cristianización en el siglo iv y la conversión de mujeres
TRANSCRIPT
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Christianization in the Fourth Century
The Example of Roman Women
ANNE YARBROUGH
At the beginning of the fourth century the Roman aristocracy was for themost part pagan in its religious attitude1 By the end of that century the aristocracy had undergone what Peter Brown has described as a sea change itspagan values had become redefined within the context of Christianity2 This driftinto respectable Christianity was the result of the process of socialization in thehouseholds of the Roman senatorial class over several generations Brown suggests that the fourth-century Christianization of the aristocracy was the achievement of those upper-class Roman women who by continuing to practice their Chris
tian religion in the households of their pagan husbands established the syncretisticmilieu which would influence the religious attitudes of the next generation Butthe apparent calm of Browns anonymous culture-bearers is disturbed by a smallgroup of women whose religious extremism delineates them sharply from theirpeers Rejecting wholly the society into which they were born they fled thecloying Roman atmosphere for the harsh air of the desert The respectable Christianity that Rome was adopting offered them no satisfaction
This paper will attempt to modify Browns somewhat benign and impressionistic sketch of Christian aristocratic Roman women in the fourth century It
will consider the cluster of ascetic women who stand out in sharp relief againstthat background It will analyze the social bonds that held these women together then it will deal with the relationship between members of the group and theirown immediate families Having treated her immediate environment the paperwill describe a composite ascetic woman by considering the necessary elements ofher asceticism Finally it will consider the effect of the group on its society
For clarity the paper includes two stemmata The first shows the familialrelationships among most of the women who will be discussed8 The second is aspiritual stemma indicating schematically the web of influences among the women
and their relationships to some major figures of the fourth-century church Theyare as follows
1 For Roman aristocratic paganism in the course of the fourth century see AHM JonesThe Social Background of the Struggle between Paganism and Christianity in TheConflict Between Paganism and Chrstfonity in the Fourth Century ed A Momigliano (Oxford Clarendon Press 1963) pp 17-37 H Bloch The Pagan Bevival in theWest at the End of the Fourth Century ibid pp 193-217 JA McGeachy QuintusAurelius Symmachus and the Senatorial Aristocracy of the West (Ph D diss University of Chicago 1942) F Paschoud Boma Aeterna Etudes sur le patriotisme Bomain
dans Voccident Latin a Vepoque des grands invasions (Borne Institut Suisse de Borne1967)
2 PBL Brown Aspects of the Christianization of the Boman Aristocracy Journal of Boman Studies 51 (1961) 4
3 The first stemma is taken from A Chastagnoicirc Le seacutenateur Volusien et la conversiondune famille de laristocratie Bomaine au bas-empire Beacutevue des Etudes Anciennes 58(1956) 249 for the Caeionii from F X Murphy Melania the Elder A Biographical
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150 CHURCH HISTORY
STEMMA OF THE CAEIONII FAMILY
C Caeionius Ruf ius Volusianusconsul 311 and 314
Caeionius Ruf ius Albinusconsul 335 and 345
C Caeionius RufiusVolusianus Lampadiuspraefectus populi 355praefectus urbis 365m Caecinia Lolliana
AVbina ght
Marcella
a daughter
Asella Pammachius
IC Rufius
Albinuspraefectus
urbis 389-391m a Christian
ILollianad 371
Publilius CCaecina Albinuspontifex Vestaeconsul of Numidia365m a Christian
CaeioniusVolusianus
Albinam Valerius
Publicoacutela
RufiusAntonius
A Volusianuspraefectus
urbis 417-418praefectus
populi 428-429Caecina Decius
Albinuspraefectus urbis
402
CaeioniusC Gregorius
Valeria Melaniam Valerius Pinianus
Sabina Runtildea
Laetam JuliusToxotius
Paula
PARTIAL STEMMA OF MELANIA THE ELDER
Antonius Marcellinusconsul 341 Pontius Paulinuspraef Gall
Ant Marcellinus m Pontia Paulina
the
Pontius Paulinus of Nola
Melania the Elderm Valerius Maximus
Valerius Publicoacutela m Caeonia Albina
Valeria Melania junior
P A R T I A L S T E M M A O P P A U L A
Rogatus m Blessilla
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152 CHURCH HISTORY
Christian asceticism both evoked and answered in its aristocratic converts a sense
of dissatisfaction excitement and a longing for escape There was an uneasiness
in Rome in the late fourth century Though those aristocrats who slid into
Browns respectable Christianity were not noticeably affected by it the un-easiness is reflected in these ascetic women
THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND AND MILIEU OF THE ASCETIC WOMEN
Through their husbands and fathers this group of ascetic women shared a
position in the inner aristocracy of the senatorial order8 Since the reforms of
Diocletian and Constantine the senatorial order had no longer been a rigidly strati-
fied hierarchy solely dependent on hereditary position A nobility of service had
been infused into the nobility of blood The infusion of new men was due to the
power struggle between emperor and senate a struggle which was perceived as a
contest between Christianity and paganism9 By opening up new channels of mo-
bility by introducing into the senate both the achieving members of the lower
social strata and men of good but provincial families the emperor attempted to
mitigate the opposition of a hitherto monolithic institution The nobility of serv-
ice was a vehicle for the Christianization of the senatorial order The inner
aristocracy consisted both of the old nobility of blood and the most successful
members of the nobility of service In either case membership in this most elite
circle could be recognized by the possession of the consulship or of the urban
prefecture10
The number of their relatives who held the offices of consul or urban prefect
indicates that the ascetic women belonged to the families of the inner aristocracy11
The father of Albina the Elder held the consulship both in 335 and in 345 1 2
her
grandfather was consul in 311 and in 3141S
He r nephew the father of Albina the
Younger and the grandfather of Melania the Younger was urban prefect from
389 to 39114
The brother of Albina the Younger was Volusianus who held
among other offices the office of urban prefect from 417 to 41815
Melania the
Elder was the daughter of a consul her grandfathers were consul in 341 and
prefect of Gaul 1 β
her husband was urban prefect from 361 to 36317
8 See AHM Jones The Later Soman Empire (Norman Oklahoma University of Okla-homa Press 1964) 1523983085563 for an analysis of the structure of the senatorial aristocracyHe notes (p 529) that the legal rank of an aristocratic woman depended on the rank ofher husband or father S Mazzarino The End of the Ancient World (New York AlfredKnopf 1966) pp 131983085132 also considers this point
9 M K Hopkins Elite Mobility in the Roman Empire Past and Present 32 (1965)1298308526 complements Jones description of the senatorial order but suggests that socialmobility could be recognized before the reforms of the emperors Aside from imperialmachinations he believes that a second reason for social mobility was the aristocraticethos itself which stressed achievement as well as hereditary status and therefore re-quired that the aristocracy remain open to men of skiil In his Social Mobility in theLater Roman Empire The Evidence of Ausonius Classical Quarterly 11 (1961) 246983085247 he offers an example of his theory
10 Jones Later Boman Empire p 55011 Secondary sources considering their relations soeial positions are Chastagnol pp 241983085253 for the Caeionii Murphy Melania the Elder pp 6198308562 Gibbon Decline andFall of the Boman Empire chap 31 gi es some consideration to the nobilt of Pa las
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 158
It is probable that the membership of these womens families in the inneraristocracy was by virtue of their position in the old nobility of blood rather thanin the new nobility of service At least three of their male relatives were members of Symmachus reactionary pagan circle18 In addition Jerome and Paulinusof Nola described these women in terms of their ancient lineages
19 Such claims of
a long and exalted lineage may have been tenuous but they did reflect a socialreality The members of that nucleus of families which made these claims regarded themselves and were accepted as aristocrats of the bluest blood
20 A sum
mary of familial ties suggests that these women belonged to the elite of the senatorial order through lineage rather than through achievement only But in the attempt to reconstruct their social background certain lacunae appear at crucialpoints and force a slight qualification of this conclusion
The brother of Albina the Elder who was urban prefect in 365 was marriedto a priestess of Isis
21 They had four sons and two daughters none of whom is
known to have been Christian Two of the sonsmdashboth portrayed in MacrobiusSaturnaliamdashmarried Christian women whose names and families are unknownTheir marriages produced respectively Albina the Younger who married the sonof Melania the Elder and whose daughter was Melania the Younger and Laetawho married the son of Paula and whose daughter was Paula the Younger Theidentity of the mothers of Albina the Younger and Laeta is crucial in attemptingto determine the social background of these aristocratic households The fact that
they are unnamed suggests that they were members either of the rising social strataof new men who were frequently Christian or that they were like the motherof Melania the Elder members of the provincial aristocracy The presence of bothgroups in the senatorial order of the late fourth century makes either of these possibilities likely The social background of the ascetic women is not yet completely understood While they were all members of the inner aristocracy it is possible that some of them were also the daughters or granddaughters of marriagesthat were mixed socially as well as religiously
The social environment of Roman aristocratic women in this period has beenmemorably described both by Ammianus Marcellinus
22 and by Jerome especially
in his letter on virginity addressed to Eustochium28 They describe a society ofidle and wealthy women living in a ghetto peopled by children servants andsycophants The frustrated productivity of these aristocratic women sought outlets in what has been described as the competitive salon culture
24 They seem
18 Chastagnol p 24719 Jerome Epistulae (Corpus Soriptorum Eoclesiasticorum Latinorum [hereafter C8EL] edi-
tum Consilio et impenois Academiae Litterarum Caesarae Vindobonensis v 55) Ep 10815-8 describes Paula as Nobilis genere sed multo nobicirclior aanctitate Graccho-rum stirps suboles Scipionus Pauli hegraveres cuius vocabulum trahit Ibid Ep 127 Ne-que vero Marcellam tuam immo meam et ut verius loquar nostrani omniumque sanctorumet proprie Bomanae urbis inclitum decus institutes rhetorum praedicabo ut exponam il
lustrem familiam alti sanguinis decus et stemmata per coacutensules et praefectos practoriodecurrentia Ibid Ep 77 29-15 on Fabiola ordine rhetorum praetermisso tota deconversionis ac paenitentiae incunabulis adsumenda Alius forsitan scholae memor QuintumMaximum Unus qui nobis cunctando restitutit rem et totam Fabriorum gentem pro
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154 CHURCH HISTORY
to have filled up their days by constantly vying among themselves for social prestige
[The widows] houses are full of flatterers full of guests The very clergy
whose teaching and authority ought to inspire respect kiss these ladies on the fore
head and then stretch out their handmdashyou would think if you did not know that
they were giving a benedictionmdashto receive the fee for their visit The women
meanwhile seeing that priests need their help are lifted up with pride25 This
feminine society mirrored the complexity of the male senatorial order and its own
complexity appears to have been long-established The mother of the emperor
Elagabalus (218-222) had established a little senate of ladies26 whose purpose
was to determine the proper relations among the women of the Roman aristocracy
The spirit of this unique institution appears to have descended upon the women
of the mid-fourth century The group of ascetic women whom we are considering
must be defined against the background of the competitive salon culture
CONVERSION TO ASCETICISM FAMILIAL OPPOSITION
The present group of ascetic women had more in common than social status Of
those for whom evidence is available it is clear that they came from families
where Christianity was already an influence But in spite of the presence of Chris
tian influence there is a pattern of familial opposition to their conversion to
asceticism Familial opposition sheds some light on the aristocratic family of the
fourth century two of the primary duties of children to their families it seems
were the transmission of familial wealth to the next generation and the continua
tion of the lineage itself Conversions to asceticism were inimical to the fulfillment of these responsibilities At least for these two reasons the typical conver
sion to the ascetic life was accomplished in spite of the strenuous objections of the
family
Among the women of the two earlier generations the question of Christian
influence within the family cannot always be answered It is unknown whether
the mother of Albina the Elder was a Christian or whether there was any Chris
tian in her family It is also unknown whether Paulas parents Rogatus and Bles-
silla were Christians Albinas own daughters did grow up as Christians how
ever and Melania the Elder was the daughter of a Christian mother27 In thethird generation of ascetic women Paulas daughters had grown up as Christians
In the fourth generation Melania the Younger and Paula the Younger were both
the daughters and granddaughters of Christian women Nevertheless opposition
to the proposed conversion occurred in five out of seven instances Albina the
Elder wanted her daughter Marcella to remarry when her first husband died after
only seven months of marriage An old but wealthy and aristocratic man promised
to will her his fortune if she would marry him and her mother Albina was ex
cessively anxious to secure so illustrious a protector for the widowed household28
Marcellas sister Asella though she had been dedicated by her parents tovirginity encountered familial opposition in her determination to pursue that
lif
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 155
mother had never been willing that she should wear she concluded her pious
enterprise by consecrating herself forthwith to the Lord She thus showed her
relatives that they need hope to wring no further concessions from one who
by her very dress had condemned the world29
Paula was not only a Christian but herself a convert to asceticism But Jeromes
letter to her on the death of her daughter Blessilla indicates that she had been
opposed to Blessillas conversion to asceticism after the death of her husband
When you were carried fainting out of the funeral procession whispers such as
these were audible in the crowd Is not this what we have often said She weeps
for her daughter killed with fasting She wanted her to marry again that she
might have grandchildren 30 In the same letter Jerome speaks for Blessilla de
scribing her happiness after death He concludes Many other things does she
say which I pass over here she prays also to God for you For me too I feelsure she makes intercession and asks God to pardon my sins in return for the
warnings and advice that I bestowed on her when to assure her salvation I braved
the ill-will of her familylaquo
On the other hand Paula actively supported the ascetic tendencies of her
daughter Eustochium When she sailed for Jerusalem leaving the rest of her
family behind she concentrated herself quietly upon Eustochium alone the part
ner alike of her vows and of her voyage82
He r opposition to conversion seems
to have been similar to Albinas each opposed the conversion of the last re
maining daughter both of whom they had previously married off Marcella was
Albinas only daughter aside from the already dedicated Asella One of Paulas
other three daughters Rogata had died and her daughter Paulina lived chastely
with her Christian husband Aside from the son Toxotius then Blessilla was the
only child who might have conceived the next generation Albinas opposition to
Marcellas conversion was not couched in terms of Marcellas duty to provide
grandchildren but it was based on Albinas view of Marcellas duty to her family
Both of these mothers seem to have realized that at least one daughter should
take upon herself the familial responsibilities that converts to asceticism denied
The decision of Melania the Elder to embrace the ascetic life was made after
the death of her husband and two of her three young children Paulinus of Nolawrote Many were her skirmishes down to the very elements in this warfare
against the vengeful dragon For the whole force of her noble relatives armed
to restrain her attempted to change her proposal and to obstruct her passage33
The conversion of Melania the Elders granddaughter and namesake more than
any other conversion indicates the familial responsibilities which bound the child
to the parent and which were rejected by the ascetic Melania was an only
child though she may have had a brother who died in childhood34 Her father
Valerius Publicoacutela had been the only surviving son of Melania the Elder Her
mother Albina the Younger had had one brother Volusianus who did not marryMelania was therefore the last member of these branches of two aristocratic fami-
29 Jer Ep 24 3 Eng tr in Nieene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2d scr 643
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156 CHURCH HISTORY
lies She was anxious to embrace the life of her grandmother85
but her parentsexpected her to produce children to whom the wealth of the family would betransmitted and in whom the lineage would continue
6 After her marriage she
produced first a daughter who was dedicated to God as a virgin at the time ofher birth Subsequently she gave birth to a son on whose shoulders the continuation of the line would presumably fall Both children died in infancy after theirdeaths Melania prevailed upon her husband to live chastely with her They bothbegan to sell all their property so that they might undertake the ascetic life Theiraction met with fierce opposition from Melanias parents who attempted to bringlegal action against the two on the grounds that they were still minors Melaniasbrother-in-law Severus also attempted to block the sale of his brothers portionof family wealth The situation eventually elicited the intervention of Serena wife
of Stilicho and sister of the emperor Honorius The support of Honorious fortheir cause finally discouraged the opposition which had been brewing among theentire Roman aristocracy
8T
The Vita S Melmiae in particular suggests the opposition that the conversion to asceticism could arouse in the aristocracy as a whole The reason for suchopposition could lie in the fact that by dispersing a significant amount of aristocraticwealth Melania irrevocably diminished the wealth of the next aristocratic generation Hopkins points out that the only socially approved means of obtainingwealth were through inheritance dowry and the rewards of government office
88 Since office was usually held for only a few years inheritance and dowry
were the two real possibilities of income The total amount of Roman aristocraticwealth therefore had no way of ever increasing significantly it could be exchangedamong families through marriage but there was no external source of income thatwould make the aristocracy richer It could only become poorer Melanias actionwas a scandal because it threatened the financial basis not only of her own familybut of her entire class
Aside from the inheritance of property the continuation of the family itselfmay have been an issue in the conversioacuten of Melania the Younger as it was inthe conversion of Blessilla In this connection Chastagnol suggests II semble que
les pegraveres de famille ont tenu agrave maintenir la tradition pour leur principal heacuteritieret que faisant la part du feu ils ont abondonneacute leurs autres enfants agrave linfluencede leurs eacutepouses
89
Chastagnols stemma corroborates his conclusion In families where themother was Christian and the father pagan the oldest son seems to have beendesignated the inheritor of family tradition and responsibilities Julius Toxotiusthe only son of Paula and her husband remained a pagan until he was convertedby his Christian wife
40 Laeta herself the daughter of a mixed marriage had
two brothers the older urban prefect in 402 was certainly considered the in
heritor of the pagan tradition He was portrayed as a character in the Saturnalia35 Gerontius does not mention Melania the Elder but PaUadius The LauMao History
tr B T Meyer (London Longmans Green and Co 1965) says that Melania the Elder
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 157
along with his father and his uncle Albina the Younger was also the daughterof a mixed marriage Her brother Volusianus remained a pagan up to the timeof his death when he was converted
To push Chastagnols suggestion one step further not only was a male childdesignated as the inheritor of the male pagan aspect of family tradition but it wasconsidered undesirable for more than one daughter to be dedicated to the asceticlife The examples of Blessilla and Melania the Younger indicate that there wasa desire for at least one daughter to marry and have children Chastagnols pattern of male inheritance of the pagan tradition seems to have been mirrored by afemale inheritance of the Christian tradition Paula and Albina the Younger musthave expected that their granddaughters would be Christian The Christian mother then had a reason of her own for wishing to have only one ascetic daughter
THE NATURE OF THE ASCETIC LIFE
The most dramatic form of asceticism and the type most frequently associatedwith the women of fourth-century Rome because of Jeromes descriptions of itwas the flight to the desert But there was a second type of asceticism in fourth-century Rome which was more congruent with the aristocratic tradition of thephilosophic life
Jerome mentions Marcella Asella and Lea as maintaining the ascetic life inRome
41 Marcella and Lea founded religious monasteries in the city where they
gave themselves over to fasting and prayer living simply and charitably Marcella had introduced a new kind of religious life into Rome At that time no greatlady knew anything of the monastic life nor ventured to call herself a nun Thething itself was strange and the name was commonly accounted ignominious anddegrading
42 But Marcella who had learned from Athanasius about the life of
Anthony and about the monasteries founded by Pachomius and of the disciplinelaid down there for virgins and widows took up the monastic life in Rome Herexample was followed by other aristocratic women among whom were Paula andher daughter Eustochium Marcella as the center of what was probably an informal group of practicing ascetics moved her household to a farm near Rome
the country being chosen because of its loneliness43
She lived there with theother women who had joined her company until her death soon after the sack ofRome in 410
The life of retirement away from Rome was a traditional alternative for thearistocracy Peter Brown describes its development in the late fourth century
The tradition of otium had taken on a new lease of life It had become more complex and often far more earnest On their great estates in Sicily the lastpagan senators continued to re-edit manuscripts of the classics Many hadcome to think that this essentially private life might be organized as a community Indeed some of the first monasteries in the West were these laymonasteries of sensitive pagans and Christians44
Augustine looked upon his retirement to Cassiciacum in the autumn of 386 as a
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158 CHURCH HISTORY
flight to the desert Like Augustine Marcella adapted a convention of the pagan
aristocratic life to her own Christian use
But it is desert asceticism which comes to mind in connection with Jerome
and his spiritual daughters The Eastern ascetic Ufe was embraced by PaulaEustochium and Paula the Younger by Melania the Elder and by Melania the
Younger Their asceticism was dominated by one concern to preserve a singular
attachment to God In order to achieve this goal they practiced detachment from
the world through physical deprivation poverty of spirit and a life of virginity or
