PAMMACHIUS, St.
A Roman senator of the Furii family, born about the middle of the 4th century and died in 409 during the siege of Rome by Alaric. A cousin of St Marcella, he was a disciple of St Jerome, a friend of St Paulinus of Nola and of St Augustine. In 385 he married Paulina, daughter of the celebrated Paula, who was also a disciple of Jerome.
Probably in 390 he worked together with other Christian nobles to bring the case of Jovinian before Pope Siricius. But in 392, when Jerome sent to Rome his books against the condemned heretic, P. opposed the violent reaction of the Stridonese and tried to withdraw the copies that had been circulated. After the premature death of his wife in 397, P. embraced the ascetic life, not disdaining to appear in the senate-house in the shabby garb of a monk. Paulinus of Nola recalls that on this occasion P. gathered all the poor of Rome to a banquet in the basilica of St Peter, which was not large enough to contain them all, so that the poor occupied even the atrium and the square; for this reason he calls P. “Ecclesiae munerarius” (Ep., 13: PL 61, 213). He distributed his goods to Fabiola (v.) built a great hospice for pilgrims at Porto, at the mouth of the Tiber (Jerome, Epist., 66, 77). Recent excavations have brought to light the plan of the building and various remains. He established in the Caelian the “titulus Pammachii”; indeed, an inscription on the door read: “quis tantas venerandas condidit aedes, si quaeris, cultor Pammacchus fidei” (G. B. De Rossi, *Inscr. chr.*, II, Rome 1888, p. 150). H. Grisar pointed out that the expression “cultor fidei” recurs in the canon of the Mass. In the subscriptions to the Roman Synod of 499 two priests of the “titulus Pammachii” are found, distinct from two others of the “titulus Bizantis” (now SS. Giovanni e Paolo). In 399 he urged