The Lives & Legacy of Extraordinary Women. Kate Dickinson Sweetser
and the great work of Paula and Eustochium, was the translation of the Bible into what was then the speech of the people. For this they spared no pains nor costs. They must have found a quiet happiness above all they had calculated in this work. Their minds and thoughts must have been held by the charm of the noble poetry, by the puzzle of words to be cleared and read aright, by the constant interest of accomplishment that every sunrise brought to them, and brings ever to steadfast workers in these days.
And so they dwelt, the gentle Paula, a woman of courtesy, high spirit, steadfastness and gracious, sprightly humour; Eustochium, the grave young daughter who never left her mother's side, whose gentle shadow is one with her mother's; and Jerome, the greatest writer of his time, the mighty controversialist, a man evidently a well of force and sympathy, the kind friend and fellow-worker. Every day the three had conferences as to the most accurate renderings possible, and at all times the greatest respect for the scholarship and acuteness of one another. Amid them was the pleasant stir of independent opinion.
In the books that went forth from that seclusion in Bethlehem we find such an inscription as this:
You, Paula, and Eustochium, who have studied so deeply the books of the Hebrews, take it, this book of Esther, and test it word by word; you can tell whether anything is added, anything withdrawn: and can bear faithful witness whether I have rendered aright in Latin this Hebrew history.
Between these zealous workers in Bethlehem and the old Christian friends in Rome letters were constantly passing. And as the years of her absence grew, Paula, in time, heard of the marriage of Toxotius, who, a little boy of ten, had held out begging hands to her as her ship set sail from the port of Rome. Anon came the joyful news that a daughter had been born and named after her grandmother, Paula. The baby's mother, Leta, looking forward with early longings for the child's future, at once wrote to Jerome about the education of the little one.
The great writer's first thought, amidst his joyous congratulations, is the probable conversion of the baby's maternal grandfather, Albinus, a follower of the old gods.
"Albinus is already a candidate for the faith," he writes, "a crowd of sons and grandsons besiege him. I believe, on my part, that if Jupiter himself had such a family he would be converted to Jesus Christ."
Then Jerome gives, with tender detail, the counsels as to education for which Leta had asked. But he adds:
"It will be difficult to bring up thy little daughter thus at Rome. Send her to Bethlehem; she will repose in the manger of Jesus. Eustochium wishes for her; trust the little one with her. Let this new Paula be cradled on the bosom of her grandmother. Send her to me; I will carry her on my shoulders, old man as I am. I will make myself a child with her; I will lisp to fit her speech; and, believe me, I shall be prouder of my employment than ever Aristotle was of his" [as tutor to Alexander.]
The invitation was accepted. In a few years the little maiden was indeed sent to Bethlehem, though not till after the death of her grandmother Paula. And it was the child, the younger Paula, who at last closed the eyes of Jerome.
Paula, the grandmother, did not live long after the birth of her namesake. Her last illness was beginning. Eustochium watched her night and day, entrusting to no one else the tender last cares—sustaining the drooping head, warming the cold feet, feeding the weakened body, and making the invalid's bed. If the mother fell asleep for a little while, the daughter would go for prayers to the Manger, close at hand and sanctified by its tender associations of motherhood.
But the precious life was slowly ebbing away. Knowing that her end was near, Paula began to repeat with great joy the verses of the Psalms she knew so well:
"Lord, I have loved the habitation of Thy house, and the place where Thine honour dwelleth!"; "How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord God of hosts! My soul longeth, yea, fainteth, for the courts of the house of my God."; "Better to be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than to dwell in the tents of wickedness."
When she had finished, she began to say these songs of the threshold over again. She did not answer when spoken to, until Jerome came and asked gently why she did not speak and if she suffered. Then she answered in Greek, the language of her father and of her childhood, that she had no discomfort, but was "beholding in a vision all quiet and tranquil things." "I feel already an infinite peace," she said. And still she continued to murmur at intervals the words of that ancient song of pilgrimage until her voice grew fainter and fainter, and with the sigh of longing for God's presence on her lips she entered it forever.
All Palestine may be said to have assisted at her funeral. A chorus of psalms and lamentations sounded forth in all languages—Hebrew, Greek, Latin. Hermits crept out of their caves, and monks came in throngs from their monasteries to bewail their generous friend, this great Roman lady, this devoted Christian. During her last days bishops from the neighbouring dioceses had gathered round her and her coffin was borne on their heads into the basilica of the Manger.
And there all the poor, the widowed and orphans lamented "their foster-mother," "their mother," and showed the gifts she had given them and the garments she had made for them. Eustochium could with difficulty be prevailed to leave her. She stayed kissing the cold lips, and at last, her grief breaking through the usual calm of her life, throwing her arms about the unconscious form and praying to be buried beside her.
Paula died at fifty-six. She had spent the last eighteen years of her life in Palestine.
Jerome, for the first time in his laborious life, lost his appetite for work. He could do no more. "I have been able to do nothing, not even from the Scriptures, since the death of the holy and gracious Paula," he wrote. "Grief overwhelms me."
Eustochium, with the instinct of true affection, drew him out of this stupor by inducing him to write a memoir of her mother for her. In two sleepless nights he dictated it. "He could not write himself. Each time that he took up the tablets his fingers stiffened and the stylus fell from his hand. He could not dwell," he said, "on her great pedigree from the Scipios, the Gracchi, from Agamemnon, nor on her splendid opulence and her palace at Rome. She had preferred Bethlehem to Rome. Her praise was that she died poorer than the poorest she had succoured. At Rome she had not been known beyond Rome. At Bethlehem all Christendom, Roman and barbarian, revered her."
"We weep not her loss; we thank God to have had her. Nay! we have her always, for all live by the spirit of God; and the elect who ascend to Him remain still always in the family of those He loves."
Eustochium quietly took up the guidance of her mother's convents and hospice and gently urged Jerome to resume his work. Writing almost countless letters, translating and commenting on the Scriptures he passed still many years, and at last, dying, at his own wish his body was buried in a hollow of the rocks at Bethlehem. To this day, it is said, his name can still be traced graven in the rock.
In the fifteen hundred years that have passed since the death of Paula, the homes of piety and charity established by her strength and love have been swept away. No tradition even of their site is left. But with one storied chamber is connected a warm interest. It is the rocky room, in one of the half caves, half excavations, close to that of the Nativity, and communicating with it by rudely hewn stairs and passages. In this, the legend runs, Jerome established himself while his convent was building. He called it his paradise. Sunlit from above, with prayer and the music of alleluias sounding there night and day, brightened by the glow of the pure affections of Paula and Eustochium and sanctified by their great work, from it flowed rivers of water to refresh the earth.
CATHERINE DOUGLAS
The Tragedy of James I. of Scots. 20th February, 1437
Note.—Tradition says that Catherine Douglas, in honour of her heroic act when she barred the door with her arm against the murderers of James the First of Scots, received popularly the name of "Barlass." The name remains to her descendants, the Barlas family, in Scotland, who bear for their crest a broken arm. She married Alexander Lovell of