chastity At the same time that they struggled to flee the world they strengthened
their attachment to God by the study of scripture and by their passion for the his-
torical concrete elements of the Christian tradition Like their other achievements
the ascetics scorn for their bodies was dramatic Jerdme describes Paulas practice
of the ascetic life As often too as she was troubled by bodily weakness (broughton by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings) she would be heard to
say Ί keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means
when I have preached to others I myself should be cast983085away 4 5
When Melania
the Elder returned to Italy for a short visit after twenty983085five years in Jerusalem
she was met by her children and grandchildren Their short trip from Naples to
Nola was described by Paulinus She sat on a tiny thin horse worth less than
any ass and they attended her on the journey their trappings emphasizing the
extraordinary contrast Be sure that there is such divine strength in that
weak woman that she finds refreshment in fasting repose in prayer bread in the
Word clothing in rags 46
Physical poverty was akin to poverty of the spirit since both were seen as
means of preserving detachment from the world In his letter on the life of Paula
Jerome describes her great humility
Humility is the first of Christian graces and hers was so pronounced that one
who had never seen her and who on account of her celebrity had desired to
see her would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of maids When
she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remark-
able in dress in speech in gesture and in gait47
Subjection of the body and of the spirit were both important elements in the con-cept of chastity The preservation of chasity more than anything else was con-
sidered by Jerome as the essence of worldly detachment His letter to Eustochium
on virginity compares the life of the virgin to the life of the married woman
The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy
both in the body and in spirit but she that is married cares for the things of the
world how she may please her husband48
The condition of virginity influences
every aspect of a womans behavior she is modest in all things she rejects the
society of married women and avoids any situation that might compromise her
status40
Through physical and spiritual poverty and through the life of chastity theascetic woman sought to put aside worldly concerns so that she might concentrate
ll h tt ti G d Th f J i l ht G d th h
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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^ s
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150 CHURCH HISTORY
STEMMA OF THE CAEIONII FAMILY
C Caeionius Ruf ius Volusianusconsul 311 and 314
Caeionius Ruf ius Albinusconsul 335 and 345
C Caeionius RufiusVolusianus Lampadiuspraefectus populi 355praefectus urbis 365m Caecinia Lolliana
AVbina ght
Marcella
a daughter
Asella Pammachius
IC Rufius
Albinuspraefectus
urbis 389-391m a Christian
ILollianad 371
Publilius CCaecina Albinuspontifex Vestaeconsul of Numidia365m a Christian
CaeioniusVolusianus
Albinam Valerius
Publicoacutela
RufiusAntonius
A Volusianuspraefectus
urbis 417-418praefectus
populi 428-429Caecina Decius
Albinuspraefectus urbis
402
CaeioniusC Gregorius
Valeria Melaniam Valerius Pinianus
Sabina Runtildea
Laetam JuliusToxotius
Paula
PARTIAL STEMMA OF MELANIA THE ELDER
Antonius Marcellinusconsul 341 Pontius Paulinuspraef Gall
Ant Marcellinus m Pontia Paulina
the
Pontius Paulinus of Nola
Melania the Elderm Valerius Maximus
Valerius Publicoacutela m Caeonia Albina
Valeria Melania junior
P A R T I A L S T E M M A O P P A U L A
Rogatus m Blessilla
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152 CHURCH HISTORY
Christian asceticism both evoked and answered in its aristocratic converts a sense
of dissatisfaction excitement and a longing for escape There was an uneasiness
in Rome in the late fourth century Though those aristocrats who slid into
Browns respectable Christianity were not noticeably affected by it the un-easiness is reflected in these ascetic women
THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND AND MILIEU OF THE ASCETIC WOMEN
Through their husbands and fathers this group of ascetic women shared a
position in the inner aristocracy of the senatorial order8 Since the reforms of
Diocletian and Constantine the senatorial order had no longer been a rigidly strati-
fied hierarchy solely dependent on hereditary position A nobility of service had
been infused into the nobility of blood The infusion of new men was due to the
power struggle between emperor and senate a struggle which was perceived as a
contest between Christianity and paganism9 By opening up new channels of mo-
bility by introducing into the senate both the achieving members of the lower
social strata and men of good but provincial families the emperor attempted to
mitigate the opposition of a hitherto monolithic institution The nobility of serv-
ice was a vehicle for the Christianization of the senatorial order The inner
aristocracy consisted both of the old nobility of blood and the most successful
members of the nobility of service In either case membership in this most elite
circle could be recognized by the possession of the consulship or of the urban
prefecture10
The number of their relatives who held the offices of consul or urban prefect
indicates that the ascetic women belonged to the families of the inner aristocracy11
The father of Albina the Elder held the consulship both in 335 and in 345 1 2
her
grandfather was consul in 311 and in 3141S
He r nephew the father of Albina the
Younger and the grandfather of Melania the Younger was urban prefect from
389 to 39114
The brother of Albina the Younger was Volusianus who held
among other offices the office of urban prefect from 417 to 41815
Melania the
Elder was the daughter of a consul her grandfathers were consul in 341 and
prefect of Gaul 1 β
her husband was urban prefect from 361 to 36317
8 See AHM Jones The Later Soman Empire (Norman Oklahoma University of Okla-homa Press 1964) 1523983085563 for an analysis of the structure of the senatorial aristocracyHe notes (p 529) that the legal rank of an aristocratic woman depended on the rank ofher husband or father S Mazzarino The End of the Ancient World (New York AlfredKnopf 1966) pp 131983085132 also considers this point
9 M K Hopkins Elite Mobility in the Roman Empire Past and Present 32 (1965)1298308526 complements Jones description of the senatorial order but suggests that socialmobility could be recognized before the reforms of the emperors Aside from imperialmachinations he believes that a second reason for social mobility was the aristocraticethos itself which stressed achievement as well as hereditary status and therefore re-quired that the aristocracy remain open to men of skiil In his Social Mobility in theLater Roman Empire The Evidence of Ausonius Classical Quarterly 11 (1961) 246983085247 he offers an example of his theory
10 Jones Later Boman Empire p 55011 Secondary sources considering their relations soeial positions are Chastagnol pp 241983085253 for the Caeionii Murphy Melania the Elder pp 6198308562 Gibbon Decline andFall of the Boman Empire chap 31 gi es some consideration to the nobilt of Pa las
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 158
It is probable that the membership of these womens families in the inneraristocracy was by virtue of their position in the old nobility of blood rather thanin the new nobility of service At least three of their male relatives were members of Symmachus reactionary pagan circle18 In addition Jerome and Paulinusof Nola described these women in terms of their ancient lineages
19 Such claims of
a long and exalted lineage may have been tenuous but they did reflect a socialreality The members of that nucleus of families which made these claims regarded themselves and were accepted as aristocrats of the bluest blood
20 A sum
mary of familial ties suggests that these women belonged to the elite of the senatorial order through lineage rather than through achievement only But in the attempt to reconstruct their social background certain lacunae appear at crucialpoints and force a slight qualification of this conclusion
The brother of Albina the Elder who was urban prefect in 365 was marriedto a priestess of Isis
21 They had four sons and two daughters none of whom is
known to have been Christian Two of the sonsmdashboth portrayed in MacrobiusSaturnaliamdashmarried Christian women whose names and families are unknownTheir marriages produced respectively Albina the Younger who married the sonof Melania the Elder and whose daughter was Melania the Younger and Laetawho married the son of Paula and whose daughter was Paula the Younger Theidentity of the mothers of Albina the Younger and Laeta is crucial in attemptingto determine the social background of these aristocratic households The fact that
they are unnamed suggests that they were members either of the rising social strataof new men who were frequently Christian or that they were like the motherof Melania the Elder members of the provincial aristocracy The presence of bothgroups in the senatorial order of the late fourth century makes either of these possibilities likely The social background of the ascetic women is not yet completely understood While they were all members of the inner aristocracy it is possible that some of them were also the daughters or granddaughters of marriagesthat were mixed socially as well as religiously
The social environment of Roman aristocratic women in this period has beenmemorably described both by Ammianus Marcellinus
22 and by Jerome especially
in his letter on virginity addressed to Eustochium28 They describe a society ofidle and wealthy women living in a ghetto peopled by children servants andsycophants The frustrated productivity of these aristocratic women sought outlets in what has been described as the competitive salon culture
24 They seem
18 Chastagnol p 24719 Jerome Epistulae (Corpus Soriptorum Eoclesiasticorum Latinorum [hereafter C8EL] edi-
tum Consilio et impenois Academiae Litterarum Caesarae Vindobonensis v 55) Ep 10815-8 describes Paula as Nobilis genere sed multo nobicirclior aanctitate Graccho-rum stirps suboles Scipionus Pauli hegraveres cuius vocabulum trahit Ibid Ep 127 Ne-que vero Marcellam tuam immo meam et ut verius loquar nostrani omniumque sanctorumet proprie Bomanae urbis inclitum decus institutes rhetorum praedicabo ut exponam il
lustrem familiam alti sanguinis decus et stemmata per coacutensules et praefectos practoriodecurrentia Ibid Ep 77 29-15 on Fabiola ordine rhetorum praetermisso tota deconversionis ac paenitentiae incunabulis adsumenda Alius forsitan scholae memor QuintumMaximum Unus qui nobis cunctando restitutit rem et totam Fabriorum gentem pro
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154 CHURCH HISTORY
to have filled up their days by constantly vying among themselves for social prestige
[The widows] houses are full of flatterers full of guests The very clergy
whose teaching and authority ought to inspire respect kiss these ladies on the fore
head and then stretch out their handmdashyou would think if you did not know that
they were giving a benedictionmdashto receive the fee for their visit The women
meanwhile seeing that priests need their help are lifted up with pride25 This
feminine society mirrored the complexity of the male senatorial order and its own
complexity appears to have been long-established The mother of the emperor
Elagabalus (218-222) had established a little senate of ladies26 whose purpose
was to determine the proper relations among the women of the Roman aristocracy
The spirit of this unique institution appears to have descended upon the women
of the mid-fourth century The group of ascetic women whom we are considering
must be defined against the background of the competitive salon culture
CONVERSION TO ASCETICISM FAMILIAL OPPOSITION
The present group of ascetic women had more in common than social status Of
those for whom evidence is available it is clear that they came from families
where Christianity was already an influence But in spite of the presence of Chris
tian influence there is a pattern of familial opposition to their conversion to
asceticism Familial opposition sheds some light on the aristocratic family of the
fourth century two of the primary duties of children to their families it seems
were the transmission of familial wealth to the next generation and the continua
tion of the lineage itself Conversions to asceticism were inimical to the fulfillment of these responsibilities At least for these two reasons the typical conver
sion to the ascetic life was accomplished in spite of the strenuous objections of the
family
Among the women of the two earlier generations the question of Christian
influence within the family cannot always be answered It is unknown whether
the mother of Albina the Elder was a Christian or whether there was any Chris
tian in her family It is also unknown whether Paulas parents Rogatus and Bles-
silla were Christians Albinas own daughters did grow up as Christians how
ever and Melania the Elder was the daughter of a Christian mother27 In thethird generation of ascetic women Paulas daughters had grown up as Christians
In the fourth generation Melania the Younger and Paula the Younger were both
the daughters and granddaughters of Christian women Nevertheless opposition
to the proposed conversion occurred in five out of seven instances Albina the
Elder wanted her daughter Marcella to remarry when her first husband died after
only seven months of marriage An old but wealthy and aristocratic man promised
to will her his fortune if she would marry him and her mother Albina was ex
cessively anxious to secure so illustrious a protector for the widowed household28
Marcellas sister Asella though she had been dedicated by her parents tovirginity encountered familial opposition in her determination to pursue that
lif
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 155
mother had never been willing that she should wear she concluded her pious
enterprise by consecrating herself forthwith to the Lord She thus showed her
relatives that they need hope to wring no further concessions from one who
by her very dress had condemned the world29
Paula was not only a Christian but herself a convert to asceticism But Jeromes
letter to her on the death of her daughter Blessilla indicates that she had been
opposed to Blessillas conversion to asceticism after the death of her husband
When you were carried fainting out of the funeral procession whispers such as
these were audible in the crowd Is not this what we have often said She weeps
for her daughter killed with fasting She wanted her to marry again that she
might have grandchildren 30 In the same letter Jerome speaks for Blessilla de
scribing her happiness after death He concludes Many other things does she
say which I pass over here she prays also to God for you For me too I feelsure she makes intercession and asks God to pardon my sins in return for the
warnings and advice that I bestowed on her when to assure her salvation I braved
the ill-will of her familylaquo
On the other hand Paula actively supported the ascetic tendencies of her
daughter Eustochium When she sailed for Jerusalem leaving the rest of her
family behind she concentrated herself quietly upon Eustochium alone the part
ner alike of her vows and of her voyage82
He r opposition to conversion seems
to have been similar to Albinas each opposed the conversion of the last re
maining daughter both of whom they had previously married off Marcella was
Albinas only daughter aside from the already dedicated Asella One of Paulas
other three daughters Rogata had died and her daughter Paulina lived chastely
with her Christian husband Aside from the son Toxotius then Blessilla was the
only child who might have conceived the next generation Albinas opposition to
Marcellas conversion was not couched in terms of Marcellas duty to provide
grandchildren but it was based on Albinas view of Marcellas duty to her family
Both of these mothers seem to have realized that at least one daughter should
take upon herself the familial responsibilities that converts to asceticism denied
The decision of Melania the Elder to embrace the ascetic life was made after
the death of her husband and two of her three young children Paulinus of Nolawrote Many were her skirmishes down to the very elements in this warfare
against the vengeful dragon For the whole force of her noble relatives armed
to restrain her attempted to change her proposal and to obstruct her passage33
The conversion of Melania the Elders granddaughter and namesake more than
any other conversion indicates the familial responsibilities which bound the child
to the parent and which were rejected by the ascetic Melania was an only
child though she may have had a brother who died in childhood34 Her father
Valerius Publicoacutela had been the only surviving son of Melania the Elder Her
mother Albina the Younger had had one brother Volusianus who did not marryMelania was therefore the last member of these branches of two aristocratic fami-
29 Jer Ep 24 3 Eng tr in Nieene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2d scr 643
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156 CHURCH HISTORY
lies She was anxious to embrace the life of her grandmother85
but her parentsexpected her to produce children to whom the wealth of the family would betransmitted and in whom the lineage would continue
6 After her marriage she
produced first a daughter who was dedicated to God as a virgin at the time ofher birth Subsequently she gave birth to a son on whose shoulders the continuation of the line would presumably fall Both children died in infancy after theirdeaths Melania prevailed upon her husband to live chastely with her They bothbegan to sell all their property so that they might undertake the ascetic life Theiraction met with fierce opposition from Melanias parents who attempted to bringlegal action against the two on the grounds that they were still minors Melaniasbrother-in-law Severus also attempted to block the sale of his brothers portionof family wealth The situation eventually elicited the intervention of Serena wife
of Stilicho and sister of the emperor Honorius The support of Honorious fortheir cause finally discouraged the opposition which had been brewing among theentire Roman aristocracy
8T
The Vita S Melmiae in particular suggests the opposition that the conversion to asceticism could arouse in the aristocracy as a whole The reason for suchopposition could lie in the fact that by dispersing a significant amount of aristocraticwealth Melania irrevocably diminished the wealth of the next aristocratic generation Hopkins points out that the only socially approved means of obtainingwealth were through inheritance dowry and the rewards of government office
88 Since office was usually held for only a few years inheritance and dowry
were the two real possibilities of income The total amount of Roman aristocraticwealth therefore had no way of ever increasing significantly it could be exchangedamong families through marriage but there was no external source of income thatwould make the aristocracy richer It could only become poorer Melanias actionwas a scandal because it threatened the financial basis not only of her own familybut of her entire class
Aside from the inheritance of property the continuation of the family itselfmay have been an issue in the conversioacuten of Melania the Younger as it was inthe conversion of Blessilla In this connection Chastagnol suggests II semble que
les pegraveres de famille ont tenu agrave maintenir la tradition pour leur principal heacuteritieret que faisant la part du feu ils ont abondonneacute leurs autres enfants agrave linfluencede leurs eacutepouses
89
Chastagnols stemma corroborates his conclusion In families where themother was Christian and the father pagan the oldest son seems to have beendesignated the inheritor of family tradition and responsibilities Julius Toxotiusthe only son of Paula and her husband remained a pagan until he was convertedby his Christian wife
40 Laeta herself the daughter of a mixed marriage had
two brothers the older urban prefect in 402 was certainly considered the in
heritor of the pagan tradition He was portrayed as a character in the Saturnalia35 Gerontius does not mention Melania the Elder but PaUadius The LauMao History
tr B T Meyer (London Longmans Green and Co 1965) says that Melania the Elder
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 157
along with his father and his uncle Albina the Younger was also the daughterof a mixed marriage Her brother Volusianus remained a pagan up to the timeof his death when he was converted
To push Chastagnols suggestion one step further not only was a male childdesignated as the inheritor of the male pagan aspect of family tradition but it wasconsidered undesirable for more than one daughter to be dedicated to the asceticlife The examples of Blessilla and Melania the Younger indicate that there wasa desire for at least one daughter to marry and have children Chastagnols pattern of male inheritance of the pagan tradition seems to have been mirrored by afemale inheritance of the Christian tradition Paula and Albina the Younger musthave expected that their granddaughters would be Christian The Christian mother then had a reason of her own for wishing to have only one ascetic daughter
THE NATURE OF THE ASCETIC LIFE
The most dramatic form of asceticism and the type most frequently associatedwith the women of fourth-century Rome because of Jeromes descriptions of itwas the flight to the desert But there was a second type of asceticism in fourth-century Rome which was more congruent with the aristocratic tradition of thephilosophic life
Jerome mentions Marcella Asella and Lea as maintaining the ascetic life inRome
41 Marcella and Lea founded religious monasteries in the city where they
gave themselves over to fasting and prayer living simply and charitably Marcella had introduced a new kind of religious life into Rome At that time no greatlady knew anything of the monastic life nor ventured to call herself a nun Thething itself was strange and the name was commonly accounted ignominious anddegrading
42 But Marcella who had learned from Athanasius about the life of
Anthony and about the monasteries founded by Pachomius and of the disciplinelaid down there for virgins and widows took up the monastic life in Rome Herexample was followed by other aristocratic women among whom were Paula andher daughter Eustochium Marcella as the center of what was probably an informal group of practicing ascetics moved her household to a farm near Rome
the country being chosen because of its loneliness43
She lived there with theother women who had joined her company until her death soon after the sack ofRome in 410
The life of retirement away from Rome was a traditional alternative for thearistocracy Peter Brown describes its development in the late fourth century
The tradition of otium had taken on a new lease of life It had become more complex and often far more earnest On their great estates in Sicily the lastpagan senators continued to re-edit manuscripts of the classics Many hadcome to think that this essentially private life might be organized as a community Indeed some of the first monasteries in the West were these laymonasteries of sensitive pagans and Christians44
Augustine looked upon his retirement to Cassiciacum in the autumn of 386 as a
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158 CHURCH HISTORY
flight to the desert Like Augustine Marcella adapted a convention of the pagan
aristocratic life to her own Christian use
But it is desert asceticism which comes to mind in connection with Jerome
and his spiritual daughters The Eastern ascetic Ufe was embraced by PaulaEustochium and Paula the Younger by Melania the Elder and by Melania the
Younger Their asceticism was dominated by one concern to preserve a singular
attachment to God In order to achieve this goal they practiced detachment from
the world through physical deprivation poverty of spirit and a life of virginity or
chastity At the same time that they struggled to flee the world they strengthened
their attachment to God by the study of scripture and by their passion for the his-
torical concrete elements of the Christian tradition Like their other achievements
the ascetics scorn for their bodies was dramatic Jerdme describes Paulas practice
of the ascetic life As often too as she was troubled by bodily weakness (broughton by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings) she would be heard to
say Ί keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means
when I have preached to others I myself should be cast983085away 4 5
When Melania
