bodily comforts; they have stretched out their hand to the poor but they remain mired in the pleasures of the flesh. They whitewash the outside but inside they are filled with the bones of the dead. But Paula was not like this: she was almost excessively self-restrained and she weakened her body by severe fasting and hard work. She would use hardly any oil on her food except on feast days – this fact alone gives one an indication of her views on wine, sauce, fish, milk, honey and lamb and other tasty things. In eating these things some people believe that they are very abstemious: if they eat such things, they still believe their chastity is safe.
18 Envy is always hunting down virtues and lightning strikes the mountain tops.72 Does it surprise you if I say that this is true of human life when even our Lord was crucified as a result of the Pharisees’ jealousy? Even holy people are the object of jealousy and even in Paradise the serpent’s jealousy caused death to come into the world. The Lord had roused Adar the Edomite73 against Paula to beat her so that she would not grow proud, and he often warned her with the thorn of the flesh not to think too highly of herself because of her great virtues, as this might lead her to believe that she had attained the summit of perfection, leaving other women far behind. I used to say that it was better for her to give way before the envy of others and withdraw in the face of their madness. That was how Jacob dealt with his brother Esau and David with the unrelenting persecution of Saul.74 I reminded her of how Jacob fled to Mesopotamia, while David handed himself over to a foreign tribe, preferring to be subject to his enemies than to envy. But Paula replied, ‘What you say would be fair enough if the devil were not constantly fighting against God’s servants, both male and female, and beating them to whatever place they fled to. It would be fair enough if I were not held back by my love for the holy places and if I could find my beloved Bethlehem in another part of the world. For why should I not overcome envy by means of patience? Why should I not crush arrogance with humility and when struck on the cheek turn the other cheek? As St Paul says, “Overcome evil with good.”75 Were not the apostles proud to suffer abuse for the Lord’s sake? Did not the Saviour himself act with humility when he took the form of a servant and became obedient to his father to the point of death, death on the cross, so that he might save us through his suffering? If Job had not put up a struggle and been triumphant in battle, he would not have received the crown of justice and been told by the Lord: “Do you think that I would have talked to you for any other reason than that you might appear just?”76 In the Gospel it is said, “Blessed are those who suffer persecution for the sake of justice.”77 Keep a clear conscience so that you can be sure that it is not because of our sins that we are suffering; affliction in this life provides the opportunity for reward.’
When the enemy persisted and tried to hurl abuse at her, she would recite these words from the Psalm: ‘When the sinner stood firm against me, I fell silent and was humiliated and I refrained from saying good things’, and also ‘Like a deaf person I did not hear and like a dumb person I did not open my mouth. And I became like a man who could not hear and who has no rebukes on his lips.’78 In moments of temptation she would repeat the words from Deuteronomy, ‘The Lord your God tests you, so that he may know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.’79 When tempted she would repeat what Isaiah had said, ‘You who have been weaned off milk and removed from the breast, expect one tribulation after another, one hope after another, here a little, there a little because of the malice of lips, because of another person’s tongue.’80 She consoled herself by interpreting this scriptural passage in this way: to be one of the weaned ones – of those who have reached maturity – we must endure one tribulation after another, so that we might deserve to receive one hope after another, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces experience and experience hope but hope does not disappoint us,81 because ‘if our outer nature wastes away, our inner nature is renewed. Temporary tribulation which is easy to bear is preparing us for eternal glory: we do not look at what can be seen but at what cannot be seen. For things that are seen do not last while those that cannot be seen are eternal.’82 Even if one felt, with all the impatience typical of humans, that God’s help was a long time coming, it would not really be long for God has said: ‘I heard you at the right moment and on the day of salvation I helped you.’83 Paula believed that one should not be daunted by what deceitful or malicious people said, for we will be happy with God’s help. We ought to listen to him when he gives us the following advice: ‘Through your patience you will possess your souls’, and ‘the sufferings of the present life cannot be compared with the future glory which will be revealed in us’,84 while in the passage where it is said: ‘The patient person is very sensible; but the one who is impatient is extremely foolish’,85 the aim of the words is to make us patient in all things that happen to us.
