Читать книгу Heroines That Every Child Should Know - Various - Страница 11

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In the city of Rome when its imperial strength had faded, to seek pleasure and to give one's self to display had taken the place of honest work and sober duty. The time of which we speak was the fourth century. Affairs of government had been moved to Constantinople, and the effects of the conduct of great matters in their midst was thus denied the Romans.

The populace, fed for ages on public doles and the terrible gaiety of gladiatorial shows had become thoroughly debased, and unable to work out their own bettering. The persons having riches were likewise degraded by a life of luxury and senseless extravagance. Men of that type aired themselves in lofty chariots, lazily reclining and showing to advantage their carefully curled hair, robes of silk embroidery and tissue of gold, to excite the admiration and envy of plainer livers. Their horses' harness would be covered with ornaments of gold, their coachmen armed with a golden wand instead of whip, and troups of slaves, parasites and other servitors would dance attendance about them. With such display the poor rich creatures would pass through the streets, pushing out of the way or trampling and crushing to the dust whomsoever they might chance to meet—very much as some automobilists act to-day. Brutality and senseless show always are hand in glove with each other.

The rich women of Rome well matched such men. Their very shoes crackled under their feet from excess of gold and silver ornament. Their dresses of cloth-of-gold or other expensive stuff were so heavy that the wearers could hardly walk, even with the aid of attendants. Their faces were often painted and their hair dyed and mounted high on the head in monstrous shapes and designs.

Creeping into such a life as we have just been describing came the pure and simple precepts of Jesus—and they doubtless found many a soul athirst and sick with folly and coarse regard for riches. For years the Christians had been persecuted and many of their number gaining the strength that poverty and persecution bring. In opposition to the luxury-loving spirit, also, had risen among a number an austere denial of all pleasure, and such persons sought a solitary life in a cave or other retired spot. The deserts were mined with caverns and holes in the sand in which hermits dwelt, picking up food as best they might, their bones rattling in a skin blackened by exposure—they were starving, praying and agonising for the salvation of their own souls and for a world sunk in luxury and wickedness.

Now and then one of these hermits would leave his country solitariness and go to some city with a mission of converting vice to virtue. Among these was a man whom we know as Jerome, or Saint Jerome. He was a native of a village on the slope of the Illyrian Alps, and his full name was Eusebius Hieronymus. Inflamed with a zeal for doing great works, loving controversy and harsh and strong in conflict, Jerome sought Rome after years of study and prayer in the desert. In Rome he came to be a frequenter of a palace on the Aventine in which a number of rich and influential women held meetings for Christian teaching and sought a truer and purer life.

Of all these women we best know Paula. No fine lady of that day was more exquisite, more fastidious, more splendid than she. She could not walk abroad without the support of servants, nor cross the marble floor from one silken couch to another, so heavily was gold interwoven in the tissue of her dresses. Her eldest daughter, Blæsilla, a widow at twenty, was a Roman exquisite, loving everything soft and luxurious. It was said of her that she spent entire days before her mirror giving herself to personal decoration—to the tower of curls on her head and the touch of rouge on her cheeks. Paula's second daughter, Paulina, had married a young patrician who was Christian.

The third member of the family, a girl of sixteen, was Eustochium, a character strongly contrasting with her beautiful mother and sister. Even in early years she had fixed her choice upon a secluded life and shown herself untouched by the gaudy luxury about her. And to this the following pretty story will bear witness. An aunt of hers was Prætextata, wife of a high official of the Emperor Julian, and like the Emperor a follower of the old faith in the gods rather than the new faith in the teachings of Jesus. The family of Paula were, however, as we said, Christian.

This aunt Prætextata saw with some impatience and anger what she considered the artificial gravity of her youthful niece, and when she heard that the maid had said she intended never to marry, and purposed to withdraw from the world, she invited Eustochium to her house on a visit. The young vestal donned her brown gown, the habit of humility, and all unsuspicious sought her aunt. She had scarcely found herself within the house, however, before she was seized by favourite maids, who were interested in the plot. They loosed Eustochium's long hair and elaborated it in curls and plaits; they took away her little brown gown and covered her with silk and cloth-of-gold; they hung upon her precious ornaments, and finally led her to the mirror to dazzle her eyes with the reflection she would find in the polished surface.

The little maid with the Greek name and pure heart, let them turn her round and round and praise her fresh and youthful beauty. But she was a girl who knew her mind, and was blessed with a natural seriousness. Her aunt's household she permitted to have their pleasure that day. Then again she donned her little brown gown; and wore the habit all her life.

To return to Jerome: he had hardly arrived in Rome when he was made secretary of a council held in that city by ecclesiastics in the year 382. During his stay he dwelt in the house upon the Aventine in which such women as Paula had been meeting. The little community were now giving up their excessive luxuries and were devoting their time and income to good works, to visiting the poor, tending the sick and founding the first hospitals. To the man of the desert the gentle life must have been more agreeable. In this retreat he accomplished the first portion of his great work, the first authoritative translation of the entire Canon of Scripture—the Vulgate—so named when the Latin of Jerome was the language of the crowd.

But he did not work alone. Paula and other women of the community helped in the translation. They studied with enthusiasm the Scriptures in Hebrew and in Greek; they discussed phrases difficult of understanding, and often held their own opinions against the learned Jerome whose scribes they were willing to be.

Thus began the friendship between Paula and Jerome, which was deepened by the death of Blæsilla. This eldest daughter of Paula had a serious illness. One night, in a dream or vision, Jesus seemed to appear to her and take her by the hand and say, "Arise, come forth." Waking, she seemed to sit at the table like Mary of Bethany. From that night her whole life was changed. She gathered together her embroidered robes and her jewels and sold them for the poor. Instead of torturing her head with a mitre of curls, she wore a simple veil. A woollen cord, dark linen gown and common shoes replaced the gold embroidered girdle, the glistening silks and the golden-heeled shoes. She slept upon a hard couch. Like others of her family she was finely intelligent, and she became one of the "apprentices" of Jerome, who wrote for her a commentary on the book of Ecclesiastes, "Vanity of Vanities."