the Elder returned to Italy for a short visit after twenty983085five years in Jerusalem
she was met by her children and grandchildren Their short trip from Naples to
Nola was described by Paulinus She sat on a tiny thin horse worth less than
any ass and they attended her on the journey their trappings emphasizing the
extraordinary contrast Be sure that there is such divine strength in that
weak woman that she finds refreshment in fasting repose in prayer bread in the
Word clothing in rags 46
Physical poverty was akin to poverty of the spirit since both were seen as
means of preserving detachment from the world In his letter on the life of Paula
Jerome describes her great humility
Humility is the first of Christian graces and hers was so pronounced that one
who had never seen her and who on account of her celebrity had desired to
see her would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of maids When
she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remark-
able in dress in speech in gesture and in gait47
Subjection of the body and of the spirit were both important elements in the con-cept of chastity The preservation of chasity more than anything else was con-
sidered by Jerome as the essence of worldly detachment His letter to Eustochium
on virginity compares the life of the virgin to the life of the married woman
The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy
both in the body and in spirit but she that is married cares for the things of the
world how she may please her husband48
The condition of virginity influences
every aspect of a womans behavior she is modest in all things she rejects the
society of married women and avoids any situation that might compromise her
status40
Through physical and spiritual poverty and through the life of chastity theascetic woman sought to put aside worldly concerns so that she might concentrate
ll h tt ti G d Th f J i l ht G d th h
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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^ s
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152 CHURCH HISTORY
Christian asceticism both evoked and answered in its aristocratic converts a sense
of dissatisfaction excitement and a longing for escape There was an uneasiness
in Rome in the late fourth century Though those aristocrats who slid into
Browns respectable Christianity were not noticeably affected by it the un-easiness is reflected in these ascetic women
THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND AND MILIEU OF THE ASCETIC WOMEN
Through their husbands and fathers this group of ascetic women shared a
position in the inner aristocracy of the senatorial order8 Since the reforms of
Diocletian and Constantine the senatorial order had no longer been a rigidly strati-
fied hierarchy solely dependent on hereditary position A nobility of service had
been infused into the nobility of blood The infusion of new men was due to the
power struggle between emperor and senate a struggle which was perceived as a
contest between Christianity and paganism9 By opening up new channels of mo-
bility by introducing into the senate both the achieving members of the lower
social strata and men of good but provincial families the emperor attempted to
mitigate the opposition of a hitherto monolithic institution The nobility of serv-
ice was a vehicle for the Christianization of the senatorial order The inner
aristocracy consisted both of the old nobility of blood and the most successful
members of the nobility of service In either case membership in this most elite
circle could be recognized by the possession of the consulship or of the urban
prefecture10
The number of their relatives who held the offices of consul or urban prefect
indicates that the ascetic women belonged to the families of the inner aristocracy11
The father of Albina the Elder held the consulship both in 335 and in 345 1 2
her
grandfather was consul in 311 and in 3141S
He r nephew the father of Albina the
Younger and the grandfather of Melania the Younger was urban prefect from
389 to 39114
The brother of Albina the Younger was Volusianus who held
among other offices the office of urban prefect from 417 to 41815
Melania the
Elder was the daughter of a consul her grandfathers were consul in 341 and
prefect of Gaul 1 β
her husband was urban prefect from 361 to 36317
8 See AHM Jones The Later Soman Empire (Norman Oklahoma University of Okla-homa Press 1964) 1523983085563 for an analysis of the structure of the senatorial aristocracyHe notes (p 529) that the legal rank of an aristocratic woman depended on the rank ofher husband or father S Mazzarino The End of the Ancient World (New York AlfredKnopf 1966) pp 131983085132 also considers this point
9 M K Hopkins Elite Mobility in the Roman Empire Past and Present 32 (1965)1298308526 complements Jones description of the senatorial order but suggests that socialmobility could be recognized before the reforms of the emperors Aside from imperialmachinations he believes that a second reason for social mobility was the aristocraticethos itself which stressed achievement as well as hereditary status and therefore re-quired that the aristocracy remain open to men of skiil In his Social Mobility in theLater Roman Empire The Evidence of Ausonius Classical Quarterly 11 (1961) 246983085247 he offers an example of his theory
10 Jones Later Boman Empire p 55011 Secondary sources considering their relations soeial positions are Chastagnol pp 241983085253 for the Caeionii Murphy Melania the Elder pp 6198308562 Gibbon Decline andFall of the Boman Empire chap 31 gi es some consideration to the nobilt of Pa las
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 158
It is probable that the membership of these womens families in the inneraristocracy was by virtue of their position in the old nobility of blood rather thanin the new nobility of service At least three of their male relatives were members of Symmachus reactionary pagan circle18 In addition Jerome and Paulinusof Nola described these women in terms of their ancient lineages
19 Such claims of
a long and exalted lineage may have been tenuous but they did reflect a socialreality The members of that nucleus of families which made these claims regarded themselves and were accepted as aristocrats of the bluest blood
20 A sum
mary of familial ties suggests that these women belonged to the elite of the senatorial order through lineage rather than through achievement only But in the attempt to reconstruct their social background certain lacunae appear at crucialpoints and force a slight qualification of this conclusion
The brother of Albina the Elder who was urban prefect in 365 was marriedto a priestess of Isis
21 They had four sons and two daughters none of whom is
known to have been Christian Two of the sonsmdashboth portrayed in MacrobiusSaturnaliamdashmarried Christian women whose names and families are unknownTheir marriages produced respectively Albina the Younger who married the sonof Melania the Elder and whose daughter was Melania the Younger and Laetawho married the son of Paula and whose daughter was Paula the Younger Theidentity of the mothers of Albina the Younger and Laeta is crucial in attemptingto determine the social background of these aristocratic households The fact that
they are unnamed suggests that they were members either of the rising social strataof new men who were frequently Christian or that they were like the motherof Melania the Elder members of the provincial aristocracy The presence of bothgroups in the senatorial order of the late fourth century makes either of these possibilities likely The social background of the ascetic women is not yet completely understood While they were all members of the inner aristocracy it is possible that some of them were also the daughters or granddaughters of marriagesthat were mixed socially as well as religiously
The social environment of Roman aristocratic women in this period has beenmemorably described both by Ammianus Marcellinus
22 and by Jerome especially
in his letter on virginity addressed to Eustochium28 They describe a society ofidle and wealthy women living in a ghetto peopled by children servants andsycophants The frustrated productivity of these aristocratic women sought outlets in what has been described as the competitive salon culture
24 They seem
18 Chastagnol p 24719 Jerome Epistulae (Corpus Soriptorum Eoclesiasticorum Latinorum [hereafter C8EL] edi-
tum Consilio et impenois Academiae Litterarum Caesarae Vindobonensis v 55) Ep 10815-8 describes Paula as Nobilis genere sed multo nobicirclior aanctitate Graccho-rum stirps suboles Scipionus Pauli hegraveres cuius vocabulum trahit Ibid Ep 127 Ne-que vero Marcellam tuam immo meam et ut verius loquar nostrani omniumque sanctorumet proprie Bomanae urbis inclitum decus institutes rhetorum praedicabo ut exponam il
lustrem familiam alti sanguinis decus et stemmata per coacutensules et praefectos practoriodecurrentia Ibid Ep 77 29-15 on Fabiola ordine rhetorum praetermisso tota deconversionis ac paenitentiae incunabulis adsumenda Alius forsitan scholae memor QuintumMaximum Unus qui nobis cunctando restitutit rem et totam Fabriorum gentem pro
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154 CHURCH HISTORY
to have filled up their days by constantly vying among themselves for social prestige
[The widows] houses are full of flatterers full of guests The very clergy
whose teaching and authority ought to inspire respect kiss these ladies on the fore
head and then stretch out their handmdashyou would think if you did not know that
they were giving a benedictionmdashto receive the fee for their visit The women
meanwhile seeing that priests need their help are lifted up with pride25 This
feminine society mirrored the complexity of the male senatorial order and its own
complexity appears to have been long-established The mother of the emperor
Elagabalus (218-222) had established a little senate of ladies26 whose purpose
was to determine the proper relations among the women of the Roman aristocracy
The spirit of this unique institution appears to have descended upon the women
of the mid-fourth century The group of ascetic women whom we are considering
must be defined against the background of the competitive salon culture
CONVERSION TO ASCETICISM FAMILIAL OPPOSITION
The present group of ascetic women had more in common than social status Of
those for whom evidence is available it is clear that they came from families
where Christianity was already an influence But in spite of the presence of Chris
tian influence there is a pattern of familial opposition to their conversion to
asceticism Familial opposition sheds some light on the aristocratic family of the
fourth century two of the primary duties of children to their families it seems
were the transmission of familial wealth to the next generation and the continua
tion of the lineage itself Conversions to asceticism were inimical to the fulfillment of these responsibilities At least for these two reasons the typical conver
sion to the ascetic life was accomplished in spite of the strenuous objections of the
family
Among the women of the two earlier generations the question of Christian
influence within the family cannot always be answered It is unknown whether
the mother of Albina the Elder was a Christian or whether there was any Chris
tian in her family It is also unknown whether Paulas parents Rogatus and Bles-
silla were Christians Albinas own daughters did grow up as Christians how
ever and Melania the Elder was the daughter of a Christian mother27 In thethird generation of ascetic women Paulas daughters had grown up as Christians
In the fourth generation Melania the Younger and Paula the Younger were both
the daughters and granddaughters of Christian women Nevertheless opposition
to the proposed conversion occurred in five out of seven instances Albina the
Elder wanted her daughter Marcella to remarry when her first husband died after
only seven months of marriage An old but wealthy and aristocratic man promised
to will her his fortune if she would marry him and her mother Albina was ex
cessively anxious to secure so illustrious a protector for the widowed household28
Marcellas sister Asella though she had been dedicated by her parents tovirginity encountered familial opposition in her determination to pursue that
lif
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 155
mother had never been willing that she should wear she concluded her pious
enterprise by consecrating herself forthwith to the Lord She thus showed her
relatives that they need hope to wring no further concessions from one who
by her very dress had condemned the world29
Paula was not only a Christian but herself a convert to asceticism But Jeromes
letter to her on the death of her daughter Blessilla indicates that she had been
opposed to Blessillas conversion to asceticism after the death of her husband
When you were carried fainting out of the funeral procession whispers such as
these were audible in the crowd Is not this what we have often said She weeps
for her daughter killed with fasting She wanted her to marry again that she
might have grandchildren 30 In the same letter Jerome speaks for Blessilla de
scribing her happiness after death He concludes Many other things does she
say which I pass over here she prays also to God for you For me too I feelsure she makes intercession and asks God to pardon my sins in return for the
warnings and advice that I bestowed on her when to assure her salvation I braved
the ill-will of her familylaquo
On the other hand Paula actively supported the ascetic tendencies of her
daughter Eustochium When she sailed for Jerusalem leaving the rest of her
family behind she concentrated herself quietly upon Eustochium alone the part
ner alike of her vows and of her voyage82
He r opposition to conversion seems
to have been similar to Albinas each opposed the conversion of the last re
maining daughter both of whom they had previously married off Marcella was
Albinas only daughter aside from the already dedicated Asella One of Paulas
other three daughters Rogata had died and her daughter Paulina lived chastely
with her Christian husband Aside from the son Toxotius then Blessilla was the
only child who might have conceived the next generation Albinas opposition to
Marcellas conversion was not couched in terms of Marcellas duty to provide
grandchildren but it was based on Albinas view of Marcellas duty to her family
Both of these mothers seem to have realized that at least one daughter should
take upon herself the familial responsibilities that converts to asceticism denied
The decision of Melania the Elder to embrace the ascetic life was made after
the death of her husband and two of her three young children Paulinus of Nolawrote Many were her skirmishes down to the very elements in this warfare
against the vengeful dragon For the whole force of her noble relatives armed
to restrain her attempted to change her proposal and to obstruct her passage33
The conversion of Melania the Elders granddaughter and namesake more than
any other conversion indicates the familial responsibilities which bound the child
to the parent and which were rejected by the ascetic Melania was an only
child though she may have had a brother who died in childhood34 Her father
Valerius Publicoacutela had been the only surviving son of Melania the Elder Her
mother Albina the Younger had had one brother Volusianus who did not marryMelania was therefore the last member of these branches of two aristocratic fami-
29 Jer Ep 24 3 Eng tr in Nieene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2d scr 643
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156 CHURCH HISTORY
lies She was anxious to embrace the life of her grandmother85
but her parentsexpected her to produce children to whom the wealth of the family would betransmitted and in whom the lineage would continue
6 After her marriage she
produced first a daughter who was dedicated to God as a virgin at the time ofher birth Subsequently she gave birth to a son on whose shoulders the continuation of the line would presumably fall Both children died in infancy after theirdeaths Melania prevailed upon her husband to live chastely with her They bothbegan to sell all their property so that they might undertake the ascetic life Theiraction met with fierce opposition from Melanias parents who attempted to bringlegal action against the two on the grounds that they were still minors Melaniasbrother-in-law Severus also attempted to block the sale of his brothers portionof family wealth The situation eventually elicited the intervention of Serena wife
of Stilicho and sister of the emperor Honorius The support of Honorious fortheir cause finally discouraged the opposition which had been brewing among theentire Roman aristocracy
8T
The Vita S Melmiae in particular suggests the opposition that the conversion to asceticism could arouse in the aristocracy as a whole The reason for suchopposition could lie in the fact that by dispersing a significant amount of aristocraticwealth Melania irrevocably diminished the wealth of the next aristocratic generation Hopkins points out that the only socially approved means of obtainingwealth were through inheritance dowry and the rewards of government office
88 Since office was usually held for only a few years inheritance and dowry
were the two real possibilities of income The total amount of Roman aristocraticwealth therefore had no way of ever increasing significantly it could be exchangedamong families through marriage but there was no external source of income thatwould make the aristocracy richer It could only become poorer Melanias actionwas a scandal because it threatened the financial basis not only of her own familybut of her entire class
Aside from the inheritance of property the continuation of the family itselfmay have been an issue in the conversioacuten of Melania the Younger as it was inthe conversion of Blessilla In this connection Chastagnol suggests II semble que
les pegraveres de famille ont tenu agrave maintenir la tradition pour leur principal heacuteritieret que faisant la part du feu ils ont abondonneacute leurs autres enfants agrave linfluencede leurs eacutepouses
89
Chastagnols stemma corroborates his conclusion In families where themother was Christian and the father pagan the oldest son seems to have beendesignated the inheritor of family tradition and responsibilities Julius Toxotiusthe only son of Paula and her husband remained a pagan until he was convertedby his Christian wife
40 Laeta herself the daughter of a mixed marriage had
two brothers the older urban prefect in 402 was certainly considered the in
heritor of the pagan tradition He was portrayed as a character in the Saturnalia35 Gerontius does not mention Melania the Elder but PaUadius The LauMao History
tr B T Meyer (London Longmans Green and Co 1965) says that Melania the Elder
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 157
along with his father and his uncle Albina the Younger was also the daughterof a mixed marriage Her brother Volusianus remained a pagan up to the timeof his death when he was converted
To push Chastagnols suggestion one step further not only was a male childdesignated as the inheritor of the male pagan aspect of family tradition but it wasconsidered undesirable for more than one daughter to be dedicated to the asceticlife The examples of Blessilla and Melania the Younger indicate that there wasa desire for at least one daughter to marry and have children Chastagnols pattern of male inheritance of the pagan tradition seems to have been mirrored by afemale inheritance of the Christian tradition Paula and Albina the Younger musthave expected that their granddaughters would be Christian The Christian mother then had a reason of her own for wishing to have only one ascetic daughter
THE NATURE OF THE ASCETIC LIFE
The most dramatic form of asceticism and the type most frequently associatedwith the women of fourth-century Rome because of Jeromes descriptions of itwas the flight to the desert But there was a second type of asceticism in fourth-century Rome which was more congruent with the aristocratic tradition of thephilosophic life
Jerome mentions Marcella Asella and Lea as maintaining the ascetic life inRome
41 Marcella and Lea founded religious monasteries in the city where they
gave themselves over to fasting and prayer living simply and charitably Marcella had introduced a new kind of religious life into Rome At that time no greatlady knew anything of the monastic life nor ventured to call herself a nun Thething itself was strange and the name was commonly accounted ignominious anddegrading
42 But Marcella who had learned from Athanasius about the life of
Anthony and about the monasteries founded by Pachomius and of the disciplinelaid down there for virgins and widows took up the monastic life in Rome Herexample was followed by other aristocratic women among whom were Paula andher daughter Eustochium Marcella as the center of what was probably an informal group of practicing ascetics moved her household to a farm near Rome
the country being chosen because of its loneliness43
She lived there with theother women who had joined her company until her death soon after the sack ofRome in 410
The life of retirement away from Rome was a traditional alternative for thearistocracy Peter Brown describes its development in the late fourth century
The tradition of otium had taken on a new lease of life It had become more complex and often far more earnest On their great estates in Sicily the lastpagan senators continued to re-edit manuscripts of the classics Many hadcome to think that this essentially private life might be organized as a community Indeed some of the first monasteries in the West were these laymonasteries of sensitive pagans and Christians44
Augustine looked upon his retirement to Cassiciacum in the autumn of 386 as a
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158 CHURCH HISTORY
flight to the desert Like Augustine Marcella adapted a convention of the pagan
aristocratic life to her own Christian use
But it is desert asceticism which comes to mind in connection with Jerome
and his spiritual daughters The Eastern ascetic Ufe was embraced by PaulaEustochium and Paula the Younger by Melania the Elder and by Melania the
Younger Their asceticism was dominated by one concern to preserve a singular
attachment to God In order to achieve this goal they practiced detachment from
the world through physical deprivation poverty of spirit and a life of virginity or
chastity At the same time that they struggled to flee the world they strengthened
their attachment to God by the study of scripture and by their passion for the his-
torical concrete elements of the Christian tradition Like their other achievements
the ascetics scorn for their bodies was dramatic Jerdme describes Paulas practice
of the ascetic life As often too as she was troubled by bodily weakness (broughton by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings) she would be heard to
say Ί keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means
when I have preached to others I myself should be cast983085away 4 5
When Melania
the Elder returned to Italy for a short visit after twenty983085five years in Jerusalem
she was met by her children and grandchildren Their short trip from Naples to
Nola was described by Paulinus She sat on a tiny thin horse worth less than
any ass and they attended her on the journey their trappings emphasizing the
extraordinary contrast Be sure that there is such divine strength in that
weak woman that she finds refreshment in fasting repose in prayer bread in the
Word clothing in rags 46
Physical poverty was akin to poverty of the spirit since both were seen as
means of preserving detachment from the world In his letter on the life of Paula
Jerome describes her great humility
Humility is the first of Christian graces and hers was so pronounced that one
who had never seen her and who on account of her celebrity had desired to
see her would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of maids When
she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remark-
able in dress in speech in gesture and in gait47
Subjection of the body and of the spirit were both important elements in the con-cept of chastity The preservation of chasity more than anything else was con-
sidered by Jerome as the essence of worldly detachment His letter to Eustochium
on virginity compares the life of the virgin to the life of the married woman
The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy
both in the body and in spirit but she that is married cares for the things of the
world how she may please her husband48
The condition of virginity influences
every aspect of a womans behavior she is modest in all things she rejects the
society of married women and avoids any situation that might compromise her
