PAOLA ROMANA, saint. – Born in Rome on 5 May 347 to a Christian patrician family. At about fifteen she married Tossozio, a pagan but tolerant man, by whom she had five children: Blesilla, Paolina, Eustochio, Rufina, and Tossozio. Although pious and merciful by nature, P. indulged in the luxury of an aristocratic life. At the age of thirty-one,
having been widowed, she felt moved to MARCELLA, SANTA (v.). Eustochio followed her mother and became a devoted disciple of Marcella.
P.’s household thus gathered together a family of women—her friends, servants, and dependants—bound by the holy resolve which, as an embryo of monastic vows, was then regarded as the sublimation of baptismal vows. S. Girolamo, having returned to Rome in 382 and remaining there until the death of Pope Damaso, became in a sense the spiritual father and teacher of Sacred Scripture of Marcella’s community. P. too attended his admirable lessons, and in that school, after Hebrew, distinguished herself by her progress in biblical scholarship. P.’s daughter, Blesilla, widowed after barely seven months of marriage, after much hesitation converted to her mother’s ideal, and the intensity of her penitential life hastened her death (November 384), followed shortly afterwards by that of Pope Damaso. Girolamo saw the wave of popular and Roman clerical discontent rising against him; he had particularly criticised them in the letter XXI ad Eustochium, and in August 385 he departed for the East.
With that departure, P. felt her desire grow to spend the remainder of her life in the Holy Land and to found a cenobium there. With great sorrow she left her family—Paolina was married to Pammachio, Rufina was shortly to be married, and the still young Tossozio was entrusted to Paolina—and with Eustochio she sailed (autumn 385) for Salamis, where she was the guest of Epifanio. From there she went to Antioch, as the guest of Paolino. From Antioch, although it was winter, she set out with Girolamo for Jerusalem and visited Palestine. The following spring they travelled to Egypt, where, in Alexandria, they attended the lectures of Didimo il Cieco. They continued their journey through the deserts of Nitria and Arsenoe in order to establish contact and gain experience with the great monastic movement. Returning to the Holy Land, P. took up permanent residence at Bethlehem in the summer. There, at her expense, three buildings arose: one as a hospice for pilgrims, another as a cenobium for s. Girolamo and his companions, and the third for P. herself and her religious women. The latter was dedicated to s. Caterina of Alexandria and protected by an enclosing wall and a tower.
The religious women, according to the Pachomian system, were divided into three groups according to social class—noblewomen, slaves, and those of intermediate status—with their own houses and superiors; they came together in the common chapel. Their occupations were the making of clothing for themselves and for the poor, liturgical prayer (Matins, Terce, Sext, None, and Vespers), and the study of Sacred Scripture.
Life in P.’s cenobium was strict: never any meat or wine, except for the sick; the same woollen habit for all; linen only for towels. P., knowing how to temper severity and gentleness in a Roman manner, attracted religious women to herself from every part of the Empire. Her death followed that of all her children except Eustochio: it occurred on 26 January 404. She was then fifty-six years old. She was buried beside the Holy Grotto of the Nativity. She was succeeded in the administration of the monastery by Eustochio and then by her niece Paola, daughter of Tossozio and Leta. Her feast is on 26 January.