19 In her frequent periods of ill health and weakness, Paula would say, ‘when I am weak, then I am strong’, and ‘we have this treasure in clay jars’ until ‘this mortal body puts on immortality and this perishable body puts on imperishability’, and also ‘just as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so also our consolation is abundant in Christ’, and a little further on in the same passage, ‘as you share in his sufferings, so also you will share in his consolation’.86 In times of grief she would sing, ‘Why are you sad, my soul, and why are you upset within me? Hope in God, for I shall again praise him, the salvation of my countenance and my God.’87 In times of danger she would say, ‘Anyone who wishes to follow me let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’; and also ‘Anyone who wishes to save his life will lose it’, and ‘He who loses his life for my sake will save it.’88
When news came that her family wealth was used up and that all her inheritance had been lost, her response was, ‘What does it benefit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his life? Or what will he give in return for his life?’89 ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked shall I return. As it pleased the Lord, so it has come to pass; may the Lord’s name be praised’,90 and these words: ‘Do not love this world nor the things of the world, for everything that is in the world is desire of the flesh, and desire of the eyes, and pride in this life which do not come from the Father but are of this world. And the world and its desire will pass away.’91 I know that when she received letters telling her of the serious illnesses of her children and especially of her son Toxotius whom she loved very much, she would keep a tight grip on herself, thereby fulfilling these words: ‘I was upset but I did not speak.’92 Then she would cry out, ‘Anyone who loves his son or daughter more than [he loves] me is not worthy of me.’93 She prayed to the Lord saying, ‘Possess the children of those who have been put to death’,94 who mortify their bodies every day for your sake.
I am aware that some telltale (the worst kind of person) had told her (pretending to do so out of kindness!) that some people thought her insane because of what they considered her excessive zeal for virtue; they thought she needed counselling. To these she replied, ‘We have been made a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals; we are fools for Christ’s sake but the foolishness of God is wiser than men.’95 That is why the Saviour also said to the Father: ‘You know my weakness.’96 In the Gospel we read that even his relatives wanted to have him restrained on the grounds that he was mentally ill, while his opponents reviled him, saying: ‘He has a demon and is a Samaritan’,97 and ‘He casts out devils in the name of Beelzebub, prince of devils.’98 But let us listen to the Apostle who encourages us by saying: ‘This is our boast, the testimony of our conscience, that we have behaved in the world with holiness and sincerity and by the grace of God’; let us listen to the Lord when he says to the disciples: ‘The world hates you because you are not of this world; for if you were of the world, the world would love you as its own.’99 And Paula would turn her words to the Lord himself, saying: ‘You know the secrets of our heart’, and ‘All these things have come upon us and we have not forgotten you nor have we been false to your covenant. Our heart has not turned back’, and ‘We face death for your sake all day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter’, but ‘The Lord supports me; I will not fear what man can do to me.’100 For I have read: ‘My son, honour the Lord and you shall be made strong; do not fear anyone apart from him.’101 She used these and other similar passages from Scripture to arm herself with the armour of Christ, so to speak, to protect herself against all sins but especially against raging envy. By refusing to take offence she calmed the fury of her heart though it was fit to burst. Until the day of her death her patience was obvious to all, as was the envy of others. But envy gnaws at its source and while it strives to harm the object it envies, it only manages to turn its insane rage on itself.