status40
Through physical and spiritual poverty and through the life of chastity theascetic woman sought to put aside worldly concerns so that she might concentrate
ll h tt ti G d Th f J i l ht G d th h
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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^ s
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152 CHURCH HISTORY
Christian asceticism both evoked and answered in its aristocratic converts a sense
of dissatisfaction excitement and a longing for escape There was an uneasiness
in Rome in the late fourth century Though those aristocrats who slid into
Browns respectable Christianity were not noticeably affected by it the un-easiness is reflected in these ascetic women
THE SOCIAL BACKGROUND AND MILIEU OF THE ASCETIC WOMEN
Through their husbands and fathers this group of ascetic women shared a
position in the inner aristocracy of the senatorial order8 Since the reforms of
Diocletian and Constantine the senatorial order had no longer been a rigidly strati-
fied hierarchy solely dependent on hereditary position A nobility of service had
been infused into the nobility of blood The infusion of new men was due to the
power struggle between emperor and senate a struggle which was perceived as a
contest between Christianity and paganism9 By opening up new channels of mo-
bility by introducing into the senate both the achieving members of the lower
social strata and men of good but provincial families the emperor attempted to
mitigate the opposition of a hitherto monolithic institution The nobility of serv-
ice was a vehicle for the Christianization of the senatorial order The inner
aristocracy consisted both of the old nobility of blood and the most successful
members of the nobility of service In either case membership in this most elite
circle could be recognized by the possession of the consulship or of the urban
prefecture10
The number of their relatives who held the offices of consul or urban prefect
indicates that the ascetic women belonged to the families of the inner aristocracy11
The father of Albina the Elder held the consulship both in 335 and in 345 1 2
her
grandfather was consul in 311 and in 3141S
He r nephew the father of Albina the
Younger and the grandfather of Melania the Younger was urban prefect from
389 to 39114
The brother of Albina the Younger was Volusianus who held
among other offices the office of urban prefect from 417 to 41815
Melania the
Elder was the daughter of a consul her grandfathers were consul in 341 and
prefect of Gaul 1 β
her husband was urban prefect from 361 to 36317
8 See AHM Jones The Later Soman Empire (Norman Oklahoma University of Okla-homa Press 1964) 1523983085563 for an analysis of the structure of the senatorial aristocracyHe notes (p 529) that the legal rank of an aristocratic woman depended on the rank ofher husband or father S Mazzarino The End of the Ancient World (New York AlfredKnopf 1966) pp 131983085132 also considers this point
9 M K Hopkins Elite Mobility in the Roman Empire Past and Present 32 (1965)1298308526 complements Jones description of the senatorial order but suggests that socialmobility could be recognized before the reforms of the emperors Aside from imperialmachinations he believes that a second reason for social mobility was the aristocraticethos itself which stressed achievement as well as hereditary status and therefore re-quired that the aristocracy remain open to men of skiil In his Social Mobility in theLater Roman Empire The Evidence of Ausonius Classical Quarterly 11 (1961) 246983085247 he offers an example of his theory
10 Jones Later Boman Empire p 55011 Secondary sources considering their relations soeial positions are Chastagnol pp 241983085253 for the Caeionii Murphy Melania the Elder pp 6198308562 Gibbon Decline andFall of the Boman Empire chap 31 gi es some consideration to the nobilt of Pa las
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 158
It is probable that the membership of these womens families in the inneraristocracy was by virtue of their position in the old nobility of blood rather thanin the new nobility of service At least three of their male relatives were members of Symmachus reactionary pagan circle18 In addition Jerome and Paulinusof Nola described these women in terms of their ancient lineages
19 Such claims of
a long and exalted lineage may have been tenuous but they did reflect a socialreality The members of that nucleus of families which made these claims regarded themselves and were accepted as aristocrats of the bluest blood
20 A sum
mary of familial ties suggests that these women belonged to the elite of the senatorial order through lineage rather than through achievement only But in the attempt to reconstruct their social background certain lacunae appear at crucialpoints and force a slight qualification of this conclusion
The brother of Albina the Elder who was urban prefect in 365 was marriedto a priestess of Isis
21 They had four sons and two daughters none of whom is
known to have been Christian Two of the sonsmdashboth portrayed in MacrobiusSaturnaliamdashmarried Christian women whose names and families are unknownTheir marriages produced respectively Albina the Younger who married the sonof Melania the Elder and whose daughter was Melania the Younger and Laetawho married the son of Paula and whose daughter was Paula the Younger Theidentity of the mothers of Albina the Younger and Laeta is crucial in attemptingto determine the social background of these aristocratic households The fact that
they are unnamed suggests that they were members either of the rising social strataof new men who were frequently Christian or that they were like the motherof Melania the Elder members of the provincial aristocracy The presence of bothgroups in the senatorial order of the late fourth century makes either of these possibilities likely The social background of the ascetic women is not yet completely understood While they were all members of the inner aristocracy it is possible that some of them were also the daughters or granddaughters of marriagesthat were mixed socially as well as religiously
The social environment of Roman aristocratic women in this period has beenmemorably described both by Ammianus Marcellinus
22 and by Jerome especially
in his letter on virginity addressed to Eustochium28 They describe a society ofidle and wealthy women living in a ghetto peopled by children servants andsycophants The frustrated productivity of these aristocratic women sought outlets in what has been described as the competitive salon culture
24 They seem
18 Chastagnol p 24719 Jerome Epistulae (Corpus Soriptorum Eoclesiasticorum Latinorum [hereafter C8EL] edi-
tum Consilio et impenois Academiae Litterarum Caesarae Vindobonensis v 55) Ep 10815-8 describes Paula as Nobilis genere sed multo nobicirclior aanctitate Graccho-rum stirps suboles Scipionus Pauli hegraveres cuius vocabulum trahit Ibid Ep 127 Ne-que vero Marcellam tuam immo meam et ut verius loquar nostrani omniumque sanctorumet proprie Bomanae urbis inclitum decus institutes rhetorum praedicabo ut exponam il
lustrem familiam alti sanguinis decus et stemmata per coacutensules et praefectos practoriodecurrentia Ibid Ep 77 29-15 on Fabiola ordine rhetorum praetermisso tota deconversionis ac paenitentiae incunabulis adsumenda Alius forsitan scholae memor QuintumMaximum Unus qui nobis cunctando restitutit rem et totam Fabriorum gentem pro
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154 CHURCH HISTORY
to have filled up their days by constantly vying among themselves for social prestige
[The widows] houses are full of flatterers full of guests The very clergy
whose teaching and authority ought to inspire respect kiss these ladies on the fore
head and then stretch out their handmdashyou would think if you did not know that
they were giving a benedictionmdashto receive the fee for their visit The women
meanwhile seeing that priests need their help are lifted up with pride25 This
feminine society mirrored the complexity of the male senatorial order and its own
complexity appears to have been long-established The mother of the emperor
Elagabalus (218-222) had established a little senate of ladies26 whose purpose
was to determine the proper relations among the women of the Roman aristocracy
The spirit of this unique institution appears to have descended upon the women
of the mid-fourth century The group of ascetic women whom we are considering
must be defined against the background of the competitive salon culture
CONVERSION TO ASCETICISM FAMILIAL OPPOSITION
The present group of ascetic women had more in common than social status Of
those for whom evidence is available it is clear that they came from families
where Christianity was already an influence But in spite of the presence of Chris
tian influence there is a pattern of familial opposition to their conversion to
asceticism Familial opposition sheds some light on the aristocratic family of the
fourth century two of the primary duties of children to their families it seems
were the transmission of familial wealth to the next generation and the continua
tion of the lineage itself Conversions to asceticism were inimical to the fulfillment of these responsibilities At least for these two reasons the typical conver
sion to the ascetic life was accomplished in spite of the strenuous objections of the
family
Among the women of the two earlier generations the question of Christian
influence within the family cannot always be answered It is unknown whether
the mother of Albina the Elder was a Christian or whether there was any Chris
tian in her family It is also unknown whether Paulas parents Rogatus and Bles-
silla were Christians Albinas own daughters did grow up as Christians how
ever and Melania the Elder was the daughter of a Christian mother27 In thethird generation of ascetic women Paulas daughters had grown up as Christians
In the fourth generation Melania the Younger and Paula the Younger were both
the daughters and granddaughters of Christian women Nevertheless opposition
to the proposed conversion occurred in five out of seven instances Albina the
Elder wanted her daughter Marcella to remarry when her first husband died after
only seven months of marriage An old but wealthy and aristocratic man promised
to will her his fortune if she would marry him and her mother Albina was ex
cessively anxious to secure so illustrious a protector for the widowed household28
Marcellas sister Asella though she had been dedicated by her parents tovirginity encountered familial opposition in her determination to pursue that
lif
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 155
mother had never been willing that she should wear she concluded her pious
enterprise by consecrating herself forthwith to the Lord She thus showed her
relatives that they need hope to wring no further concessions from one who
by her very dress had condemned the world29
Paula was not only a Christian but herself a convert to asceticism But Jeromes
letter to her on the death of her daughter Blessilla indicates that she had been
opposed to Blessillas conversion to asceticism after the death of her husband
When you were carried fainting out of the funeral procession whispers such as
these were audible in the crowd Is not this what we have often said She weeps
for her daughter killed with fasting She wanted her to marry again that she
might have grandchildren 30 In the same letter Jerome speaks for Blessilla de
scribing her happiness after death He concludes Many other things does she
say which I pass over here she prays also to God for you For me too I feelsure she makes intercession and asks God to pardon my sins in return for the
warnings and advice that I bestowed on her when to assure her salvation I braved
the ill-will of her familylaquo
On the other hand Paula actively supported the ascetic tendencies of her
daughter Eustochium When she sailed for Jerusalem leaving the rest of her
family behind she concentrated herself quietly upon Eustochium alone the part
ner alike of her vows and of her voyage82
He r opposition to conversion seems
to have been similar to Albinas each opposed the conversion of the last re
maining daughter both of whom they had previously married off Marcella was
Albinas only daughter aside from the already dedicated Asella One of Paulas
other three daughters Rogata had died and her daughter Paulina lived chastely
with her Christian husband Aside from the son Toxotius then Blessilla was the
only child who might have conceived the next generation Albinas opposition to
Marcellas conversion was not couched in terms of Marcellas duty to provide
grandchildren but it was based on Albinas view of Marcellas duty to her family
Both of these mothers seem to have realized that at least one daughter should
take upon herself the familial responsibilities that converts to asceticism denied
The decision of Melania the Elder to embrace the ascetic life was made after
the death of her husband and two of her three young children Paulinus of Nolawrote Many were her skirmishes down to the very elements in this warfare
against the vengeful dragon For the whole force of her noble relatives armed
to restrain her attempted to change her proposal and to obstruct her passage33
The conversion of Melania the Elders granddaughter and namesake more than
any other conversion indicates the familial responsibilities which bound the child
to the parent and which were rejected by the ascetic Melania was an only
child though she may have had a brother who died in childhood34 Her father
Valerius Publicoacutela had been the only surviving son of Melania the Elder Her
mother Albina the Younger had had one brother Volusianus who did not marryMelania was therefore the last member of these branches of two aristocratic fami-
29 Jer Ep 24 3 Eng tr in Nieene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2d scr 643
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156 CHURCH HISTORY
lies She was anxious to embrace the life of her grandmother85
but her parentsexpected her to produce children to whom the wealth of the family would betransmitted and in whom the lineage would continue
6 After her marriage she
produced first a daughter who was dedicated to God as a virgin at the time ofher birth Subsequently she gave birth to a son on whose shoulders the continuation of the line would presumably fall Both children died in infancy after theirdeaths Melania prevailed upon her husband to live chastely with her They bothbegan to sell all their property so that they might undertake the ascetic life Theiraction met with fierce opposition from Melanias parents who attempted to bringlegal action against the two on the grounds that they were still minors Melaniasbrother-in-law Severus also attempted to block the sale of his brothers portionof family wealth The situation eventually elicited the intervention of Serena wife
of Stilicho and sister of the emperor Honorius The support of Honorious fortheir cause finally discouraged the opposition which had been brewing among theentire Roman aristocracy
8T
The Vita S Melmiae in particular suggests the opposition that the conversion to asceticism could arouse in the aristocracy as a whole The reason for suchopposition could lie in the fact that by dispersing a significant amount of aristocraticwealth Melania irrevocably diminished the wealth of the next aristocratic generation Hopkins points out that the only socially approved means of obtainingwealth were through inheritance dowry and the rewards of government office
88 Since office was usually held for only a few years inheritance and dowry
were the two real possibilities of income The total amount of Roman aristocraticwealth therefore had no way of ever increasing significantly it could be exchangedamong families through marriage but there was no external source of income thatwould make the aristocracy richer It could only become poorer Melanias actionwas a scandal because it threatened the financial basis not only of her own familybut of her entire class
Aside from the inheritance of property the continuation of the family itselfmay have been an issue in the conversioacuten of Melania the Younger as it was inthe conversion of Blessilla In this connection Chastagnol suggests II semble que
les pegraveres de famille ont tenu agrave maintenir la tradition pour leur principal heacuteritieret que faisant la part du feu ils ont abondonneacute leurs autres enfants agrave linfluencede leurs eacutepouses
89
Chastagnols stemma corroborates his conclusion In families where themother was Christian and the father pagan the oldest son seems to have beendesignated the inheritor of family tradition and responsibilities Julius Toxotiusthe only son of Paula and her husband remained a pagan until he was convertedby his Christian wife
40 Laeta herself the daughter of a mixed marriage had
two brothers the older urban prefect in 402 was certainly considered the in
heritor of the pagan tradition He was portrayed as a character in the Saturnalia35 Gerontius does not mention Melania the Elder but PaUadius The LauMao History
tr B T Meyer (London Longmans Green and Co 1965) says that Melania the Elder
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 157
along with his father and his uncle Albina the Younger was also the daughterof a mixed marriage Her brother Volusianus remained a pagan up to the timeof his death when he was converted
To push Chastagnols suggestion one step further not only was a male childdesignated as the inheritor of the male pagan aspect of family tradition but it wasconsidered undesirable for more than one daughter to be dedicated to the asceticlife The examples of Blessilla and Melania the Younger indicate that there wasa desire for at least one daughter to marry and have children Chastagnols pattern of male inheritance of the pagan tradition seems to have been mirrored by afemale inheritance of the Christian tradition Paula and Albina the Younger musthave expected that their granddaughters would be Christian The Christian mother then had a reason of her own for wishing to have only one ascetic daughter
THE NATURE OF THE ASCETIC LIFE
The most dramatic form of asceticism and the type most frequently associatedwith the women of fourth-century Rome because of Jeromes descriptions of itwas the flight to the desert But there was a second type of asceticism in fourth-century Rome which was more congruent with the aristocratic tradition of thephilosophic life
Jerome mentions Marcella Asella and Lea as maintaining the ascetic life inRome
41 Marcella and Lea founded religious monasteries in the city where they
gave themselves over to fasting and prayer living simply and charitably Marcella had introduced a new kind of religious life into Rome At that time no greatlady knew anything of the monastic life nor ventured to call herself a nun Thething itself was strange and the name was commonly accounted ignominious anddegrading
42 But Marcella who had learned from Athanasius about the life of
Anthony and about the monasteries founded by Pachomius and of the disciplinelaid down there for virgins and widows took up the monastic life in Rome Herexample was followed by other aristocratic women among whom were Paula andher daughter Eustochium Marcella as the center of what was probably an informal group of practicing ascetics moved her household to a farm near Rome
the country being chosen because of its loneliness43
She lived there with theother women who had joined her company until her death soon after the sack ofRome in 410
The life of retirement away from Rome was a traditional alternative for thearistocracy Peter Brown describes its development in the late fourth century
The tradition of otium had taken on a new lease of life It had become more complex and often far more earnest On their great estates in Sicily the lastpagan senators continued to re-edit manuscripts of the classics Many hadcome to think that this essentially private life might be organized as a community Indeed some of the first monasteries in the West were these laymonasteries of sensitive pagans and Christians44
Augustine looked upon his retirement to Cassiciacum in the autumn of 386 as a
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158 CHURCH HISTORY
flight to the desert Like Augustine Marcella adapted a convention of the pagan
aristocratic life to her own Christian use
But it is desert asceticism which comes to mind in connection with Jerome
and his spiritual daughters The Eastern ascetic Ufe was embraced by PaulaEustochium and Paula the Younger by Melania the Elder and by Melania the
Younger Their asceticism was dominated by one concern to preserve a singular
attachment to God In order to achieve this goal they practiced detachment from
the world through physical deprivation poverty of spirit and a life of virginity or
chastity At the same time that they struggled to flee the world they strengthened
their attachment to God by the study of scripture and by their passion for the his-
torical concrete elements of the Christian tradition Like their other achievements
the ascetics scorn for their bodies was dramatic Jerdme describes Paulas practice
of the ascetic life As often too as she was troubled by bodily weakness (broughton by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings) she would be heard to
say Ί keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means
when I have preached to others I myself should be cast983085away 4 5
When Melania
the Elder returned to Italy for a short visit after twenty983085five years in Jerusalem
she was met by her children and grandchildren Their short trip from Naples to
Nola was described by Paulinus She sat on a tiny thin horse worth less than
any ass and they attended her on the journey their trappings emphasizing the
extraordinary contrast Be sure that there is such divine strength in that
weak woman that she finds refreshment in fasting repose in prayer bread in the
Word clothing in rags 46
Physical poverty was akin to poverty of the spirit since both were seen as
means of preserving detachment from the world In his letter on the life of Paula
Jerome describes her great humility
Humility is the first of Christian graces and hers was so pronounced that one
who had never seen her and who on account of her celebrity had desired to
see her would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of maids When
she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remark-
able in dress in speech in gesture and in gait47
Subjection of the body and of the spirit were both important elements in the con-cept of chastity The preservation of chasity more than anything else was con-
sidered by Jerome as the essence of worldly detachment His letter to Eustochium
on virginity compares the life of the virgin to the life of the married woman
The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy
both in the body and in spirit but she that is married cares for the things of the
world how she may please her husband48
The condition of virginity influences
every aspect of a womans behavior she is modest in all things she rejects the
society of married women and avoids any situation that might compromise her
status40
Through physical and spiritual poverty and through the life of chastity theascetic woman sought to put aside worldly concerns so that she might concentrate
ll h tt ti G d Th f J i l ht G d th h
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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^ s
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 158
It is probable that the membership of these womens families in the inneraristocracy was by virtue of their position in the old nobility of blood rather thanin the new nobility of service At least three of their male relatives were members of Symmachus reactionary pagan circle18 In addition Jerome and Paulinusof Nola described these women in terms of their ancient lineages
19 Such claims of
a long and exalted lineage may have been tenuous but they did reflect a socialreality The members of that nucleus of families which made these claims regarded themselves and were accepted as aristocrats of the bluest blood
20 A sum
mary of familial ties suggests that these women belonged to the elite of the senatorial order through lineage rather than through achievement only But in the attempt to reconstruct their social background certain lacunae appear at crucialpoints and force a slight qualification of this conclusion
The brother of Albina the Elder who was urban prefect in 365 was marriedto a priestess of Isis
21 They had four sons and two daughters none of whom is
