MARCELLA, Saint. – A noble Roman widow, disciple of St Jerome. Born around 335, while still very young she met St Athanasius (339 or 340) and the two monks who had accompanied him to Rome, Ammonius and Isidore. From them Marcella heard the marvellous tales of the desert, peopled with solitaries, and from Athanasius she received as a gift the Life of St Anthony, which he himself had written, Anthony still living in the Thebaid.
After seven months of marriage she was widowed, refused to marry the wealthy Cerealis, and established an oratory in her own palace on the Aventine. In 374 her resolve was confirmed by the monk Peter, who had come from Egypt. Other women of the Roman aristocracy followed her example, forming on the Aventine the first monastic community in the broad sense of which there is record in Rome.
From 382 to 385 St Jerome became their spiritual director, resolving day by day the difficulties they encountered in reading the sacred texts. Jerome dedicated to Marcella a book of sixteen letters (De viris illustribus, CXXXV; Ad Marcellam epistularum liber unus).
After Jerome’s departure for the East, the community on the Aventine gradually dispersed; Marcella at first retired with Principia to a villa in the suburbs. Between 400 and 403 she worked energetically with Pammachius and Oceanus, with Pope Anastasius, for the condemnation of Origen.
In 410 she witnessed the sack of Rome; struck by Alaric’s soldiers because they found no wealth as they had hoped, she nevertheless obtained permission to accompany Principia to the basilica of St Paul, where a few days later she died in her arms. Jerome composed her eulogy in a letter to Principia (Ep. 127; PL 22). Her feast is commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on 31 January.