EUSTOCHIUM, Saint. - Third-born daughter of the illustrious Roman matron Paula and of the senator Toxotius, she consecrated herself to God while still very young. The first information concerning her is directly linked to the second Roman sojourn of St. Jerome (382-85). It was precisely in the house of Marcella on the Aventine, by then become the spiritual center of the City, that the girl met for the first time the holy doctor, who had recently arrived from the East with St. Epiphanius and St. Paulinus of Antioch. E. soon became the center of Jerome's attentions, for whom, at her mother's request, he wrote the admirable 22nd letter De custodia virginitatis, rightly called the canon of virginity.
In the spring of 386, together with her mother, she left Rome for the East: they reached Jerome at Antioch and, after visiting the most famous monasteries of Egypt and the Holy Places of Palestine, they settled definitively at Bethlehem, leading there a strictly ascetic life. E., who knew Greek and Latin perfectly, in a short time succeeded in mastering Hebrew as well, so that Jerome could have in her a valuable aid in the transcription of codices. Later the master dedicated to her the commentaries on Isaiah and on Ezekiel. After the death of Paula (404), of whom Jerome wrote an affectionate epitaph, she herself assumed the governance of the women's monastery founded by her mother, which she directed for a period of fifteen years. Finally in 419, barely a year before the death of the master, she too passed away serenely in the land that had witnessed the birth of the Redeemer.
Bibliography4 works
Emanuele Romanelli