20 I must also describe the organization of her monastery and the way she turned the chastity of holy people to her own profit. She sowed material things so that she might reap spiritual things; she distributed worldly things so that she might receive heavenly things; she gave up what lasts only a short while so that she could exchange it for what is eternal. First, she established a monastery for men, handing it over to the men to administer it. Then the many women, whom she had gathered together from different provinces, she divided up, aristocratic as well as those from the middle and lower classes, into three groups and three monasteries, in such a way that they worked and ate their meals separately but assembled to pray and sing psalms. After the singing of the Alleluia (this being the signal summoning them to the collect), no one was allowed to remain behind. The first one or the first group who arrived would wait for the others. It was her modesty and good example, rather than fear, that inspired them to work.
At dawn, at the third, sixth and ninth hours, at nightfall and in the middle of the night they would sing through the psalms in order. Each of the sisters had to know the psalms and each day learn a certain passage from the Holy Scriptures. Only on Sundays did they process to the church beside which they lived, each group following its own mother superior; and when they left the church in the same way, they would devote themselves to some task in a disciplined manner, making clothes for themselves or for others. For any of them of noble birth, she was not allowed to have a companion from her own home, in case memories of past behaviour might revive the old mistakes of a frivolous childhood or renew them through frequent chats. There was one form of dress for all: they used linen cloth only to wipe their hands. There was such complete separation from the men that Paula even kept the women apart from the eunuchs, so as not to encourage malicious gossip, which tends to find fault with holy people in order to make those who behave less well feel better.
If one of the women happened to arrive late for the psalms or was slow at her work, Paula would deal with her in different ways. If the woman was irritable, Paula would speak soothingly; if she was apathetic, she would rebuke her, thereby imitating the words of the Apostle when he said: ‘What do you want? Shall I come to you with a stick or in a spirit of gentleness and mildness?’102 She allowed no woman to have anything apart from food and clothing, for St Paul had said: ‘If we have food and clothing that is enough.’103 She did not want them to get used to having things which might engender covetousness which no amount of possessions can satisfy: indeed, the more someone has, the more he wants, for neither abundance nor need causes desire to diminish. When people were arguing, she would speak gently to them and make them come to an agreement. If the young girls became frisky with thoughts of sex, Paula would crush these tendencies by prescribing frequent and redoubled fasts, preferring the girls to have stomach pains rather than mental troubles. If she saw one of them rather elegantly dressed, she would rebuke the girl who was at fault with a frown and an expression of displeasure, pointing out to her that elegance of appearance and dress were indications of spiritual ugliness. A foul or dirty word should never be uttered by a virgin for these were signs of a lewd mind, and a person’s external characteristics revealed the faults of the inner person. When she found someone talkative or frivolous or insolent and this girl refused to correct her behaviour even after several warnings, Paula would make her pray among the younger ones, separated from the others, outside the dining-room doors, and eat her meal apart so that if she could not be corrected by rebuke, shame might force her to amend her ways. She detested theft as a form of sacrilege and she used to say that an act that was considered by people in secular society as something trivial or of no importance was in fact a very serious crime inside a monastery. Do I need to describe her compassion and committed care of the sick and the extraordinary devotion and concern with which she looked after them? Although she generously offered everything to others when they were ill, even allowing them to eat meat, if ever she herself fell ill, she refused to be self-indulgent and so appeared inconsistent, in that the compassion she showed to others turned into strictness towards herself.
