Jerome was always fond of the classics, although pagan writers were not in favor with the early Christians.  One night he dreamed he was called to the skies where he was soundly flogged for reading certain pagan authors.  This vision interrupted his classical studies for a time.  In later years he resumed his beloved Virgil; and he vigorously defended himself against those who charged him with being a Pagan and an apostate on account of his love for Greek and Roman literature.  If his admiration for Virgil was the Devil’s work, I but give the Devil his due when I declare that much of the charm of Jerome’s literary productions is owing to the inspiration of classic models.

Our attention must now be transferred from Jerome to the high-born Roman matrons, who laid off their silks that they might clothe themselves in the humble garb of the nun.  As the narrative proceeds I shall let Jerome speak as often as possible, that the reader may become acquainted with the style of those biographies and eulogies which were the talk of Rome, and which have been admired so highly by succeeding generations.

Those who embraced monasticism in Rome did so in one of two ways.  Some sold their possessions, adopted coarse garments, and subsisted on the plainest food, but they did not leave the city and were still to be seen upon the streets.  Jerome writes to Pammachius:  “Who would have believed that a last descendant of the consuls, an ornament of the race of Camillus, could make up his mind to traverse the city in the black robe of a monk, and should not blush to appear thus clad in the midst of senators.”  Some of those who remained at Rome established a sort of retreat for their ascetic friends.

But another class left Rome altogether.  Some took up their abode on the rugged isles of the Adriatic or the Mediterranean.  Large numbers of them went to the East, principally to Palestine.  Jerome was practically the abbot of a Roman colony of monks and nuns.  Two motives, beside the general ruling desire to achieve holiness, produced this exodus to the Holy Land, which culminated centuries later in the crusades.  One was a desire to see the deserts and caves, the abode of hermits famous for piety and miracles.  Jerome, as I have shown, invested these lonely retreats and strange characters with a sort of holy romance, and hence, faith, mingled with curiosity, led men to the East.  Another motive was the desire to visit the land of the Saviour, to tread the soil consecrated by his labors of love, to live a life of poverty in the land where He had no home He could call his own.

St. Paula was one of the women who left Rome and went to Palestine.  The story of her life is told in a letter designed to comfort her daughter Eustochium at the time of Paula’s death.  The epistle begins:  “If all the members of my body were to be converted into tongues, and if each of my limbs were to be gifted with a human voice, I could still do no justice to the virtues of the holy and