known to have been Christian Two of the sonsmdashboth portrayed in MacrobiusSaturnaliamdashmarried Christian women whose names and families are unknownTheir marriages produced respectively Albina the Younger who married the sonof Melania the Elder and whose daughter was Melania the Younger and Laetawho married the son of Paula and whose daughter was Paula the Younger Theidentity of the mothers of Albina the Younger and Laeta is crucial in attemptingto determine the social background of these aristocratic households The fact that
they are unnamed suggests that they were members either of the rising social strataof new men who were frequently Christian or that they were like the motherof Melania the Elder members of the provincial aristocracy The presence of bothgroups in the senatorial order of the late fourth century makes either of these possibilities likely The social background of the ascetic women is not yet completely understood While they were all members of the inner aristocracy it is possible that some of them were also the daughters or granddaughters of marriagesthat were mixed socially as well as religiously
The social environment of Roman aristocratic women in this period has beenmemorably described both by Ammianus Marcellinus
22 and by Jerome especially
in his letter on virginity addressed to Eustochium28 They describe a society ofidle and wealthy women living in a ghetto peopled by children servants andsycophants The frustrated productivity of these aristocratic women sought outlets in what has been described as the competitive salon culture
24 They seem
18 Chastagnol p 24719 Jerome Epistulae (Corpus Soriptorum Eoclesiasticorum Latinorum [hereafter C8EL] edi-
tum Consilio et impenois Academiae Litterarum Caesarae Vindobonensis v 55) Ep 10815-8 describes Paula as Nobilis genere sed multo nobicirclior aanctitate Graccho-rum stirps suboles Scipionus Pauli hegraveres cuius vocabulum trahit Ibid Ep 127 Ne-que vero Marcellam tuam immo meam et ut verius loquar nostrani omniumque sanctorumet proprie Bomanae urbis inclitum decus institutes rhetorum praedicabo ut exponam il
lustrem familiam alti sanguinis decus et stemmata per coacutensules et praefectos practoriodecurrentia Ibid Ep 77 29-15 on Fabiola ordine rhetorum praetermisso tota deconversionis ac paenitentiae incunabulis adsumenda Alius forsitan scholae memor QuintumMaximum Unus qui nobis cunctando restitutit rem et totam Fabriorum gentem pro
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154 CHURCH HISTORY
to have filled up their days by constantly vying among themselves for social prestige
[The widows] houses are full of flatterers full of guests The very clergy
whose teaching and authority ought to inspire respect kiss these ladies on the fore
head and then stretch out their handmdashyou would think if you did not know that
they were giving a benedictionmdashto receive the fee for their visit The women
meanwhile seeing that priests need their help are lifted up with pride25 This
feminine society mirrored the complexity of the male senatorial order and its own
complexity appears to have been long-established The mother of the emperor
Elagabalus (218-222) had established a little senate of ladies26 whose purpose
was to determine the proper relations among the women of the Roman aristocracy
The spirit of this unique institution appears to have descended upon the women
of the mid-fourth century The group of ascetic women whom we are considering
must be defined against the background of the competitive salon culture
CONVERSION TO ASCETICISM FAMILIAL OPPOSITION
The present group of ascetic women had more in common than social status Of
those for whom evidence is available it is clear that they came from families
where Christianity was already an influence But in spite of the presence of Chris
tian influence there is a pattern of familial opposition to their conversion to
asceticism Familial opposition sheds some light on the aristocratic family of the
fourth century two of the primary duties of children to their families it seems
were the transmission of familial wealth to the next generation and the continua
tion of the lineage itself Conversions to asceticism were inimical to the fulfillment of these responsibilities At least for these two reasons the typical conver
sion to the ascetic life was accomplished in spite of the strenuous objections of the
family
Among the women of the two earlier generations the question of Christian
influence within the family cannot always be answered It is unknown whether
the mother of Albina the Elder was a Christian or whether there was any Chris
tian in her family It is also unknown whether Paulas parents Rogatus and Bles-
silla were Christians Albinas own daughters did grow up as Christians how
ever and Melania the Elder was the daughter of a Christian mother27 In thethird generation of ascetic women Paulas daughters had grown up as Christians
In the fourth generation Melania the Younger and Paula the Younger were both
the daughters and granddaughters of Christian women Nevertheless opposition
to the proposed conversion occurred in five out of seven instances Albina the
Elder wanted her daughter Marcella to remarry when her first husband died after
only seven months of marriage An old but wealthy and aristocratic man promised
to will her his fortune if she would marry him and her mother Albina was ex
cessively anxious to secure so illustrious a protector for the widowed household28
Marcellas sister Asella though she had been dedicated by her parents tovirginity encountered familial opposition in her determination to pursue that
lif
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 155
mother had never been willing that she should wear she concluded her pious
enterprise by consecrating herself forthwith to the Lord She thus showed her
relatives that they need hope to wring no further concessions from one who
by her very dress had condemned the world29
Paula was not only a Christian but herself a convert to asceticism But Jeromes
letter to her on the death of her daughter Blessilla indicates that she had been
opposed to Blessillas conversion to asceticism after the death of her husband
When you were carried fainting out of the funeral procession whispers such as
these were audible in the crowd Is not this what we have often said She weeps
for her daughter killed with fasting She wanted her to marry again that she
might have grandchildren 30 In the same letter Jerome speaks for Blessilla de
scribing her happiness after death He concludes Many other things does she
say which I pass over here she prays also to God for you For me too I feelsure she makes intercession and asks God to pardon my sins in return for the
warnings and advice that I bestowed on her when to assure her salvation I braved
the ill-will of her familylaquo
On the other hand Paula actively supported the ascetic tendencies of her
daughter Eustochium When she sailed for Jerusalem leaving the rest of her
family behind she concentrated herself quietly upon Eustochium alone the part
ner alike of her vows and of her voyage82
He r opposition to conversion seems
to have been similar to Albinas each opposed the conversion of the last re
maining daughter both of whom they had previously married off Marcella was
Albinas only daughter aside from the already dedicated Asella One of Paulas
other three daughters Rogata had died and her daughter Paulina lived chastely
with her Christian husband Aside from the son Toxotius then Blessilla was the
only child who might have conceived the next generation Albinas opposition to
Marcellas conversion was not couched in terms of Marcellas duty to provide
grandchildren but it was based on Albinas view of Marcellas duty to her family
Both of these mothers seem to have realized that at least one daughter should
take upon herself the familial responsibilities that converts to asceticism denied
The decision of Melania the Elder to embrace the ascetic life was made after
the death of her husband and two of her three young children Paulinus of Nolawrote Many were her skirmishes down to the very elements in this warfare
against the vengeful dragon For the whole force of her noble relatives armed
to restrain her attempted to change her proposal and to obstruct her passage33
The conversion of Melania the Elders granddaughter and namesake more than
any other conversion indicates the familial responsibilities which bound the child
to the parent and which were rejected by the ascetic Melania was an only
child though she may have had a brother who died in childhood34 Her father
Valerius Publicoacutela had been the only surviving son of Melania the Elder Her
mother Albina the Younger had had one brother Volusianus who did not marryMelania was therefore the last member of these branches of two aristocratic fami-
29 Jer Ep 24 3 Eng tr in Nieene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2d scr 643
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156 CHURCH HISTORY
lies She was anxious to embrace the life of her grandmother85
but her parentsexpected her to produce children to whom the wealth of the family would betransmitted and in whom the lineage would continue
6 After her marriage she
produced first a daughter who was dedicated to God as a virgin at the time ofher birth Subsequently she gave birth to a son on whose shoulders the continuation of the line would presumably fall Both children died in infancy after theirdeaths Melania prevailed upon her husband to live chastely with her They bothbegan to sell all their property so that they might undertake the ascetic life Theiraction met with fierce opposition from Melanias parents who attempted to bringlegal action against the two on the grounds that they were still minors Melaniasbrother-in-law Severus also attempted to block the sale of his brothers portionof family wealth The situation eventually elicited the intervention of Serena wife
of Stilicho and sister of the emperor Honorius The support of Honorious fortheir cause finally discouraged the opposition which had been brewing among theentire Roman aristocracy
8T
The Vita S Melmiae in particular suggests the opposition that the conversion to asceticism could arouse in the aristocracy as a whole The reason for suchopposition could lie in the fact that by dispersing a significant amount of aristocraticwealth Melania irrevocably diminished the wealth of the next aristocratic generation Hopkins points out that the only socially approved means of obtainingwealth were through inheritance dowry and the rewards of government office
88 Since office was usually held for only a few years inheritance and dowry
were the two real possibilities of income The total amount of Roman aristocraticwealth therefore had no way of ever increasing significantly it could be exchangedamong families through marriage but there was no external source of income thatwould make the aristocracy richer It could only become poorer Melanias actionwas a scandal because it threatened the financial basis not only of her own familybut of her entire class
Aside from the inheritance of property the continuation of the family itselfmay have been an issue in the conversioacuten of Melania the Younger as it was inthe conversion of Blessilla In this connection Chastagnol suggests II semble que
les pegraveres de famille ont tenu agrave maintenir la tradition pour leur principal heacuteritieret que faisant la part du feu ils ont abondonneacute leurs autres enfants agrave linfluencede leurs eacutepouses
89
Chastagnols stemma corroborates his conclusion In families where themother was Christian and the father pagan the oldest son seems to have beendesignated the inheritor of family tradition and responsibilities Julius Toxotiusthe only son of Paula and her husband remained a pagan until he was convertedby his Christian wife
40 Laeta herself the daughter of a mixed marriage had
two brothers the older urban prefect in 402 was certainly considered the in
heritor of the pagan tradition He was portrayed as a character in the Saturnalia35 Gerontius does not mention Melania the Elder but PaUadius The LauMao History
tr B T Meyer (London Longmans Green and Co 1965) says that Melania the Elder
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 157
along with his father and his uncle Albina the Younger was also the daughterof a mixed marriage Her brother Volusianus remained a pagan up to the timeof his death when he was converted
To push Chastagnols suggestion one step further not only was a male childdesignated as the inheritor of the male pagan aspect of family tradition but it wasconsidered undesirable for more than one daughter to be dedicated to the asceticlife The examples of Blessilla and Melania the Younger indicate that there wasa desire for at least one daughter to marry and have children Chastagnols pattern of male inheritance of the pagan tradition seems to have been mirrored by afemale inheritance of the Christian tradition Paula and Albina the Younger musthave expected that their granddaughters would be Christian The Christian mother then had a reason of her own for wishing to have only one ascetic daughter
THE NATURE OF THE ASCETIC LIFE
The most dramatic form of asceticism and the type most frequently associatedwith the women of fourth-century Rome because of Jeromes descriptions of itwas the flight to the desert But there was a second type of asceticism in fourth-century Rome which was more congruent with the aristocratic tradition of thephilosophic life
Jerome mentions Marcella Asella and Lea as maintaining the ascetic life inRome
41 Marcella and Lea founded religious monasteries in the city where they
gave themselves over to fasting and prayer living simply and charitably Marcella had introduced a new kind of religious life into Rome At that time no greatlady knew anything of the monastic life nor ventured to call herself a nun Thething itself was strange and the name was commonly accounted ignominious anddegrading
42 But Marcella who had learned from Athanasius about the life of
Anthony and about the monasteries founded by Pachomius and of the disciplinelaid down there for virgins and widows took up the monastic life in Rome Herexample was followed by other aristocratic women among whom were Paula andher daughter Eustochium Marcella as the center of what was probably an informal group of practicing ascetics moved her household to a farm near Rome
the country being chosen because of its loneliness43
She lived there with theother women who had joined her company until her death soon after the sack ofRome in 410
The life of retirement away from Rome was a traditional alternative for thearistocracy Peter Brown describes its development in the late fourth century
The tradition of otium had taken on a new lease of life It had become more complex and often far more earnest On their great estates in Sicily the lastpagan senators continued to re-edit manuscripts of the classics Many hadcome to think that this essentially private life might be organized as a community Indeed some of the first monasteries in the West were these laymonasteries of sensitive pagans and Christians44
Augustine looked upon his retirement to Cassiciacum in the autumn of 386 as a
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158 CHURCH HISTORY
flight to the desert Like Augustine Marcella adapted a convention of the pagan
aristocratic life to her own Christian use
But it is desert asceticism which comes to mind in connection with Jerome
and his spiritual daughters The Eastern ascetic Ufe was embraced by PaulaEustochium and Paula the Younger by Melania the Elder and by Melania the
Younger Their asceticism was dominated by one concern to preserve a singular
attachment to God In order to achieve this goal they practiced detachment from
the world through physical deprivation poverty of spirit and a life of virginity or
chastity At the same time that they struggled to flee the world they strengthened
their attachment to God by the study of scripture and by their passion for the his-
torical concrete elements of the Christian tradition Like their other achievements
the ascetics scorn for their bodies was dramatic Jerdme describes Paulas practice
of the ascetic life As often too as she was troubled by bodily weakness (broughton by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings) she would be heard to
say Ί keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means
when I have preached to others I myself should be cast983085away 4 5
When Melania
the Elder returned to Italy for a short visit after twenty983085five years in Jerusalem
she was met by her children and grandchildren Their short trip from Naples to
Nola was described by Paulinus She sat on a tiny thin horse worth less than
any ass and they attended her on the journey their trappings emphasizing the
extraordinary contrast Be sure that there is such divine strength in that
weak woman that she finds refreshment in fasting repose in prayer bread in the
Word clothing in rags 46
Physical poverty was akin to poverty of the spirit since both were seen as
means of preserving detachment from the world In his letter on the life of Paula
Jerome describes her great humility
Humility is the first of Christian graces and hers was so pronounced that one
who had never seen her and who on account of her celebrity had desired to
see her would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of maids When
she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remark-
able in dress in speech in gesture and in gait47
Subjection of the body and of the spirit were both important elements in the con-cept of chastity The preservation of chasity more than anything else was con-
sidered by Jerome as the essence of worldly detachment His letter to Eustochium
on virginity compares the life of the virgin to the life of the married woman
The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy
both in the body and in spirit but she that is married cares for the things of the
world how she may please her husband48
The condition of virginity influences
every aspect of a womans behavior she is modest in all things she rejects the
society of married women and avoids any situation that might compromise her
status40
Through physical and spiritual poverty and through the life of chastity theascetic woman sought to put aside worldly concerns so that she might concentrate
ll h tt ti G d Th f J i l ht G d th h
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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^ s
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154 CHURCH HISTORY
to have filled up their days by constantly vying among themselves for social prestige
[The widows] houses are full of flatterers full of guests The very clergy
whose teaching and authority ought to inspire respect kiss these ladies on the fore
head and then stretch out their handmdashyou would think if you did not know that
they were giving a benedictionmdashto receive the fee for their visit The women
meanwhile seeing that priests need their help are lifted up with pride25 This
feminine society mirrored the complexity of the male senatorial order and its own
complexity appears to have been long-established The mother of the emperor
Elagabalus (218-222) had established a little senate of ladies26 whose purpose
was to determine the proper relations among the women of the Roman aristocracy
The spirit of this unique institution appears to have descended upon the women
of the mid-fourth century The group of ascetic women whom we are considering
must be defined against the background of the competitive salon culture
CONVERSION TO ASCETICISM FAMILIAL OPPOSITION
The present group of ascetic women had more in common than social status Of
those for whom evidence is available it is clear that they came from families
where Christianity was already an influence But in spite of the presence of Chris
tian influence there is a pattern of familial opposition to their conversion to
asceticism Familial opposition sheds some light on the aristocratic family of the
fourth century two of the primary duties of children to their families it seems
were the transmission of familial wealth to the next generation and the continua
tion of the lineage itself Conversions to asceticism were inimical to the fulfillment of these responsibilities At least for these two reasons the typical conver
sion to the ascetic life was accomplished in spite of the strenuous objections of the
family
Among the women of the two earlier generations the question of Christian
influence within the family cannot always be answered It is unknown whether
the mother of Albina the Elder was a Christian or whether there was any Chris
tian in her family It is also unknown whether Paulas parents Rogatus and Bles-
silla were Christians Albinas own daughters did grow up as Christians how
ever and Melania the Elder was the daughter of a Christian mother27 In thethird generation of ascetic women Paulas daughters had grown up as Christians
In the fourth generation Melania the Younger and Paula the Younger were both
the daughters and granddaughters of Christian women Nevertheless opposition
to the proposed conversion occurred in five out of seven instances Albina the
Elder wanted her daughter Marcella to remarry when her first husband died after
only seven months of marriage An old but wealthy and aristocratic man promised
to will her his fortune if she would marry him and her mother Albina was ex
cessively anxious to secure so illustrious a protector for the widowed household28
Marcellas sister Asella though she had been dedicated by her parents tovirginity encountered familial opposition in her determination to pursue that
lif
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 155
mother had never been willing that she should wear she concluded her pious
enterprise by consecrating herself forthwith to the Lord She thus showed her
relatives that they need hope to wring no further concessions from one who
by her very dress had condemned the world29
Paula was not only a Christian but herself a convert to asceticism But Jeromes
letter to her on the death of her daughter Blessilla indicates that she had been
opposed to Blessillas conversion to asceticism after the death of her husband
When you were carried fainting out of the funeral procession whispers such as
these were audible in the crowd Is not this what we have often said She weeps
for her daughter killed with fasting She wanted her to marry again that she
might have grandchildren 30 In the same letter Jerome speaks for Blessilla de
scribing her happiness after death He concludes Many other things does she
say which I pass over here she prays also to God for you For me too I feelsure she makes intercession and asks God to pardon my sins in return for the
warnings and advice that I bestowed on her when to assure her salvation I braved
the ill-will of her familylaquo
On the other hand Paula actively supported the ascetic tendencies of her
daughter Eustochium When she sailed for Jerusalem leaving the rest of her
family behind she concentrated herself quietly upon Eustochium alone the part
ner alike of her vows and of her voyage82
He r opposition to conversion seems
to have been similar to Albinas each opposed the conversion of the last re
maining daughter both of whom they had previously married off Marcella was
Albinas only daughter aside from the already dedicated Asella One of Paulas
other three daughters Rogata had died and her daughter Paulina lived chastely
with her Christian husband Aside from the son Toxotius then Blessilla was the
only child who might have conceived the next generation Albinas opposition to
Marcellas conversion was not couched in terms of Marcellas duty to provide
grandchildren but it was based on Albinas view of Marcellas duty to her family
Both of these mothers seem to have realized that at least one daughter should
take upon herself the familial responsibilities that converts to asceticism denied
The decision of Melania the Elder to embrace the ascetic life was made after
the death of her husband and two of her three young children Paulinus of Nolawrote Many were her skirmishes down to the very elements in this warfare
against the vengeful dragon For the whole force of her noble relatives armed
to restrain her attempted to change her proposal and to obstruct her passage33
The conversion of Melania the Elders granddaughter and namesake more than
any other conversion indicates the familial responsibilities which bound the child
to the parent and which were rejected by the ascetic Melania was an only
child though she may have had a brother who died in childhood34 Her father
Valerius Publicoacutela had been the only surviving son of Melania the Elder Her
mother Albina the Younger had had one brother Volusianus who did not marryMelania was therefore the last member of these branches of two aristocratic fami-
29 Jer Ep 24 3 Eng tr in Nieene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2d scr 643
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156 CHURCH HISTORY
lies She was anxious to embrace the life of her grandmother85
but her parentsexpected her to produce children to whom the wealth of the family would betransmitted and in whom the lineage would continue