21 Not a single one of the young girls, with a healthy and vigorous body, made as strong a commitment to self-restraint as Paula with her broken and frail body, weakened by age. I admit that in this matter she was too determined not to spare herself nor to yield to anyone’s advice. I will tell you something from my own experience. There was a period of very great heat one July when Paula succumbed to a fever and we despaired of her life. But by God’s mercy she recovered a little and the doctors urged her to drink a little light wine as a tonic for they feared that if she drank water she might suffer from dropsy. I asked Bishop Epiphanius to advise her, or rather to compel her to drink the wine, but being as sharp and alert as ever, she immediately perceived our stratagem, and with a smile she said that it was no doubt my idea that the bishop should speak to her. What more need I say? After trying repeatedly to persuade her, the bishop came outside and I asked him what he had managed to do, to which he replied, ‘Only that, old as I am, I have almost been persuaded to give up wine.’ I relate this episode not because I approve of people taking on burdens recklessly or beyond their ability (for Scripture warns us: ‘Do not take upon yourself a burden’104), but so that I might use this instance of her stubbornness to show her passion of spirit and the longing of her faithful soul, for she would say, ‘My soul has thirsted for you and how many times also has my body?’105 It is hard to maintain moderation in all things. And it is true what the philosophers say: ‘moderation is considered a virtue, while excess is something bad’ (which can be expressed more succinctly as ‘nothing in excess’).106
But she who was so obstinate when it came to contempt for food was easily moved in sorrow and was devastated by the death of family members, particularly those of her children. When her husband and children died one after another, she herself almost died of grief, and although she made the sign of the cross over her mouth and stomach, trying in this way to lessen a mother’s suffering with the sign of the cross, her maternal feelings got the better of her and caused her faith to falter. Although her reason remained in control, she was overcome by physical weakness, for once sickness seized her she remained in its grip for a long time, endangering her life and causing us much anxiety. But even then she was happy, constantly repeating to herself St Paul’s words: ‘What a miserable human being I am! Who will free me from the body of this death?’107
The perceptive reader may say that I am being critical rather than laudatory. I call Jesus as my witness, he whom she served and whom I desire to serve, that I am inventing nothing whether of praise or criticism, but as a Christian man writing about a Christian woman, I put down what is true, in other words I am writing history not eulogy. What were faults in her might well be considered virtues in other people. I mention her faults to satisfy my own feelings and the longing of all the sisters and brothers who love her and miss her.
22 However, she has completed her life’s course and kept her faith, and now she is enjoying the crown of justice. She followed the Lamb wherever he went and she who was hungry is now filled. Joyfully she sings, ‘As we have heard, so we have seen, in the city of our lord of virtues, in the city of our God.’108 What a fortunate exchange! She wept and now she can laugh for ever, she looked with scorn at the broken cisterns but now she has found the Lord, her fountain; before she wore the hair-shirt and now she can be dressed in white and say, ‘You have torn my sackcloth and you have clothed me in happiness.’109 She ate ashes as if they were bread and she mixed her drink with tears, saying, ‘My tears were to me bread day and night;’110 now she can feed on the bread of angels for ever and can sing, ‘Taste and see, for the Lord is gracious’, and ‘My heart has uttered a good word; I tell my deeds to the king.’111 She sees fulfilled in herself the words of Isaiah, or rather the words of the Lord speaking through Isaiah: ‘Behold my servants will eat but you will be hungry, my servants will drink but you will be thirsty; my servants will rejoice but you will be put to shame; my servants will exult with joy, but you will cry out with pain of heart and will wail for anguish of spirit.’112 I have said that she always avoided the broken cisterns so that she might find her Lord, the fountain, and be able to sing joyfully, ‘As the deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for the strong and living God: when will I come and appear before the face of God?’113
23 I shall briefly describe how she avoided the filthy pools of the heretics whom she considered as no better than non-Christians. Some cunning old man who thought himself both learned and clever began, without my knowledge, to question her, saying, ‘What sin has a baby committed that it should be seized by the devil? At what age will we be resurrected? At the same age as we are when we die? If so there will be need of foster-mothers after the resurrection! Or at a different age? Then it will not be a resurrection of the dead but rather a transformation into new people. Will there still be differences of gender, male and female? If there will be, then there will be marriages and sexual union and reproduction; if not, it will not be the same bodies being resurrected.’ For he argued that ‘the earthly habitation weighs down the mind which muses on many things’114 – but our bodies will be subtle and spiritual according to the words of the Apostle: ‘it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body’.115 With all this the man sought to prove that rational creatures have through their faults and previous sins fallen into the bodily condition; and that their state in life depends on the nature and guilt of their transgressions. Some enjoy physical health and a noble and wealthy family, while others get sent into sickly bodies and poor homes so that they might pay the penalty of former sins by being as it were imprisoned in a body in the present life.
When Paula heard this and reported it, pointing out the man to me, I was forced to take a stand against this wicked snake, this deadly beast, the sort of person to whom the writer of the Psalms refers when he says: ‘Do not hand over to the beasts the souls confessing to you’, and ‘Rebuke, O Lord, the beasts of the reeds’,116 who when they write nasty things tell a lie against God and raise up their voice to the heights. So I went to see the man and by means of a few questions I managed to put a stop to his talk with which he was attempting to lead Paula astray. I asked him whether he believed that there would be a resurrection of the dead or not. When he replied that he did believe that there would be one, I said, ‘Will they be resurrected with the same bodies or different ones?’ He replied, ‘The same’, so I asked him, ‘And the same gender as before or not?’ He refused to answer my question and like a snake he moved his head this way and that to avoid being struck. So I said to him, ‘Since you refuse to say anything, I will answer my question for you and tell you what follows.
‘If one is resurrected as neither male nor female, there will be no resurrection of the dead because gender involves having limbs and it is the limbs that make the body complete. If there will be neither gender nor limbs, how can there be a resurrection of bodies that cannot exist without gender and limbs? Furthermore, if there is to be no resurrection of the body, there will certainly be no resurrection of the dead. But your objection concerning marriage, that if they were the same limbs, there would have to be marriage, is dismissed by the Saviour when he says: “You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God; for in the resurrection of the dead they will be like the angels.”117 When it is said “they neither marry nor are given in marriage”, it clearly implies that there is to be a distinction between the sexes. After all, no one would say of stone or wood that they neither marry nor are given in marriage, for it is not in their nature to marry. It is only said of those who can marry but who do not do so by the grace of Christ and by their own virtue. But if you put forward the objection “How then will we be like the angels since there is no male or female among the angels?”, listen briefly: Christ does not promise us angelic substance but their way of life and their blessedness, which is why John the Baptist, too, before he was beheaded, was called an angel and all the saints and virgins of God manifest, even in this world, the life of the angels within them. For when it is said: “You will be like the angels”, Christ is promising likeness, not a change of nature.
24 ‘And now answer me, how do you interpret the fact that Thomas touched the hand of the risen Lord and saw the side wounded by the spear?118 How about the fact that Peter saw the Lord standing on the shore, eating honeycomb and a piece of roasted fish?119 If he was standing, he must have had feet; if he showed his wounded side, he must have had a chest and stomach, too, for otherwise there could be no side which is joined to the stomach and chest; if he spoke, he did so with a tongue and palate and teeth, for just as the plectrum strikes the strings so the tongue strikes the teeth producing a vocal sound; and if his hands were touched, it follows that he must have had arms as well. And so, as he is said to have had all his limbs, he must have had a complete body which is made up of limbs, and not of course a female body but a male one, in other words, of the same gender as he was when he died. But if you object to this by replying with a sneer, “Oh, so we too will eat after our resurrection? How come Christ could walk through closed doors,120 which would be impossible for solid bodies made of flesh and blood?”, you will receive this reply: “Do not use the question of food to undermine belief in the resurrection.” For Jesus ordered the daughter of the chief of the synagogue to be given food after she had been raised from the dead, and Lazarus, after being dead for three days, is said to have attended a party with Jesus so that their resurrection should not be considered a mere illusion.121
‘But if you use the fact that Christ walked through closed doors to try to prove that his body was spiritual and ethereal, he must then have had a spiritual body even before he suffered because he was able to walk on water, which is unnatural since bodies are too heavy to do so. The Apostle Peter must also have had a spiritual body because he too walked on water, as his feet skimmed the surface.122 When something occurs which is against nature, it demonstrates the great power and virtue of God. To prove to you that in these great miracles there was no change of nature but rather a demonstration of God’s omnipotence, he who by faith had walked on water began to sink through lack of faith, and would have done so if the Lord’s hand had not lifted him up, with the words: “Why do you doubt, you of little faith?”123 I am amazed that you are so obstinate when the Lord says: “Put your finger in here and touch my hands. Stretch out your hand and put it into my side and do not be faithless, but trusting”,124 and elsewhere it says: “Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Feel them and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet.”125 You hear him speak of bones and flesh, feet and hands, and you present me with the Stoics’ delusions, as fragile and vacuous as bubbles!
25 ‘You also ask how a baby, that has no sins of its own, can be seized by the devil, and how old we will be at the resurrection, given that we die at different ages. No doubt my answer will not be welcome: “the Lord’s judgements are a great abyss”, and “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways! For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor?”126 The difference in ages does not alter the reality of the bodies. For since our bodies change every day and either grow or shrink, are we to suppose that we will be all the people we have been through our daily changes? Was I one person when I was ten years old and a different one when I was thirty, another at fifty and a different one now that I am grey-haired? And so according to the traditions of the churches and the Apostle Paul, the answer must be that we will rise again as a perfect person attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.127 The Jews believe that Adam was created at this age and we read that the Lord our Saviour rose again at this age.’
I put forward many other arguments from both the Old and New Testaments to stifle this heretic. From that day on Paula began to detest the man and all who shared his opinions so much that she would publicly proclaim them to be enemies of the Lord. I have related this not in order to give a brief refutation of a heresy – that would require many volumes – but to demonstrate this woman’s faith in that she preferred to be exposed to the lasting hostility of men than to provoke God’s anger by means of friendships that could harm her.
26 Now I shall continue with my description of Paula’s virtues. No mind was more docile than hers. She was slow to speak and ready to listen, mindful of those words of advice: ‘Be silent, Israel, and listen.’128 She knew the Scriptures by heart and although she loved the historical facts, referring to them as the foundation of truth, she preferred to follow the spiritual meaning and used this as the roof to protect the edification of her soul. She persuaded me to allow her to read through both the Old Testament and the New with her daughter, while I commented on it. I refused to do so because I did not think I was up to it, but she insisted and so I agreed to teach what I had learned, not from myself (for over-confidence is the worst possible teacher) but from the outstanding men of the church. When I hesitated and openly admitted that there was something I did not know, she absolutely refused to give up but by constant questioning she forced me to tell her which of the many powerful arguments seemed to me the most compelling. I will mention something else which may perhaps seem incredible to those who envy her: she expressed a desire to learn the Hebrew language which I had been studying since my teenage years and in which I had gained a partial competence, tirelessly continuing with my studies so as not to forget what I had learned. And in fact she persisted with it to the point where she could sing the Psalms in Hebrew and read the language aloud without any trace of a Latin accent. Indeed, this degree of accomplishment is also to be found now in her holy daughter Eustochium, who always stayed close to her mother’s side, obeying her so completely that she never slept apart from her, never went out or took her meals without her, did not have even a penny of her own but was happy that her mother gave away her family’s wealth, such as it was, to the poor. Eustochium firmly believed that her love for her mother was the greatest wealth and the best inheritance she could receive. I must not fail to mention with what joy she heard her granddaughter Paula,129 the child of Laeta and Toxotius (or rather conceived as a result of her mother’s vow and the dedication to virginity of the child that had not yet been born), singing the Alleluia with babyish pronunciation while still in her cradle and playing with rattles, and coming out with distorted attempts to pronounce her grandmother’s and aunt’s names. Paula’s homesickness revealed itself only in the fact that she wanted to hear that her son, her daughter-in-law and her granddaughter had withdrawn from the world to serve Christ. In this she was partially successful, for her granddaughter is being preserved to take the veil of Christ, while her daughter-in-law has committed herself to everlasting chastity, imitating her mother-in-law’s deeds of faith and alms-giving and trying to carry out in Rome what Paula achieved in Jerusalem.
27 What is the matter, my soul? Why are you afraid to approach her death? I have already made this work longer than it should be because I am afraid to reach the end, as if by not mentioning it and by concentrating on praising her we could postpone her death. Thus far we have sailed with favourable winds and the gliding ship has ploughed a furrow through the rippling waves of the sea; now my words have hit rocks and both monasteries are threatened by shipwreck on waves as high as mountains. We are forced to cry out, ‘Save us master, for we are dying’, and ‘Get up, Lord, why are you asleep?’130 For who could tell of Paula’s death without crying? She fell seriously ill, or rather, she found what she wanted, which was to leave us and be joined more fully to the Lord. During her illness Eustochium’s love for her mother which had already been tried and tested became clear to everybody. Eustochium sat beside her bed, held the fan, raised her head to put a pillow under her, massaged her feet, saw to the needs of her stomach, arranged soft bedclothes for her, cooled the hot water and brought her towels. In fact she did all the maids’ duties before they had time to do them, and if one of the maids did something, she felt she had been robbed. She ran sobbing and sighing back and forth between her mother’s bedside and the Lord’s cave, praying that she would not be deprived of her company, that she would not have to live without her, that she might be carried to burial on the same bier! But alas for frail and fleeting human nature! Except that faith in Christ raises us up to heaven and promises eternity to the soul, we share the same physical condition as wild animals and beasts of burden! The same death affects both the just and the unjust, the good and the bad, the clean and the unclean, someone who sacrifices and one who does not. There is no difference between the good person and the sinner; or between the one who swears and the one who fears an oath. Man and beast alike will dissolve into dust and ashes.
28 Why do I still delay, prolonging my grief by dwelling on other matters? The wisest of women sensed that death was close. While the rest of her body and limbs grew cold, only in her holy breast did her warm heart continue to beat. As if she were leaving strangers to go to meet her dearest ones, she whispered the following verses, ‘O Lord I have loved the beauty of your house and the place where your glory abides’, and ‘how lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of virtues. My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord’, and ‘I would rather be an outcast in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.’131 When I asked her why she was silent, why she refused to answer me when I asked whether she was in any pain, she replied in Greek that she was not at all uncomfortable, and that everything seemed peaceful and quiet to her. After this she fell silent and closed her eyes, as if she had already lost interest in human affairs. Until she breathed her last she continued to repeat the same verses so quietly that I could hardly hear what she was saying; and bringing her finger up to her mouth she made the sign of the cross on her lips. Her spirit was failing and she longed for death; but even though her soul was keen to break free, she managed to turn her death rattle into praise of the Lord. The bishops of Jerusalem and other cities were present as well as innumerable members of the lower clergy, both priests and Levites. The whole monastery was filled with virgins and monks. As soon as she heard the bridegroom calling, ‘Arise, my love, my fair one, my dove, and come away, for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone’, she responded cheerfully, ‘The flowers have appeared on the earth and the time of reaping has come’, and ‘I believe I can see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living.’132
29 After her death there was no weeping or wailing as usually happens; instead the psalms rang out from the crowds of monks. Paula’s body was lifted up by the bishops and the stronger ones supported her bier on their shoulders; some walked in front carrying the lamps and candles while others led the choirs who were singing psalms. They laid her down in the middle of the church of the Saviour’s cave. A huge crowd of people from the towns of Palestine had turned up for her funeral. Not a single monk living in the remote desert remained in his cell. Not a single virgin stayed in her room. Everyone regarded it as sacrilege if they failed to pay their final respects to such a woman. As in the case of Dorcas,133 widows and poor women showed off the dresses she had given them; all the poor people, large numbers of them, cried out that they had lost their mother and nurse. And what is amazing is that her face did not lose its colour – in fact, she maintained such a dignified and serious expression that you would not have thought she was dead but rather asleep. The Psalms were sung, one after the other, in Greek, Latin and Syriac, not only for the three-day period until she was buried beneath the church and next to the Lord’s cave but throughout the week. All who had come behaved as if it was their own funeral and the tears were for themselves. That remarkable virgin, her daughter Eustochium, could not be torn from her parent, like a child being weaned from its mother: she kept kissing Paula’s eyes, putting her cheek close to her mother’s, embracing her whole body, insisting that she wanted to be buried beside her.
30 Jesus will testify to the fact that Paula has left not a single penny to her daughter – in fact, as I have already mentioned, she has left her with a huge debt and (what makes it all the more difficult) a large number of monastic brothers and sisters whom it is hard for her to support but whom she cannot reject. Is there any more remarkable instance of virtue than that of this noble woman who had such strong faith that she gave away so much of what had once been a massive fortune that she was almost reduced to extreme poverty? Others may boast of how much money they have piled high in God’s treasury and hung up as votive offerings with cords of gold: no one gave more to the poor than this woman who left nothing for herself. Now she can enjoy the wealth and good things which neither eye has seen nor ear heard nor have they gone up into the heart of man.134 We may mourn for our situation but if we continue to weep for one who reigns with Christ, we shall seem to be begrudging her the glory she has won.
31 Be confident, Eustochium: you are endowed with a great inheritance. Your share is the Lord and – a source of even greater joy to you – your mother has been crowned for her long martyrdom. It is not only the shedding of blood that is considered a confession: the service performed by a devout mind is also a daily martyrdom. Both are rewarded with a crown – a crown of roses and violets for the former, for the latter a crown of lilies. That is why it is written in the Song of Songs, ‘My lover is white and red’,135 for whether in peace or in war God gives the same prizes to the winners. Like Abraham, your mother heard the words: ‘Go forth from your land and your family and come to the land that I will show you’, and the Lord’s command given through Jeremiah: ‘Flee from the midst of Babylon and save your souls.’136 Till the day of her death she never returned to Chaldaea nor did she long for the fleshpots of Egypt and its juicy meats, but accompanied by her group of virgins she became a fellow citizen of the Saviour. From tiny Bethlehem she has gone up to the kingdom of heaven and can say to the true Naomi, ‘Your people shall be my people and your God my God.’137
32 I have spent two nights of hard work dictating this book for you and suffering the same grief as you. Whenever I wanted to put pen to paper and start writing the work I had promised you, I would find my fingers grow stiff, my hand would fall to my side and my mind lose concentration. The rough style, devoid of any elegance or charm, will give an indication of the writer’s feelings.
33 Farewell, Paula: please pray for me in my final years, I who idolize you. Your faith and your works unite you with Christ and so, face to face with him, you will easily gain what you ask for. I have raised a monument more lasting than bronze138 which the passing of time cannot destroy. I have inscribed a eulogy on your tomb which I include below so that wherever my words go, the reader may see that you have been praised and that you are buried in Bethlehem.
On the tomb is inscribed:
A woman descended from Scipio, whose parents belonged to the Pauli,
A descendant of the Gracchi, the famous offspring of Agamemnon
Lies in this tomb, to whom her parents gave the name Paula.
Mother of Eustochium, leading lady of the Roman senate,
She went to live in rural Bethlehem to follow Christ in poverty.
And on the doors of the cave:
Have you noticed this narrow tomb cut into the rock?
It is the resting place of Paula who dwells in heaven.
Leaving her brother, relations, Rome and her country,
Her wealth and her child, she is buried in a cave in Bethlehem.
Here was your manger, Christ; here the kings
Brought their mystical gifts to him who was king and God.
34 The saintly and blessed Paula died on Tuesday 26 January, after sunset. She was buried on 28 January, during the sixth consulship of the Emperor Honorius and the first of Aristaenetus. She lived the life of holiness she had chosen for five years in Rome and then for twenty years at Bethlehem. She lived for a total of fifty-six years, eight months and twenty-one days.