IXTHE EPITAPH OF THE LADY PAULA
Thechurch at Bethlehem is crowded to the doors with a reverent assemblage, which overflows into the public square and fills all the nearby streets with silent, sad-faced worshippers. It is four hundred and four years since the blessed Nativity of our Lord, and the slow, solemn music which sounds faintly from within the heavy walls of the ancient church is the requiem of the noblest, sweetest, saddest lady who ever made her home in Bethlehem for Christ’s sake.
The funeral procession had seemed like a triumphal march. The bier was borne upon the shoulders of bishops, whilst other bishops carried candles beside it and led the antiphonal singing of the choirs. Beside these dignitaries walked the sweet-faced sisters from the great convent which the dead woman had founded, and barefooted brothers from the no less famous monastery which she had endowed. Strange figures followed in the procession: wild, shaggy hermits who for the first time in years had come out of their caves in the wilderness of Judea, and nuns bound to perpetual self-immolation, whose unnatural pallor told of incessant vigils broken this once only, that they also might have a part in the final honors shown to their beloved and godly benefactor. Aged Jerome was there; the foremost scholarin all Christendom, but now bent and weary with the realization that world-wide fame is but a paltry substitute for the companionship of a faithful friend. Beside him walked the proud bishop John of Jerusalem, not long since the enemy of Paula and Jerome and at bitter strife with the convent of Bethlehem; but now, it seems, a sincere mourner of one before whose pure and devoted spirit even mighty hierarchs must bow in humble reverence.
But those whose hearts grieve most sincerely cannot all gain admission to the church. The square before the entrance is crowded with the poor and the sick and the outcast who are waiting patiently until the long ceremony shall end. Then these humble folk will slip into the quiet church at eventide and pray beside the coffin of theirbeloved friend, while unrestrained tears roll down their haggard faces—tears for her, and them, and Bethlehem.
It hardly seems seventeen years since the coming of the Lady Paula stirred the quiet life of Bethlehem. All the world knew of the young Roman widow, of noble family and enormous wealth, who had renounced the luxurious life to which she had been accustomed and had aroused the gossip of the capital by her coarse dress and incessant devotions and the menial duties which she performed in her efforts to relieve the condition of the crowded slums of the city. And then the wealthy lady had broken the last ties of her old life, so the rumor ran, and had left Rome forever in order to dwell in holy Bethlehem with her daughter and their friend andteacher, the reverend presbyter Jerome.
For a time Paula and her daughter lived quietly in a small rented house, until the completion of a convent which was erected at her expense. A monastery was next built, of which Jerome was made the head, and in connection with this, a hospice for the entertainment of the strangers who in greater and greater numbers came hither to visit the holy places and to study under the famous teacher.
Thereafter Paula was the very spring of Bethlehem life and Christian activity. She managed the affairs of her various establishments with patience, tact, and great executive ability; and yet found time to perfect her Greek and to learn Hebrew, so that under the guidance of Jerome she might read the entire Bible in the original tongues. Pilgrimsfrom far and near taxed the resources of the famous hospice, and gifts to innumerable charities at last exhausted even the large fortune she had inherited, so that she became not only poor, but in debt. And reading between the lines of his own correspondence, we can see that not least among the godly woman’s worries was the care of the great, but somewhat crabbed old man whom later centuries were to honor as “Saint” Jerome. It would hardly be an exaggeration to say that Christendom is indebted to a woman for its most important and influential version of the Bible; for it is easy to conceive that the Vulgate translation might never have been completed by Jerome, without the constant aid and encouragement which were so freely bestowed on the aged author by his friend.
All these varied and exacting tasks were undertaken by one who never enjoyed robust health. Paula was often prostrated by serious illness and she further overtaxed her strength by incessant fasts and mortifications, until at last the life of the eager, self-sacrificing, loving, faithful woman burnt itself out at the age of fifty-six.
The funeral service is over now. The long procession has left the church, and for three days the poor whom Paula loved can worship at her bier. Then the tender, weary, faithful heart will be laid at rest in a vault beneath the church, “close to the cave of the Lord,” and above her cavern sepulchre lonely old Jerome will inscribe these lines:
“Seest thou here hollowed in the rock a grave;’Tis Paula’s tomb, high heaven has her soul,Who Rome and friends, riches and home forsookHere in this lonely spot to find her rest.For here Christ’s manger was, and here the kingsTo Him, both God and man, their offerings made.”
“Seest thou here hollowed in the rock a grave;’Tis Paula’s tomb, high heaven has her soul,Who Rome and friends, riches and home forsookHere in this lonely spot to find her rest.For here Christ’s manger was, and here the kingsTo Him, both God and man, their offerings made.”
“Seest thou here hollowed in the rock a grave;’Tis Paula’s tomb, high heaven has her soul,Who Rome and friends, riches and home forsookHere in this lonely spot to find her rest.For here Christ’s manger was, and here the kingsTo Him, both God and man, their offerings made.”
“Seest thou here hollowed in the rock a grave;
’Tis Paula’s tomb, high heaven has her soul,
Who Rome and friends, riches and home forsook
Here in this lonely spot to find her rest.
For here Christ’s manger was, and here the kings
To Him, both God and man, their offerings made.”