6 After her marriage she
produced first a daughter who was dedicated to God as a virgin at the time ofher birth Subsequently she gave birth to a son on whose shoulders the continuation of the line would presumably fall Both children died in infancy after theirdeaths Melania prevailed upon her husband to live chastely with her They bothbegan to sell all their property so that they might undertake the ascetic life Theiraction met with fierce opposition from Melanias parents who attempted to bringlegal action against the two on the grounds that they were still minors Melaniasbrother-in-law Severus also attempted to block the sale of his brothers portionof family wealth The situation eventually elicited the intervention of Serena wife
of Stilicho and sister of the emperor Honorius The support of Honorious fortheir cause finally discouraged the opposition which had been brewing among theentire Roman aristocracy
8T
The Vita S Melmiae in particular suggests the opposition that the conversion to asceticism could arouse in the aristocracy as a whole The reason for suchopposition could lie in the fact that by dispersing a significant amount of aristocraticwealth Melania irrevocably diminished the wealth of the next aristocratic generation Hopkins points out that the only socially approved means of obtainingwealth were through inheritance dowry and the rewards of government office
88 Since office was usually held for only a few years inheritance and dowry
were the two real possibilities of income The total amount of Roman aristocraticwealth therefore had no way of ever increasing significantly it could be exchangedamong families through marriage but there was no external source of income thatwould make the aristocracy richer It could only become poorer Melanias actionwas a scandal because it threatened the financial basis not only of her own familybut of her entire class
Aside from the inheritance of property the continuation of the family itselfmay have been an issue in the conversioacuten of Melania the Younger as it was inthe conversion of Blessilla In this connection Chastagnol suggests II semble que
les pegraveres de famille ont tenu agrave maintenir la tradition pour leur principal heacuteritieret que faisant la part du feu ils ont abondonneacute leurs autres enfants agrave linfluencede leurs eacutepouses
89
Chastagnols stemma corroborates his conclusion In families where themother was Christian and the father pagan the oldest son seems to have beendesignated the inheritor of family tradition and responsibilities Julius Toxotiusthe only son of Paula and her husband remained a pagan until he was convertedby his Christian wife
40 Laeta herself the daughter of a mixed marriage had
two brothers the older urban prefect in 402 was certainly considered the in
heritor of the pagan tradition He was portrayed as a character in the Saturnalia35 Gerontius does not mention Melania the Elder but PaUadius The LauMao History
tr B T Meyer (London Longmans Green and Co 1965) says that Melania the Elder
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 157
along with his father and his uncle Albina the Younger was also the daughterof a mixed marriage Her brother Volusianus remained a pagan up to the timeof his death when he was converted
To push Chastagnols suggestion one step further not only was a male childdesignated as the inheritor of the male pagan aspect of family tradition but it wasconsidered undesirable for more than one daughter to be dedicated to the asceticlife The examples of Blessilla and Melania the Younger indicate that there wasa desire for at least one daughter to marry and have children Chastagnols pattern of male inheritance of the pagan tradition seems to have been mirrored by afemale inheritance of the Christian tradition Paula and Albina the Younger musthave expected that their granddaughters would be Christian The Christian mother then had a reason of her own for wishing to have only one ascetic daughter
THE NATURE OF THE ASCETIC LIFE
The most dramatic form of asceticism and the type most frequently associatedwith the women of fourth-century Rome because of Jeromes descriptions of itwas the flight to the desert But there was a second type of asceticism in fourth-century Rome which was more congruent with the aristocratic tradition of thephilosophic life
Jerome mentions Marcella Asella and Lea as maintaining the ascetic life inRome
41 Marcella and Lea founded religious monasteries in the city where they
gave themselves over to fasting and prayer living simply and charitably Marcella had introduced a new kind of religious life into Rome At that time no greatlady knew anything of the monastic life nor ventured to call herself a nun Thething itself was strange and the name was commonly accounted ignominious anddegrading
42 But Marcella who had learned from Athanasius about the life of
Anthony and about the monasteries founded by Pachomius and of the disciplinelaid down there for virgins and widows took up the monastic life in Rome Herexample was followed by other aristocratic women among whom were Paula andher daughter Eustochium Marcella as the center of what was probably an informal group of practicing ascetics moved her household to a farm near Rome
the country being chosen because of its loneliness43
She lived there with theother women who had joined her company until her death soon after the sack ofRome in 410
The life of retirement away from Rome was a traditional alternative for thearistocracy Peter Brown describes its development in the late fourth century
The tradition of otium had taken on a new lease of life It had become more complex and often far more earnest On their great estates in Sicily the lastpagan senators continued to re-edit manuscripts of the classics Many hadcome to think that this essentially private life might be organized as a community Indeed some of the first monasteries in the West were these laymonasteries of sensitive pagans and Christians44
Augustine looked upon his retirement to Cassiciacum in the autumn of 386 as a
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158 CHURCH HISTORY
flight to the desert Like Augustine Marcella adapted a convention of the pagan
aristocratic life to her own Christian use
But it is desert asceticism which comes to mind in connection with Jerome
and his spiritual daughters The Eastern ascetic Ufe was embraced by PaulaEustochium and Paula the Younger by Melania the Elder and by Melania the
Younger Their asceticism was dominated by one concern to preserve a singular
attachment to God In order to achieve this goal they practiced detachment from
the world through physical deprivation poverty of spirit and a life of virginity or
chastity At the same time that they struggled to flee the world they strengthened
their attachment to God by the study of scripture and by their passion for the his-
torical concrete elements of the Christian tradition Like their other achievements
the ascetics scorn for their bodies was dramatic Jerdme describes Paulas practice
of the ascetic life As often too as she was troubled by bodily weakness (broughton by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings) she would be heard to
say Ί keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means
when I have preached to others I myself should be cast983085away 4 5
When Melania
the Elder returned to Italy for a short visit after twenty983085five years in Jerusalem
she was met by her children and grandchildren Their short trip from Naples to
Nola was described by Paulinus She sat on a tiny thin horse worth less than
any ass and they attended her on the journey their trappings emphasizing the
extraordinary contrast Be sure that there is such divine strength in that
weak woman that she finds refreshment in fasting repose in prayer bread in the
Word clothing in rags 46
Physical poverty was akin to poverty of the spirit since both were seen as
means of preserving detachment from the world In his letter on the life of Paula
Jerome describes her great humility
Humility is the first of Christian graces and hers was so pronounced that one
who had never seen her and who on account of her celebrity had desired to
see her would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of maids When
she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remark-
able in dress in speech in gesture and in gait47
Subjection of the body and of the spirit were both important elements in the con-cept of chastity The preservation of chasity more than anything else was con-
sidered by Jerome as the essence of worldly detachment His letter to Eustochium
on virginity compares the life of the virgin to the life of the married woman
The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy
both in the body and in spirit but she that is married cares for the things of the
world how she may please her husband48
The condition of virginity influences
every aspect of a womans behavior she is modest in all things she rejects the
society of married women and avoids any situation that might compromise her
status40
Through physical and spiritual poverty and through the life of chastity theascetic woman sought to put aside worldly concerns so that she might concentrate
ll h tt ti G d Th f J i l ht G d th h
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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^ s
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 155
mother had never been willing that she should wear she concluded her pious
enterprise by consecrating herself forthwith to the Lord She thus showed her
relatives that they need hope to wring no further concessions from one who
by her very dress had condemned the world29
Paula was not only a Christian but herself a convert to asceticism But Jeromes
letter to her on the death of her daughter Blessilla indicates that she had been
opposed to Blessillas conversion to asceticism after the death of her husband
When you were carried fainting out of the funeral procession whispers such as
these were audible in the crowd Is not this what we have often said She weeps
for her daughter killed with fasting She wanted her to marry again that she
might have grandchildren 30 In the same letter Jerome speaks for Blessilla de
scribing her happiness after death He concludes Many other things does she
say which I pass over here she prays also to God for you For me too I feelsure she makes intercession and asks God to pardon my sins in return for the
warnings and advice that I bestowed on her when to assure her salvation I braved
the ill-will of her familylaquo
On the other hand Paula actively supported the ascetic tendencies of her
daughter Eustochium When she sailed for Jerusalem leaving the rest of her
family behind she concentrated herself quietly upon Eustochium alone the part
ner alike of her vows and of her voyage82
He r opposition to conversion seems
to have been similar to Albinas each opposed the conversion of the last re
maining daughter both of whom they had previously married off Marcella was
Albinas only daughter aside from the already dedicated Asella One of Paulas
other three daughters Rogata had died and her daughter Paulina lived chastely
with her Christian husband Aside from the son Toxotius then Blessilla was the
only child who might have conceived the next generation Albinas opposition to
Marcellas conversion was not couched in terms of Marcellas duty to provide
grandchildren but it was based on Albinas view of Marcellas duty to her family
Both of these mothers seem to have realized that at least one daughter should
take upon herself the familial responsibilities that converts to asceticism denied
The decision of Melania the Elder to embrace the ascetic life was made after
the death of her husband and two of her three young children Paulinus of Nolawrote Many were her skirmishes down to the very elements in this warfare
against the vengeful dragon For the whole force of her noble relatives armed
to restrain her attempted to change her proposal and to obstruct her passage33
The conversion of Melania the Elders granddaughter and namesake more than
any other conversion indicates the familial responsibilities which bound the child
to the parent and which were rejected by the ascetic Melania was an only
child though she may have had a brother who died in childhood34 Her father
Valerius Publicoacutela had been the only surviving son of Melania the Elder Her
mother Albina the Younger had had one brother Volusianus who did not marryMelania was therefore the last member of these branches of two aristocratic fami-
29 Jer Ep 24 3 Eng tr in Nieene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2d scr 643
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156 CHURCH HISTORY
lies She was anxious to embrace the life of her grandmother85
but her parentsexpected her to produce children to whom the wealth of the family would betransmitted and in whom the lineage would continue
6 After her marriage she
produced first a daughter who was dedicated to God as a virgin at the time ofher birth Subsequently she gave birth to a son on whose shoulders the continuation of the line would presumably fall Both children died in infancy after theirdeaths Melania prevailed upon her husband to live chastely with her They bothbegan to sell all their property so that they might undertake the ascetic life Theiraction met with fierce opposition from Melanias parents who attempted to bringlegal action against the two on the grounds that they were still minors Melaniasbrother-in-law Severus also attempted to block the sale of his brothers portionof family wealth The situation eventually elicited the intervention of Serena wife
of Stilicho and sister of the emperor Honorius The support of Honorious fortheir cause finally discouraged the opposition which had been brewing among theentire Roman aristocracy
8T
The Vita S Melmiae in particular suggests the opposition that the conversion to asceticism could arouse in the aristocracy as a whole The reason for suchopposition could lie in the fact that by dispersing a significant amount of aristocraticwealth Melania irrevocably diminished the wealth of the next aristocratic generation Hopkins points out that the only socially approved means of obtainingwealth were through inheritance dowry and the rewards of government office
88 Since office was usually held for only a few years inheritance and dowry
were the two real possibilities of income The total amount of Roman aristocraticwealth therefore had no way of ever increasing significantly it could be exchangedamong families through marriage but there was no external source of income thatwould make the aristocracy richer It could only become poorer Melanias actionwas a scandal because it threatened the financial basis not only of her own familybut of her entire class
Aside from the inheritance of property the continuation of the family itselfmay have been an issue in the conversioacuten of Melania the Younger as it was inthe conversion of Blessilla In this connection Chastagnol suggests II semble que
les pegraveres de famille ont tenu agrave maintenir la tradition pour leur principal heacuteritieret que faisant la part du feu ils ont abondonneacute leurs autres enfants agrave linfluencede leurs eacutepouses
89
Chastagnols stemma corroborates his conclusion In families where themother was Christian and the father pagan the oldest son seems to have beendesignated the inheritor of family tradition and responsibilities Julius Toxotiusthe only son of Paula and her husband remained a pagan until he was convertedby his Christian wife
40 Laeta herself the daughter of a mixed marriage had
two brothers the older urban prefect in 402 was certainly considered the in
heritor of the pagan tradition He was portrayed as a character in the Saturnalia35 Gerontius does not mention Melania the Elder but PaUadius The LauMao History
tr B T Meyer (London Longmans Green and Co 1965) says that Melania the Elder
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 157
along with his father and his uncle Albina the Younger was also the daughterof a mixed marriage Her brother Volusianus remained a pagan up to the timeof his death when he was converted
To push Chastagnols suggestion one step further not only was a male childdesignated as the inheritor of the male pagan aspect of family tradition but it wasconsidered undesirable for more than one daughter to be dedicated to the asceticlife The examples of Blessilla and Melania the Younger indicate that there wasa desire for at least one daughter to marry and have children Chastagnols pattern of male inheritance of the pagan tradition seems to have been mirrored by afemale inheritance of the Christian tradition Paula and Albina the Younger musthave expected that their granddaughters would be Christian The Christian mother then had a reason of her own for wishing to have only one ascetic daughter
THE NATURE OF THE ASCETIC LIFE
The most dramatic form of asceticism and the type most frequently associatedwith the women of fourth-century Rome because of Jeromes descriptions of itwas the flight to the desert But there was a second type of asceticism in fourth-century Rome which was more congruent with the aristocratic tradition of thephilosophic life
Jerome mentions Marcella Asella and Lea as maintaining the ascetic life inRome
41 Marcella and Lea founded religious monasteries in the city where they
gave themselves over to fasting and prayer living simply and charitably Marcella had introduced a new kind of religious life into Rome At that time no greatlady knew anything of the monastic life nor ventured to call herself a nun Thething itself was strange and the name was commonly accounted ignominious anddegrading
42 But Marcella who had learned from Athanasius about the life of
Anthony and about the monasteries founded by Pachomius and of the disciplinelaid down there for virgins and widows took up the monastic life in Rome Herexample was followed by other aristocratic women among whom were Paula andher daughter Eustochium Marcella as the center of what was probably an informal group of practicing ascetics moved her household to a farm near Rome
the country being chosen because of its loneliness43
She lived there with theother women who had joined her company until her death soon after the sack ofRome in 410
The life of retirement away from Rome was a traditional alternative for thearistocracy Peter Brown describes its development in the late fourth century
The tradition of otium had taken on a new lease of life It had become more complex and often far more earnest On their great estates in Sicily the lastpagan senators continued to re-edit manuscripts of the classics Many hadcome to think that this essentially private life might be organized as a community Indeed some of the first monasteries in the West were these laymonasteries of sensitive pagans and Christians44
Augustine looked upon his retirement to Cassiciacum in the autumn of 386 as a
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158 CHURCH HISTORY
flight to the desert Like Augustine Marcella adapted a convention of the pagan
aristocratic life to her own Christian use
But it is desert asceticism which comes to mind in connection with Jerome
and his spiritual daughters The Eastern ascetic Ufe was embraced by PaulaEustochium and Paula the Younger by Melania the Elder and by Melania the
Younger Their asceticism was dominated by one concern to preserve a singular
attachment to God In order to achieve this goal they practiced detachment from
the world through physical deprivation poverty of spirit and a life of virginity or
chastity At the same time that they struggled to flee the world they strengthened
their attachment to God by the study of scripture and by their passion for the his-
torical concrete elements of the Christian tradition Like their other achievements
the ascetics scorn for their bodies was dramatic Jerdme describes Paulas practice
of the ascetic life As often too as she was troubled by bodily weakness (broughton by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings) she would be heard to
say Ί keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means
when I have preached to others I myself should be cast983085away 4 5
When Melania
the Elder returned to Italy for a short visit after twenty983085five years in Jerusalem
she was met by her children and grandchildren Their short trip from Naples to
Nola was described by Paulinus She sat on a tiny thin horse worth less than
any ass and they attended her on the journey their trappings emphasizing the
extraordinary contrast Be sure that there is such divine strength in that
weak woman that she finds refreshment in fasting repose in prayer bread in the
Word clothing in rags 46
Physical poverty was akin to poverty of the spirit since both were seen as
means of preserving detachment from the world In his letter on the life of Paula
Jerome describes her great humility
Humility is the first of Christian graces and hers was so pronounced that one
who had never seen her and who on account of her celebrity had desired to
see her would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of maids When
she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remark-
able in dress in speech in gesture and in gait47
Subjection of the body and of the spirit were both important elements in the con-cept of chastity The preservation of chasity more than anything else was con-
sidered by Jerome as the essence of worldly detachment His letter to Eustochium
on virginity compares the life of the virgin to the life of the married woman
The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy
both in the body and in spirit but she that is married cares for the things of the
world how she may please her husband48
The condition of virginity influences
every aspect of a womans behavior she is modest in all things she rejects the
society of married women and avoids any situation that might compromise her
status40
Through physical and spiritual poverty and through the life of chastity theascetic woman sought to put aside worldly concerns so that she might concentrate
ll h tt ti G d Th f J i l ht G d th h
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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156 CHURCH HISTORY
lies She was anxious to embrace the life of her grandmother85
but her parentsexpected her to produce children to whom the wealth of the family would betransmitted and in whom the lineage would continue
6 After her marriage she
produced first a daughter who was dedicated to God as a virgin at the time ofher birth Subsequently she gave birth to a son on whose shoulders the continuation of the line would presumably fall Both children died in infancy after theirdeaths Melania prevailed upon her husband to live chastely with her They bothbegan to sell all their property so that they might undertake the ascetic life Theiraction met with fierce opposition from Melanias parents who attempted to bringlegal action against the two on the grounds that they were still minors Melaniasbrother-in-law Severus also attempted to block the sale of his brothers portionof family wealth The situation eventually elicited the intervention of Serena wife
of Stilicho and sister of the emperor Honorius The support of Honorious fortheir cause finally discouraged the opposition which had been brewing among theentire Roman aristocracy
8T
The Vita S Melmiae in particular suggests the opposition that the conversion to asceticism could arouse in the aristocracy as a whole The reason for suchopposition could lie in the fact that by dispersing a significant amount of aristocraticwealth Melania irrevocably diminished the wealth of the next aristocratic generation Hopkins points out that the only socially approved means of obtainingwealth were through inheritance dowry and the rewards of government office
88 Since office was usually held for only a few years inheritance and dowry
were the two real possibilities of income The total amount of Roman aristocraticwealth therefore had no way of ever increasing significantly it could be exchangedamong families through marriage but there was no external source of income thatwould make the aristocracy richer It could only become poorer Melanias actionwas a scandal because it threatened the financial basis not only of her own familybut of her entire class
Aside from the inheritance of property the continuation of the family itselfmay have been an issue in the conversioacuten of Melania the Younger as it was inthe conversion of Blessilla In this connection Chastagnol suggests II semble que
les pegraveres de famille ont tenu agrave maintenir la tradition pour leur principal heacuteritieret que faisant la part du feu ils ont abondonneacute leurs autres enfants agrave linfluencede leurs eacutepouses
89
