Marcella

Overview

Date of Birth

330's ?

Date of Death

410

Biography

Marcella was a well-educated member of a senatorial family that included consuls and prefects; Pammachius, a close friend and correspondent of Jerome's, was her cousin. Marcella was widowed after only seven months of marriage and refused other offers, prefering to live an ascetic religious life. She and her mother Albina formed a religious community of women in their home on the Aventine, inspired by eastern monks; Athanasius had visited during his exile from Alexandria in the 340's. Paula (Pammachius's mother-in-law and later Jerome's colleague in Jerusalem) and her daughter Eustochium were part of Marcella's community. When Jerome came to Rome in 382, religious writings of his were already known and although he avoided the company of women, he gave in to Marcella's requests to give readings and lectures to her community and friends. Won over by their devotion and interest, he became their friend, spiritual guide, and correspondent. Several of his letters to Marcella come from this period, in response to things that arose while they were studying the bible together in Rome. In a letter, Jerome spoke of Marcella as a teacher "in the study of scriptures and sanctimony of mind and body," ep.65.2 to Principia. When Jerome left Rome in 385, Paula and Eustochium followed him, but Marcella remained, studying and teaching, and taking an active role in religious controversies. She continued to correspond with Jerome on religious matters and to look after his reputation in Rome. As he tells her companion Principia after her death, "we consoled our absence with mutual conversation, our letters continually crossed, we were joined by yoked letters" (127.8). Their correspondence began before Jerome left Rome, with questions that arose from their studies. Seventeen of Jerome's extant letters are addressed to her, a small proportion of the actual correspondence, and none of hers is extant.(1) The letters we have reveal a deep personal friendship as well as scholarly collegiality. She wrote frequently with questions; he often answered hastily, to try to keep up with them, knowing she was more concerned with the answers than with polished style (ep.29). He refers regularly to Greek words, and the original Hebrew, notes relevant passages in Origen(2) or Hilary, and discusses the errors he finds in other theologians or in the Septuagint quite openly with her. After her death — during the sack of Rome, she was attacked and beaten, courageously saved Principia, but died a few months later — Jerome wrote a letter about her at Principia's request (ep.127). Though he hesitated to write it, because of the "incredible sorrow that so oppressed my soul, that I judged it better to be silent than to say nothing worthy," he describes Marcella in some detail. He speaks of her austere and self-denying life as a Christian widow, based on what she had heard of eastern monasticism from priests of Alexandria, which gave a model to others like Paula and Eustochium to follow. Already in her adolescence Marcella had been attracted to austerity, praising that Plato who said philosophy was a meditation on death (127.6). She overcame Jerome's hesitation to meet the eyes of noble women by her industry, so that it was she who enabled him to make the contacts with those women who would be so important for him. She asked questions about scripture, always raising opposing points not to argue, but to learn, and then others came to learn from her: "all that I had gathered by long study and constant meditation, she drank in, learned and possessed, and after I left Rome, she answered any arguments that were put to her about scripture, including obscure and ambiguous inquiries from priests, saying that the answers came from me or another man, even when they were her own, claiming always to be a pupil even when she was teaching, so that she did not seem to injure the male sex because the apostle did not permit women to teach" (ep.127.7).(3) This is an extraordinary justification of a woman teaching theology even to priests, and even if it requires subterfuge.(4) Jerome also commends Marcella's battles against heresy, indeed he armed her with arguments against Montanists and Novatianists. Later she helped expose the "infamous" interpretations of Origen which were gaining support among the clergy, priests and monks, until she opposed them publically, preferring to please God rather than men (127.9). Bringing witnesses who had been taught by the heretics and correcting them, challenging them by frequent letters to defend themselves which they did not dare do, she was, Jerome claims, the "beginning" of the condemnation, the "origin" of the victory over the heretics ("damnationis hereticorum haec fuit `principium'. . . huius tam gloriosae victoriae `origo' Marcella est," with puns on Origen and his work [on "first principles"] that seems to put Marcella on an intellectual level with a major Christian thinker, 127.10).(5)

Letters to Marcella