“Do you think,” he says, “there is no difference between one who spends her time in prayer and fasting, and one who must, at her husband’s approach, make up her countenance, walk with a mincing gait, and feign a show of endearment?  The virgin aims to appear less comely; she will wrong herself so as to hide her natural attractions.  The married woman has the paint laid on before her mirror, and, to the insult of her Maker, strives to acquire something more than her natural beauty.  Then come the prattling of infants, the noisy household, children watching for her word and waiting for her kiss, the reckoning up of expenses, the preparation to meet the outlay.  On one side you will see a company of cooks, girded for the onslaught and attacking the meat; there you may hear the hum of a multitude of weavers.  Meanwhile a message is delivered that her husband and his friends have arrived.  The wife, like a swallow, flies all over the house.  She has to see to everything.  Is the sofa smooth?  Is the pavement swept?  Are the flowers in the cup?  Is dinner ready?  Tell me, pray, amid all this, is there room for the thought of God?”

Such was Roman married life as it appeared to Jerome.  The very duties and blessings that we consider the glory of the family he despised.  I will return to his views later, but it is interesting to note the absence at this period, of the modern and true idea that God may be served in the performance of household and other secular duties.  Women fled from such occupations in those days that they might be religious.  The disagreeable fact of Peter’s marriage was overcome by the assertion that he must have washed away the stain of his married life by the blood of his martyrdom.  Such extreme views arose partly as a reaction from and a protest against the dominant corruption, a state of affairs in which happy and holy marriages were rare.

The Spread of Monasticism in Europe

Much more might be said of monastic life in Rome, were it not now necessary to treat of the spread of monasticism in Europe.  There are many noble characters whom we ought to know, such as Ambrose, one of Christendom’s greatest bishops, who led a life of poverty and strict abstinence, like his sister Marcella, whom we have met.  He it was, of whom the Emperor Theodosius said:  “I have met a man who has told me the truth.”  Well might he so declare, for Ambrose refused him admission to the church at Milan, because his hands were red with the blood of the murdered, and succeeded in persuading him to submit to discipline.  To Ambrose may be applied the words which Gibbon wrote of Gregory Nazianzen:  “The title of Saint has been added to his name, but the tenderness of his heart and the elegance of his genius reflect a more pleasing luster on his memory.”