FABIOLE. - Her biographer is St. Jerome in his letter to Oceanus, written precisely on the occasion of F.'s death. Of the most noble family of the Fabii, having gone as a young bride to a dissolute man, she divorced him in order to enter a new marriage. On the death of her second husband she acknowledged her sins, abandoned her comforts and her sumptuous garments, and on Holy Saturday presented herself among the penitents in the atrium of the Lateran basilica in the presence of the pope, the clergy and all the people. She put her estates and her jewels up for sale in order to devote herself entirely to works of charity.
She founded in Rome the first hospital, exerting herself personally in all the humblest services; she supported monasteries, clothed the poor not only in Rome but among the Volsci and on all the islands of the Tyrrhenian Sea; she contended with Pammachius for the privilege of opening a hospice for pilgrims at Porto. Having gone to Palestine, she took advantage of St. Jerome's teaching for the study of the prophets, the Gospels and the Psalms (St. Jerome, Ep. 64: PL 22, 608), but, when news arrived of the incursions of the barbarians, she returned to Rome, where she died in 399. St. Jerome closed his letter by repeating the sentence of St. Paul Ubi autem abundavit delictum, superbundavit gratia (Ad Romanos, 5).
Bibliography
Enrico Josi