Chastagnols stemma corroborates his conclusion In families where themother was Christian and the father pagan the oldest son seems to have beendesignated the inheritor of family tradition and responsibilities Julius Toxotiusthe only son of Paula and her husband remained a pagan until he was convertedby his Christian wife
40 Laeta herself the daughter of a mixed marriage had
two brothers the older urban prefect in 402 was certainly considered the in
heritor of the pagan tradition He was portrayed as a character in the Saturnalia35 Gerontius does not mention Melania the Elder but PaUadius The LauMao History
tr B T Meyer (London Longmans Green and Co 1965) says that Melania the Elder
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 157
along with his father and his uncle Albina the Younger was also the daughterof a mixed marriage Her brother Volusianus remained a pagan up to the timeof his death when he was converted
To push Chastagnols suggestion one step further not only was a male childdesignated as the inheritor of the male pagan aspect of family tradition but it wasconsidered undesirable for more than one daughter to be dedicated to the asceticlife The examples of Blessilla and Melania the Younger indicate that there wasa desire for at least one daughter to marry and have children Chastagnols pattern of male inheritance of the pagan tradition seems to have been mirrored by afemale inheritance of the Christian tradition Paula and Albina the Younger musthave expected that their granddaughters would be Christian The Christian mother then had a reason of her own for wishing to have only one ascetic daughter
THE NATURE OF THE ASCETIC LIFE
The most dramatic form of asceticism and the type most frequently associatedwith the women of fourth-century Rome because of Jeromes descriptions of itwas the flight to the desert But there was a second type of asceticism in fourth-century Rome which was more congruent with the aristocratic tradition of thephilosophic life
Jerome mentions Marcella Asella and Lea as maintaining the ascetic life inRome
41 Marcella and Lea founded religious monasteries in the city where they
gave themselves over to fasting and prayer living simply and charitably Marcella had introduced a new kind of religious life into Rome At that time no greatlady knew anything of the monastic life nor ventured to call herself a nun Thething itself was strange and the name was commonly accounted ignominious anddegrading
42 But Marcella who had learned from Athanasius about the life of
Anthony and about the monasteries founded by Pachomius and of the disciplinelaid down there for virgins and widows took up the monastic life in Rome Herexample was followed by other aristocratic women among whom were Paula andher daughter Eustochium Marcella as the center of what was probably an informal group of practicing ascetics moved her household to a farm near Rome
the country being chosen because of its loneliness43
She lived there with theother women who had joined her company until her death soon after the sack ofRome in 410
The life of retirement away from Rome was a traditional alternative for thearistocracy Peter Brown describes its development in the late fourth century
The tradition of otium had taken on a new lease of life It had become more complex and often far more earnest On their great estates in Sicily the lastpagan senators continued to re-edit manuscripts of the classics Many hadcome to think that this essentially private life might be organized as a community Indeed some of the first monasteries in the West were these laymonasteries of sensitive pagans and Christians44
Augustine looked upon his retirement to Cassiciacum in the autumn of 386 as a
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158 CHURCH HISTORY
flight to the desert Like Augustine Marcella adapted a convention of the pagan
aristocratic life to her own Christian use
But it is desert asceticism which comes to mind in connection with Jerome
and his spiritual daughters The Eastern ascetic Ufe was embraced by PaulaEustochium and Paula the Younger by Melania the Elder and by Melania the
Younger Their asceticism was dominated by one concern to preserve a singular
attachment to God In order to achieve this goal they practiced detachment from
the world through physical deprivation poverty of spirit and a life of virginity or
chastity At the same time that they struggled to flee the world they strengthened
their attachment to God by the study of scripture and by their passion for the his-
torical concrete elements of the Christian tradition Like their other achievements
the ascetics scorn for their bodies was dramatic Jerdme describes Paulas practice
of the ascetic life As often too as she was troubled by bodily weakness (broughton by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings) she would be heard to
say Ί keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means
when I have preached to others I myself should be cast983085away 4 5
When Melania
the Elder returned to Italy for a short visit after twenty983085five years in Jerusalem
she was met by her children and grandchildren Their short trip from Naples to
Nola was described by Paulinus She sat on a tiny thin horse worth less than
any ass and they attended her on the journey their trappings emphasizing the
extraordinary contrast Be sure that there is such divine strength in that
weak woman that she finds refreshment in fasting repose in prayer bread in the
Word clothing in rags 46
Physical poverty was akin to poverty of the spirit since both were seen as
means of preserving detachment from the world In his letter on the life of Paula
Jerome describes her great humility
Humility is the first of Christian graces and hers was so pronounced that one
who had never seen her and who on account of her celebrity had desired to
see her would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of maids When
she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remark-
able in dress in speech in gesture and in gait47
Subjection of the body and of the spirit were both important elements in the con-cept of chastity The preservation of chasity more than anything else was con-
sidered by Jerome as the essence of worldly detachment His letter to Eustochium
on virginity compares the life of the virgin to the life of the married woman
The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy
both in the body and in spirit but she that is married cares for the things of the
world how she may please her husband48
The condition of virginity influences
every aspect of a womans behavior she is modest in all things she rejects the
society of married women and avoids any situation that might compromise her
status40
Through physical and spiritual poverty and through the life of chastity theascetic woman sought to put aside worldly concerns so that she might concentrate
ll h tt ti G d Th f J i l ht G d th h
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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^ s
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 157
along with his father and his uncle Albina the Younger was also the daughterof a mixed marriage Her brother Volusianus remained a pagan up to the timeof his death when he was converted
To push Chastagnols suggestion one step further not only was a male childdesignated as the inheritor of the male pagan aspect of family tradition but it wasconsidered undesirable for more than one daughter to be dedicated to the asceticlife The examples of Blessilla and Melania the Younger indicate that there wasa desire for at least one daughter to marry and have children Chastagnols pattern of male inheritance of the pagan tradition seems to have been mirrored by afemale inheritance of the Christian tradition Paula and Albina the Younger musthave expected that their granddaughters would be Christian The Christian mother then had a reason of her own for wishing to have only one ascetic daughter
THE NATURE OF THE ASCETIC LIFE
The most dramatic form of asceticism and the type most frequently associatedwith the women of fourth-century Rome because of Jeromes descriptions of itwas the flight to the desert But there was a second type of asceticism in fourth-century Rome which was more congruent with the aristocratic tradition of thephilosophic life
Jerome mentions Marcella Asella and Lea as maintaining the ascetic life inRome
41 Marcella and Lea founded religious monasteries in the city where they
gave themselves over to fasting and prayer living simply and charitably Marcella had introduced a new kind of religious life into Rome At that time no greatlady knew anything of the monastic life nor ventured to call herself a nun Thething itself was strange and the name was commonly accounted ignominious anddegrading
42 But Marcella who had learned from Athanasius about the life of
Anthony and about the monasteries founded by Pachomius and of the disciplinelaid down there for virgins and widows took up the monastic life in Rome Herexample was followed by other aristocratic women among whom were Paula andher daughter Eustochium Marcella as the center of what was probably an informal group of practicing ascetics moved her household to a farm near Rome
the country being chosen because of its loneliness43
She lived there with theother women who had joined her company until her death soon after the sack ofRome in 410
The life of retirement away from Rome was a traditional alternative for thearistocracy Peter Brown describes its development in the late fourth century
The tradition of otium had taken on a new lease of life It had become more complex and often far more earnest On their great estates in Sicily the lastpagan senators continued to re-edit manuscripts of the classics Many hadcome to think that this essentially private life might be organized as a community Indeed some of the first monasteries in the West were these laymonasteries of sensitive pagans and Christians44
Augustine looked upon his retirement to Cassiciacum in the autumn of 386 as a
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158 CHURCH HISTORY
flight to the desert Like Augustine Marcella adapted a convention of the pagan
aristocratic life to her own Christian use
But it is desert asceticism which comes to mind in connection with Jerome
and his spiritual daughters The Eastern ascetic Ufe was embraced by PaulaEustochium and Paula the Younger by Melania the Elder and by Melania the
Younger Their asceticism was dominated by one concern to preserve a singular
attachment to God In order to achieve this goal they practiced detachment from
the world through physical deprivation poverty of spirit and a life of virginity or
chastity At the same time that they struggled to flee the world they strengthened
their attachment to God by the study of scripture and by their passion for the his-
torical concrete elements of the Christian tradition Like their other achievements
the ascetics scorn for their bodies was dramatic Jerdme describes Paulas practice
of the ascetic life As often too as she was troubled by bodily weakness (broughton by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings) she would be heard to
say Ί keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means
when I have preached to others I myself should be cast983085away 4 5
When Melania
the Elder returned to Italy for a short visit after twenty983085five years in Jerusalem
she was met by her children and grandchildren Their short trip from Naples to
Nola was described by Paulinus She sat on a tiny thin horse worth less than
any ass and they attended her on the journey their trappings emphasizing the
extraordinary contrast Be sure that there is such divine strength in that
weak woman that she finds refreshment in fasting repose in prayer bread in the
Word clothing in rags 46
Physical poverty was akin to poverty of the spirit since both were seen as
means of preserving detachment from the world In his letter on the life of Paula
Jerome describes her great humility
Humility is the first of Christian graces and hers was so pronounced that one
who had never seen her and who on account of her celebrity had desired to
see her would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of maids When
she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remark-
able in dress in speech in gesture and in gait47
Subjection of the body and of the spirit were both important elements in the con-cept of chastity The preservation of chasity more than anything else was con-
sidered by Jerome as the essence of worldly detachment His letter to Eustochium
on virginity compares the life of the virgin to the life of the married woman
The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy
both in the body and in spirit but she that is married cares for the things of the
world how she may please her husband48
The condition of virginity influences
every aspect of a womans behavior she is modest in all things she rejects the
society of married women and avoids any situation that might compromise her
status40
Through physical and spiritual poverty and through the life of chastity theascetic woman sought to put aside worldly concerns so that she might concentrate
ll h tt ti G d Th f J i l ht G d th h
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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^ s
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158 CHURCH HISTORY
flight to the desert Like Augustine Marcella adapted a convention of the pagan
aristocratic life to her own Christian use
But it is desert asceticism which comes to mind in connection with Jerome
and his spiritual daughters The Eastern ascetic Ufe was embraced by PaulaEustochium and Paula the Younger by Melania the Elder and by Melania the
Younger Their asceticism was dominated by one concern to preserve a singular
attachment to God In order to achieve this goal they practiced detachment from
the world through physical deprivation poverty of spirit and a life of virginity or
chastity At the same time that they struggled to flee the world they strengthened
their attachment to God by the study of scripture and by their passion for the his-
torical concrete elements of the Christian tradition Like their other achievements
the ascetics scorn for their bodies was dramatic Jerdme describes Paulas practice
of the ascetic life As often too as she was troubled by bodily weakness (broughton by incredible abstinence and by redoubled fastings) she would be heard to
say Ί keep under my body and bring it into subjection lest that by any means
when I have preached to others I myself should be cast983085away 4 5
When Melania
the Elder returned to Italy for a short visit after twenty983085five years in Jerusalem
she was met by her children and grandchildren Their short trip from Naples to
Nola was described by Paulinus She sat on a tiny thin horse worth less than
any ass and they attended her on the journey their trappings emphasizing the
extraordinary contrast Be sure that there is such divine strength in that
weak woman that she finds refreshment in fasting repose in prayer bread in the
Word clothing in rags 46
Physical poverty was akin to poverty of the spirit since both were seen as
means of preserving detachment from the world In his letter on the life of Paula
Jerome describes her great humility
Humility is the first of Christian graces and hers was so pronounced that one
who had never seen her and who on account of her celebrity had desired to
see her would have believed that he saw not her but the lowest of maids When
she was surrounded by companies of virgins she was always the least remark-
able in dress in speech in gesture and in gait47
Subjection of the body and of the spirit were both important elements in the con-cept of chastity The preservation of chasity more than anything else was con-
sidered by Jerome as the essence of worldly detachment His letter to Eustochium
on virginity compares the life of the virgin to the life of the married woman
The unmarried woman cares for the things of the Lord that she may be holy
both in the body and in spirit but she that is married cares for the things of the
world how she may please her husband48
The condition of virginity influences
every aspect of a womans behavior she is modest in all things she rejects the
society of married women and avoids any situation that might compromise her
status40
Through physical and spiritual poverty and through the life of chastity theascetic woman sought to put aside worldly concerns so that she might concentrate
ll h tt ti G d Th f J i l ht G d th h
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without thecopyright holder(s) express written permission Any use decompilingreproduction or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be aviolation of copyright law
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typically is the journal owner who also may own the copyright in each article However
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Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specificwork for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
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About ATLAS
The ATLA Serials (ATLASreg) collection contains electronic versions of previously
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collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc
The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the AmericanTheological Library Association
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 159
Jerome describes how Paula and Eustochium read the Old and New Testaments
under his guidance Whenever I stuck fast and honestly confessed myself at
fault (Paula) would by no means rest content but would force me by fresh ques-
tions to point out to her which of many different solutions seemed to me the mostprobable
50 Though Jerome himself had learned Hebrew with great difficulty
Paula on making up her mind that she too would learn it succeeded so well
that she could chant the psalms in Hebrew and could speak the language without
a trace of the pronunciation peculiar to Latin The same accomplishments can
be seen to this day in her daughter Eustochium At least two of the ascetic
women were involved in the theological controversies of the time Marcella was
instrumental in having Origenists condemned in Rome51
and Melania the Elder
the friend of Rufinus was excoriated by Jerome for her alignment with Origen983085
ism Melania the Elder also had a reputation for serious study Palladius writes
that being very learned and loving literature she turned night into day perusing
every writing of the ancient commentators including three million (lines) of
Origen and two hundred fifty thousand of Gregory Stephen Pierus Basil
and other standard writers Nor did she read them once only and casually but
she laboriously went through each booiv seven or eight times52
Their intellectual pursuits were a means of understanding the tenets of the
church but they also sought understanding in a more concrete way The accounts
of the travels and adventures of Paula and Eustochium and of Melania the Elder
are filled with descriptions of people places and objects which were touched by
sanctity Though they deprived their bodies of material comforts they delighted
their souls with pilgrimages They wanted to see everything with their own eyes
and experience everything for themselves Of Paula in Jerusalem Jerome wrote
In visiting the holy places so great was the passion and enthusiasm she exhibited
for each that she could never have torn herself away from one had she not
been eager to visit the rest Before the cross she threw herself down in adora-
tion as though she beheld the Lord hanging upon it and when she entered the
tomb which was the scene of the Resurrection she kissed the stone which the
angel had rolled away from the door of the sepulchre Indeed so ardent was
her faith that she even licked with her mouth the very spot on which the Lords
body had lain like one athirst for the river which he has longed for53
When Melania the Elder arrived in Alexandria she sold what was left of her
possessions
and then went to the mount of Nitria where she met the following fathers and
their companions Pambo Arsisius Serapion the Great Paphnutius of Scete
Isidore the confessor bishop of Hermopolis and Dioscorus And she sojourned
with them half a year travelling about in the desert and visiting all the saints54
Their travel was perhaps a kind of souvenir983085hunting but it was imbued with a
passion for the historical concrete elements of the Christian tradition It was of
a piece with their intellectual curiosity This ascetic life offered mortification of
the flesh indeed but it also offered something more It must have seemed an ad- venture of the highest kind to throw over everything that was tedious and boring
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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Copyright and Use
As an ATLAS user you may print download or send articles for individual useaccording to fair use as defined by US and international copyright law and asotherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement
No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without thecopyright holder(s) express written permission Any use decompilingreproduction or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be aviolation of copyright law
This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permissionfrom the copyright holder(s) The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal
typically is the journal owner who also may own the copyright in each article However
for certain articles the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specificwork for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement For information regarding the
copyright holder(s) please refer to the copyright information in the journal if availableor contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s)
About ATLAS
The ATLA Serials (ATLASreg) collection contains electronic versions of previously
published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc
The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the AmericanTheological Library Association
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160 CHURCH HISTORY
in Rome and to strike out for a life of freedom and the company of saints and wildmonks in the desertmiddot
THE EFFECTS OF ASCETICISM ON THE FOURTH-CENTURY
ROMAN ARISTOCRACY T H E RISE OF ASCETICISM
The fourth century witnessed both a rise in ascetic practices among the Roman aristocracy and a decline in the birth rate of the aristocracymiddot Though latefourth-century sources suggest that Christian asceticism was one of the causes ofdecreasing population65 it is more likely that the increase in asceticism and thedecrease in population were two phenomena that occurred simultaneously and inresponse to the same social conditions The growing independence of aristocraticwomen and the great expense of initiating children into adulthood have been seenas two of the causes of population decrease The practice of asceticism grew in
popularity as it became an increasingly acceptable way for women to exercise theirindependence and because it provided one answer to the financial burdens of childraising Though familial opposition to ascetic conversion suggested that the dissipation of family wealth and the failure of the line were to be avoided asceticismappears to have had two positive functions
The growing independence of aristocratic women can be traced as far backas the beginning of the third century when the little senate of ladies endeavoredto insure that aristocratic women who married outside the senatorial order wouldnot lose the social rank of their fathers At the same time Pope Callistus made asimilar ruling for the benefit of Christian aristocratic women who married non-aristocratic Christians Aristocratic women were beginning to exercise more control over the choice of their husbands than they had done before56 But althoughthey more often claimed for themselves the choice of whom they should marryuntil the fourth century aristocratic women nearly always married It was only inthe course of that century that unmarried aristocratic women began to appear67
Aristocratic women in the Roman Empire married early Literary and epi-graphic evidence08 indicates that 4203 percent of pagan women were first marriedbetween the ages of ten and fourteen Since mortality was high and divorce lawlenient there was a good chance that one or other of the marriage partners wouldparticipate in a second marriage Laws from the time of Augustus limited theperiod between marriages to two years for widows and eighteen months for divorced women The unmarried woman was an anomaly in aristocratic society59
The Christian Constantine abolished laws limiting the period between marriages