Her conversion was enduring, but her health failed. In a few months another attack of fever laid her low. Her funeral was magnificent. Paula, according to Roman custom, accompanied her child's body to the tomb of her ancestors, wild with grief, lamenting, and, at last, fainting, so that she was borne away as one dead.

The people were enraged. They accused Jerome, and other "detestable monks" of killing the young widow with austerities. "Let them," they said; "be stoned and thrown into the Tiber."

For days Paula wept and refused to see her friends. Jerome, because he had understood, loved and reverenced her child, she consented to admit. Paula listened to his telling her that she "refused nourishment not from love of fasting, but from love of sorrow"; that "the spirit of God descends only upon the humble," and she arose and went forth. Nothing ever interrupted the friendship which from that time made the joy of her life and of Jerome's.

It was in the summer of 385, nearly three years after his coming to Rome, and not a year after the death of Blæsilla, that Jerome left "Babylon," as he called the tumultuous city. An affectionate company followed him to the seaport. Soon after Paula prepared for her departure, dividing her patrimony among her children. Her daughter, Paulina, was now married to a good and faithful husband, and these two undertook the charge and rearing of their youngest sister and the little Toxotius, a boy of ten. The grave young Eustochium, her head now covered by the veil of the devotee, clung to her mother's side, a serene figure in the midst of all the misunderstanding and agitation of the parting.

Friends poured forth from the city to accompany them to the port, and all the way along the winding banks of the Tiber they plied Paula with entreaties and reproaches and tears. She made no answer. She was at all times slow to speak, the chronicle tells us. She freighted a ship at the port, Ostia, and retained her self-command until the vessel began to move from the shore where stood her son Toxotius stretching out his hands to her in last appeal, and by his side his sister Rufina, with wistful eyes. Paula's heart was like to burst. She turned her eyes away, unable to bear the sight, and would have fallen but for the support of the firm Eustochium standing by her mother's side.

The rich Roman lady, luxury-loving, had become a pilgrim. She had, however, according to the interpretation of the Christian spirit of that day, in renouncing her former life and all its belongings, set aside natural ties. Now she was going forth to make herself a home in the solitude of Bethlehem.

Her ship was occupied by her own party alone, and carried much baggage for this emigration for life. It came, hindered by no storms, to Cyprus, where old friends received Paula with honour, and conducted her to visit monks and nuns in their new establishments. She afterward proceeded to Antioch, where Jerome joined the party, and then along the coast of Tyre and Sidon, by Herod's splendid city of Cæsarea and by Joppa rich with memories of the early apostles of their faith. Paula, the pilgrim, was no longer a tottering fine lady, but a strong, animated, interested traveller.

The little company continued on their tour for a year. They first paused, at Jerusalem, and here the tender, enthusiasm of Paula found its fullest expression. She went in a rapture of tears and exaltation from one to another of the sacred sites. She kissed the broken stone which was supposed to have been that rolled against the door of the Holy Sepulchre, and trod with pious awe the path to the cave where the True Cross was found. The legend of Helena's finding the cross was still fresh in those days, and doubts there were none.

The ecstasies and joy of Paula, which found their expression in rapturous prayers and tears, moved all Jerusalem. The city was thronged with pilgrims, and the great Roman lady became their wonder. The crowd followed her from point to point, marvelling at her frank emotion and the warmth of her natural feeling.

From Jerusalem the party set out to journey through the storied deserts of Syria. This was in the year 387. They stopped everywhere to visit those monasteries built in awful passes of the rocks and upon stony wastes that the penance of the indwellers might be the greater. They found shelter with tanned and weather-beaten hermits in their holes and caverns. They poured upon them enthusiastic admiration, and shared with them their Arab bread and clotted milk, and also gave many an alm. Paula fascinated by the desert, would stay there and found a convent. But Jerome prevailed upon her to turn toward Jerusalem.

Thus they came to green Bethlehem, and the calm sweetness of the place and its pleasant fields smote their hearts. Here they determined to settle and build two convents—Jerome's upon the hill near the western gate and Paula's upon the smiling level below. He is said to have sold all that he had, and all that his brother, his faithful and constant companion, had, to gain money for the expense of his building. Paula, doubtless, had ample means from her former great wealth. Indeed, after her own was builded she had two other convents put up near by, and these were soon filled with devotees.

Also, she built a hospice for the reception of travellers, so that, as she said with tender smile and tears in eyes, "If Joseph and Mary should return to Jerusalem, they might be sure of finding room for them in the inn." This gentle speech shines like a gleam of light upon the little holy city, and shows us the noble, natural kindness of Paula, and how profoundly she had been moved by associations to her most sacred and holy. Every poor pilgrim passing her door must to her sympathetic heart have had some semblance to that simple pair who carried the Light of the World to David's little town among the hills.

Paula now laying aside wholly the luxurious habits of her life, set the example of simple and industrious living by washing floors and cleaning lamps and other household work. But she was far from ceasing her studies.

Jerome every day laboured at his great translation, and Paula and Eustochium copied, compared and criticised his daily labours. A great part of the Vulgate he had completed in Rome. His two friends had, doubtless, shared his studies during their long journey. They now read with him every day a portion of the Scriptures in the original; and it was at their entreaty and with their help that he began the translation of the Psalms. The following is a sympathetic description of the method of this work as it was carried out in the rocky chamber at Bethlehem, or in the convent close by: