**ASEITA** (Lat. *aestas*, from *a se* “from itself, by itself”). — The property of a reality that does not derive its being from another. In Christian philosophy, *aestas* is an exclusive perfection of God, the undivided and unparticipated Being, existing by and for itself. According to the teaching of some Thomists, *aestas* would also indicate the metaphysical nature of God: understood as that fundamental note of the divine essence which, according to the human way of knowing, is the first root of the distinction between God and every created being, and the foundation of all His other attributes. However, according to the more genuine Thomistic thought, the prevailing doctrine places the metaphysical essence of God in the pure actuality of the divine being “subsisting by itself.” It is this infinity and self-subsistence of the divine being that, for us, grounds and explains His *aestas*.
The opposite of *aestas* in scholastic terminology is the term *abaletas* (*ab alio* “from another”).
Luigi Bellofiore
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**ASELLA, Saint.** — Roman virgin, died at the beginning of the 5th century. St. Jerome greatly praises her, making known in his letter to Marcella (384) her severe life of penance. Asella consecrated herself to God from her earliest youth; she lived in a small room from which she never departed, leading a life of continual fasting. In 386, while already on the ship traveling to Bethlehem, Jerome wrote to Asella in his own defense against the slanders spread against him in Rome. She was still alive in 405, and nothing is known of her death; the date of her feast on December 6 was established by the martyrologists of the late 15th century.
Cesario van Hulst