55 See for example Ambrose De Virginitate 11 24 35-38 Ambroses response that thepopulation was increasing in the East where asceticism flourished most has been echoedby AHM Jones The Social Background to the Struggle Between Paganism andChristianity p 17 However M K Hopkins in The Age of Boman Girls at Marriage Population Studies 18 (1965) 309-327 has presented epigraphie indications
that Christian aristocratie women of the fourth century tended to marry later than theirpagan peers Such a practice would possibly have a bearing on the birth rates of Christians
56 M i 131 133 Thi i M i th i i hi t i l t B
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
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^ s
Copyright and Use
As an ATLAS user you may print download or send articles for individual useaccording to fair use as defined by US and international copyright law and asotherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement
No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without thecopyright holder(s) express written permission Any use decompilingreproduction or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be aviolation of copyright law
This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permissionfrom the copyright holder(s) The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal
typically is the journal owner who also may own the copyright in each article However
for certain articles the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specificwork for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement For information regarding the
copyright holder(s) please refer to the copyright information in the journal if availableor contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s)
About ATLAS
The ATLA Serials (ATLASreg) collection contains electronic versions of previously
published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc
The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the AmericanTheological Library Association
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 161
as well as the laws penalizing celibacy60
Asceticism in Rome was noticeablypresent for the first time during the fourth century As evidence of its appearance we have Jeromes descriptions of an ascetic fad among the aristocratic
women of Rome we have Ambroses account of the institutionalization of virginity within the church and we have an indication that a parallel institutionalization of widowhood was attempting to take root in the West These indicationsimpressionistic as they are suggest that asceticism was increasing in the Westand therefore that it had a function to fulfill in the society
In his letter to Eustochium on virginity Jerome makes several referencesto a fashionable asceticism which seems to have penetrated the competitive salonculture of Rome He says to Eustochium
Some women indeed actually disfigure themselves so as to make it obvious
that they have been fasting As soon as they catch sight of anyone they droptheir eyes and begin sobbing covering up the face all but a glimpse of one eyewhich they just keep free to watch the effect they make They wear a blackdress and a girdle of sackcloth their feet and hands are unwashed their stomachalonemdashbecause it cannot be seenmdashis busy churning foodmiddot
1
Again he says Cast from you like the plague those idle and inquisitive virginsand widows who go about to married womens houses and surpass the very parasites in a play by their unblushing effrontery
Ambroses campaign on behalf of virginity was successful enough to bringabout an order of virgins in the church in Milan
62 Virgins were often dedicated
to God by their parents at birth as was the case with Asella and with Paula theYounger Under Ambrose these children who had been devoted to God tookpublic vows of virginity in a ceremony of consecration when they reached puberty
63
After their consecration they continued to live with their parents but were underthe special care of the bishop
64 They sat together in a special screened-off area
of the church Ambrose prescribed for them a life of a seclusion devotion and abstinence
65 They became a recognized part of church life
Jeromes treatment of Blessilla and Marcella in particular suggests that hisdealings with the Western women may have been influenced by the Eastern concept of Christian widowhood In the East the early Christian order of widowshad by the third century begun to work actively among the women members ofthe congregation In the same century this group began to share some of the functions of the made order of deacons The third-century order of deaconesses thendrew from both the diaconate and the order of widows in establishing itself as athird entity Deaconesses did not appear in the West before the fifth century
66
The Eastern order of widows expanding as it did into the order of deaconessesseems to have provided widows with a more viable place in the life of the churchthan was offered them in the West In this respect as he did in so many othersJerome may have been acting as a conductor of Eastern innovations to the West
60 Ibid p 22261 Jer Ep 2227 Eng tr in Select Letters pp 117 and 12362 Amb De Virginibus 157 59 But see ibid 1 57 58 for his problems with overcoming
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcristianizacion-en-el-siglo-iv-y-la-conversion-de-mujeres 1618
164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
httpslidepdfcomreaderfullcristianizacion-en-el-siglo-iv-y-la-conversion-de-mujeres 1718
CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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^ s
Copyright and Use
As an ATLAS user you may print download or send articles for individual useaccording to fair use as defined by US and international copyright law and asotherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement
No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without thecopyright holder(s) express written permission Any use decompilingreproduction or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be aviolation of copyright law
This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permissionfrom the copyright holder(s) The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal
typically is the journal owner who also may own the copyright in each article However
for certain articles the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specificwork for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement For information regarding the
copyright holder(s) please refer to the copyright information in the journal if availableor contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s)
About ATLAS
The ATLA Serials (ATLASreg) collection contains electronic versions of previously
published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc
The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the AmericanTheological Library Association
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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162 CHURCH HISTORY
The rise of asceticism provided the aristocratic woman with an increasingly
acceptable alternative to marriage She might either remain a virgin or after the
death of her husband remain a widow The dedication of a virgin by her parents
is a practice that should be considered in more detail While it was necessary tohave enough children to insure the continuation of the line the great expense of
initiating children into adulthood could be ruinous to a family with too many chil
dren for its resources to bear67 It was necessary to provide each daughter with
a sufficient dowry and each son with a respectable celebration of quaestorian and
praetorian games68
Dedication to virginity may have been a way of providing for
surplus daughters without straining the resources of the family Sons could then
be launched into the senatorial order in a fitting way and other daughters could
be given a dowry adequate enough to insure for them an appropriate marriage
Parents lacked control both in limiting and in sustaining their families Onthe one hand there was little notion of contraception69 on the other hand the
high mortality rate often rendered futile their attempts to insure the continuation
of the line The practice of dedication of daughters to virginity may have returned
to the parents some element of control over the number of children whose entry
into adulthood could be adequately financed by the family
T H E EFFE CTS OF ASCETICISM ON TH E FOURTH-CENTURY ROMAN ARISTOCRACY
T H E CHRISTIANIZATION OF TH E HOUSEHOLD AND THE FAILURE OF ASCETICISM
Jeromes ascetic response to the concept of marriage has been mentioned
70
But there is another side to his attitude toward marriage it is perhaps summed
up in his words I praise marriage because it produces virgins for me 71 Less
flippantly he quotes Paul The woman that hath an husband that believeth not
and if he be pleased to dwell with her let her not leave him For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified by the believing wife and the unbelieving wife is sanctified
by the believing husband else were your children unclean but now they are holy72
In this same letter to Laeta on the education of her daughter Paula the Younger
Jerome describes two purposes of the marriage of a Christian the conversion of
the other members of the household to Christianity and the education of a new
Christian generation The final end of the Christianization of the household forJerome is the production of Christian ascetics
In his letter to Laeta Jerome suggests that one result of her Christian house
hold will be the conversion of her father a pontifex Vestae to Christianity
Who would have believed that the granddaughter of the Roman pontiff Albinuswould be born in answer to a mothers vows that the grandfather would standby and rejoice while the babys yet stammering tongue cried Alleluia andthat even the old man would nurse in his arms one of Christs own virgins We
67 M K Hopkins discusses this problem of a balancing act in his Elite Mobility in the
Roman Empire pp 24-26 By the mid-fourth century three children was considered theupper limit or the unattainable ideal for aristocratic families due to the high rate of infant mortality The survival of too many children however would be as disastrous to thefamily fortune as the survival of none
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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^ s
Copyright and Use
As an ATLAS user you may print download or send articles for individual useaccording to fair use as defined by US and international copyright law and asotherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement
No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without thecopyright holder(s) express written permission Any use decompilingreproduction or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be aviolation of copyright law
This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permissionfrom the copyright holder(s) The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal
typically is the journal owner who also may own the copyright in each article However
for certain articles the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specificwork for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement For information regarding the
copyright holder(s) please refer to the copyright information in the journal if availableor contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s)
About ATLAS
The ATLA Serials (ATLASreg) collection contains electronic versions of previously
published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc
The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the AmericanTheological Library Association
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 163
did weU to expect this happy issue The one unbeliever is sanctified by a saintly
household of believers73
There are in fact two instances of conversions by Christian women of their pagan
male relatives Jerome alludes to one in his letter to Laeta Her husband Toxotiuswas a pagan when he married Laeta in spite of the fact that his mother Paula
and all his sisters were Christians He was apparently converted after his mar
riage Volusianus was the pagan son of a pagan father and Christian mother
his sister Albina the Younger was Christian and it was his Christian niece
Melania the Younger who converted him to Christianity as he lay on his death
bed74 It was not entirely fanciful for Jerome to suggest that Laetas father one
of the inner circle of staunch pagans might be converted by the Christianity of
his household
But the primary point of Jeromes letter was to outline the ideal education of
a Christian girl Paula was to be raised in a strictly Christian environment75 Her
maid and all the women servants around her were to be of sedate and unworldly
character From her earliest years she was to be encouraged in learning in the
guise of games76 She was also to be instructed from the very beginning about
her paternal grandmother and aunt Paula and Eustochium Let her crave their
company and threaten you that she will leave you for them7T As Paula grew older
she was to be dressed as simply as possible without the aid of cosmetics or jew
elry78 She was never to be separated from the watchful eyes of her mother70 She
should eat simple dishes and with restraint she should take a little wine only for
her health80
She should be deaf to all musical instruments81
Jerome devotes a large proportion of the letter to the problem of Paulas
education She was to memorize portions of the scripture daily in Greek and
Latin He sets down the order in which she was to study them beginning with
the Psalter and ending with the Song of Songs for if she were to read it at the
beginning she might be harmed by not perceiving that it was the song of a spiritual
bridal expressed in fleshly language82 She was to read Cyprian Athanasius
Hilary and those others who maintain in their books a steady love of the faith83
Anything else should be read only from a critical point of view The culmina
tion of Jeromes long letter to Laeta is a charge Do not take up a burden whichyou cannot bear84 In order to raise Paula as a true ascetic it would be best to
send her to her grandmather Paula and her aunt Eustochium There far away
from the influences of Rome she will be taught in such a way that she will be a
credit to the church What Jerome described in his letter to Laeta and what he
repeated in his letter to the baby Pacatula85 is a careful and deliberate socializa
tion of the child by the household For Jerome the success of the Christian house
hold is measured by the asceticism of its children Since the children are not
raised according to the values and expectations of the larger society which might
73 Ibid Eng tr in Select Letters pp 339-341
74 Gerontius Vita S Melania ed Rampolla pp 53-5575 Jer Ep 107476 Ibid 1074
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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^ s
Copyright and Use
As an ATLAS user you may print download or send articles for individual useaccording to fair use as defined by US and international copyright law and asotherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement
No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without thecopyright holder(s) express written permission Any use decompilingreproduction or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be aviolation of copyright law
This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permissionfrom the copyright holder(s) The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal
typically is the journal owner who also may own the copyright in each article However
for certain articles the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specificwork for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement For information regarding the
copyright holder(s) please refer to the copyright information in the journal if availableor contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s)
About ATLAS
The ATLA Serials (ATLASreg) collection contains electronic versions of previously
published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc
The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the AmericanTheological Library Association
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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164 CHURCH HISTORY
be pagan or nominally Christian or syncretic the values which they receivethrough their socialization within the household must be particularly strong Thebest household environment Jerome suggests would be the one that most closely
approximated the environment of JerusalemA similar situation existed in the Puritan household of pre-revolutionary
England86 A Puritan writing at the time said that it was important for catechizing to be carried on at home because houses are the nurseries of the Church
87
The household became spiritualized its purpose was to fill the ranks of thefaithful The distinction between seventeenth-century asceticism and fourth-centuryasceticism is important however because it contains the answer to the failure ofJeromes dream In seventeenth-century England Puritan asceticism acted positively to bring the actual world into consonance with its own vision of the good
society In the words of Max Weber it was an inner-worldly asceticism Activeasceticism operates within the world rationally active asceticism in mastering theworld seeks to tame what is creatural and wicked through work in a worldlyVocation88
In contrast to inner-worldly asceticism Weber posits an other-worldly asceticism or asceticist flight from the world If active asceticism confines itself tokeeping down and to overcoming creatural wickedness in the actors own nature it then enhances the concentration on the firmly established God-willed andactive redemptory accomplishments to the point of avoiding any action in the
orders of the world
89
Puritan asceticism effected a revolution within the household which produced a new generation of inner-worldly ascetics The asceticismof the fourth century was other-worldly rather than inner-worldly the goal offourth-century asceticism was not the mastery of the world but the mastery ofself Jeromes dream of a society of Christian households busily producing futureascetics was doomed to fail Most prosaically his Christian families would soondie out if they were to produce only ascetics But secondly the typical responseof the larger society to asceticism is opposition If the asceticism is of the inner-worldly type it will attempt to overcome that opposition as in the case of PuritanEngland But if the asceticism is other-worldly it will make no attempt to deal
with the response of the larger society and so will have little or no positive impacton the society
Fourth-century ascetics quite literally fled from Roman society The resultwas that with the influence of asceticism minimized by distance both physical andpsychological the way was open for a syncretic working-out of the pagan andChristian cultures00 Though the commitment to the ascetic life may have beenrejected by the larger society as counter-productive Christianity itself was seenin an increasingly positive light We see indications of a new syncretism in thefamilies of the ascetic women Albinus the pagan grandfather of Melania the
Younger a character in the Saturnalia and a friend of Symmachus corresponded86 See Christopher Hill Society and Puritanism in Pre-Bevolutionary England (New York
Schocken Books 1964) pp 443 481 The Spiritualization of Icirche Household
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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^ s
Copyright and Use
As an ATLAS user you may print download or send articles for individual useaccording to fair use as defined by US and international copyright law and asotherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement
No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without thecopyright holder(s) express written permission Any use decompilingreproduction or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be aviolation of copyright law
This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permissionfrom the copyright holder(s) The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal
typically is the journal owner who also may own the copyright in each article However
for certain articles the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specificwork for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement For information regarding the
copyright holder(s) please refer to the copyright information in the journal if availableor contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s)
About ATLAS
The ATLA Serials (ATLASreg) collection contains electronic versions of previously
published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc
The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the AmericanTheological Library Association
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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CHRISTIANIZATION IN THE FOURTH CENTURY 165
with Ambrose on points of doctrine01
His son Volusianus who remained a paganup to his death-bed conversion corresponded with Augustine on questions of theChristian faith
92 The proximity of paganism and Christianity within the fami
lies of the late Roman aristocracy was probably the single most potent factor inthe gradual substitution of Christianity for paganism as the religion of the senatorial order
It has been suggested first by fourth- and fifth-century contemporaries93
thenby Gibbon
94 and more recently by AHM Jones
95 that Christianity contributed
to the weakening of the Roman Empire by positing an alternative ethos to that of Roma aeterna Paulinus of Nola the friend and relative of Melania the Elderbears out this suggestion in a letter which expresses his sentiments on Romansociety We ought not to put loyalties or fatherland or distinctions or riches be
fore God for scripture says The fashion of this world passeth away Andthose who love this world will also perish with it
96 The present group of ascetic
women also corrobrate the notion of a Christian asceticism alien to the traditionalaristocratic ethos They provided Jerome the chief architect of fourth-centuryasceticism with the examples he used to inspire and prod more hesitant disciplesThey were an important weapon in his propaganda war against the Romanaristocracy
The gradual Christianization of the Roman aristocracy in the fourth and fifthcenturies has been laid at the feet of the women of the aristocracy but the drift
into respectable Christianity was accomplished in spite of the presence of onegroup of women whose Christianity was most certainly not respectable LikePaulinus of Nola they would not effect a transformation of their society becauseof their certainty that only in fleeing that society would they arrive at the Endthey so fervently desired
91 Chastagnol pp 247-248 argues for this identification92 Augustine Epistolae 135 13693 8ee Augustine The City of God 13594 Gibbon Decline and Fall chap 3135 AHM Jones The Decline of the Ancient World (New York Holt Binehart and Win
ston Inc 1966) p 369
96 Paul of Nola Ep 252 Eng tr in Letters tr P G Walsh (Westminster MarylandNewman Prese 1966)
8132019 Cristianizacioacuten en el siglo IV y la conversioacuten de mujeres
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^ s
Copyright and Use
As an ATLAS user you may print download or send articles for individual useaccording to fair use as defined by US and international copyright law and asotherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement
No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without thecopyright holder(s) express written permission Any use decompilingreproduction or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be aviolation of copyright law
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This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permissionfrom the copyright holder(s) The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal
typically is the journal owner who also may own the copyright in each article However
for certain articles the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article
Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specificwork for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered
by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement For information regarding the
copyright holder(s) please refer to the copyright information in the journal if availableor contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s)
About ATLAS
The ATLA Serials (ATLASreg) collection contains electronic versions of previously
published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission The ATLAS
collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association(ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc
The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the AmericanTheological Library Association