Letters 108.3–108.16

Let us then take up the order of the narrative. Others may go further back and, from her cradle and, so to speak, her very rattles, bring forward her mother Blesilla and her father Rogatus, of whom the one is descended from the Scipios and Gracchi, while the other is said throughout all Greece to this day, by his pedigrees and his riches and nobility, to draw his blood from Agamemnon, who destroyed Troy in a ten years' siege. We shall praise nothing except what is her own and flows from the purest spring of her holy mind. Although the Lord and Saviour teaches in the Gospel the apostles who asked what he would give to those who had left all their possessions for his name, that they would receive a hundredfold in the present time and in the age to come eternal life (from which we understand that it is not praiseworthy to possess riches, but to despise them for Christ; not to swell with honours, but to count them of little worth for faith in the Lord), truly the Saviour has paid back in the present what he promised to his servants and handmaids. For she who despised the glory of one city is celebrated in the report of the whole world; she whom, while she lived at Rome, no one outside Rome knew, is admired, while hiding in Bethlehem, by barbarian and Roman lands alike. For people of what nation do not come to the holy places? And who in the holy places found anything among men more to admire than Paula? And as among many jewels the most precious jewel shines, and the brightness of the sun overwhelms and darkens the small fires of the stars, so she surpassed the virtues and powers of all by her humility, and was the least among all so as to be greater than all; and the more she cast herself down, the more she was lifted up by Christ. She was hidden and was not hidden. By fleeing glory she earned glory, which follows virtue like a shadow and, deserting those who seek it, seeks those who despise it. But what am I doing? Neglecting the order of the narrative while I dwell on particulars, I am not keeping the rules of speaking.

Born, then, of such stock, she was married to Toxotius, who draws the loftiest blood of Aeneas and the Julii; hence also his daughter, the virgin of Christ, Eustochium, is called Julia, and he himself Julius, 'a name come down from great Iulus.' We say these things not because they are great to those who have them, but because they are wonderful in those who despise them. Men of the world look up to those who are strong in these privileges; we praise those who have despised them for the Saviour. And, wonderfully, those whom we think little of when they have them, we praise if they have been unwilling to have them. Sprung, I say, from such ancestors, and approved for fruitfulness and chastity first by her husband, then by the testimony of her relatives and of the whole city, she bore five children: Blesilla, over whose death I consoled her at Rome; Paulina, who left the holy and admirable Pammachius heir both of her way of life and of her property, to whom we published a short book on her death; Eustochium, who is now in the holy places the most precious necklace of virginity and of the church; Rufina, whose untimely death overwhelmed her mother's loving heart; and Toxotius, after whom she ceased to bear children, so that you may understand that she did not wish to serve long in the duty of marriage, but obeyed the desire of her husband, who wanted male children.

After her husband died, she mourned him so that she nearly died herself, and she so turned to the service of the Lord that she seemed to have wished for his death. Why should I tell how almost all the riches of a great and noble and once very wealthy house were given out to the poor? Why tell of her most merciful spirit toward all, and her kindness reaching even to those she had never seen? What poor man, dying, was not wrapped in her clothes? What bedridden sick person was not supported by her means? She sought them out most carefully throughout the whole city, and thought it a loss if any weak and hungry person was sustained by another's food. She stripped her children, and when her relatives rebuked her she said that she was leaving them a greater inheritance, the mercy of Christ.

Nor could she long endure the visits and crowds belonging to her high worldly rank and most noble family. She grieved at the honour paid her and hastened to turn away from and flee the mouths of those who praised her. And when imperial letters had summoned the bishops of the East and the West to Rome because of certain dissensions of the churches, she saw admirable men and high priests of Christ: Paulinus, bishop of the city of Antioch, and Epiphanius, of Salamis in Cyprus, which is now called Constantia. Epiphanius she even had as her guest; Paulinus, though staying in another's house, she made her own by her kindness. Fired by their virtues, she thought every moment of leaving her country. Mindful not of home, not of children, not of household, not of possessions, not of anything that belongs to the world, she longed to go alone (if one can say so) and unaccompanied to the desert of the Antonys and Pauls. And at last, when the winter was over and the sea open, as the bishops returned to their churches, she sailed with them in vow and desire. Why delay further? She went down to the harbour, escorted by her brother, kinsfolk, relatives by marriage, and, what is more than these, her children. Already the sails were being spread and the ship was being drawn out to the deep by the stroke of the oars; little Toxotius stretched out suppliant hands on the shore; Rufina, now of marriageable age, silently begged with tears that she would wait for her wedding; and yet she turned dry eyes to heaven, overcoming love for her children by love for God. She did not know herself a mother, so as to prove herself a handmaid of Christ. Her inward parts were wrung, and she fought with her grief as though she were being torn from her own limbs, in this more admirable than all, that she overcame a great love. Among the hands of enemies and the harsh necessity of captivity, nothing is more cruel than for parents to be separated from their children; this, against the laws of nature, her full faith endured, or rather her rejoicing spirit sought it, and, despising love for her children through a greater love for God, she found rest in Eustochium alone, who was the companion of her resolve and of her voyage. Meanwhile the ship ploughed the sea, and while all who sailed with her looked back to the shore, she kept her eyes turned away, so as not to see those whom she could not see without torment. I confess, no woman so loved her children; before she set out she gave them everything, disinheriting herself on earth that she might find an inheritance in heaven.

Carried to the island of Pontia, which the exile of Flavia Domitilla, a woman of most illustrious memory, once made famous under the emperor Domitian for her confession of the Christian name, and seeing the little cells in which she had endured her long martyrdom, she took wings, longing to see Jerusalem and the holy places. The winds were slow for her, all speed was sluggish. Between Scylla and Charybdis she entrusted herself to the Adriatic sea, came as over a pond to Methone, and there, refreshing her little body a while and laying her limbs, wasting with the brine, on the shore, she passed by Malea and Cythera, 'and the Cyclades scattered over the sea, and the straits churned by the many lands'; after Rhodes and Lycia she at last saw Cyprus, where, falling at the knees of the holy and venerable Epiphanius, she was detained by him for ten days, not for refreshment, as he thought, but for the work of God, as the facts proved. For, visiting all the monasteries of that region, she left, as far as she could, relief for the expenses of the brothers whom love for the holy man had drawn there from the whole world. Thence by a short passage she crossed to Seleucia, and going up from there to Antioch, she was detained a little by the love of the holy confessor Paulinus; and in midwinter, burning with the heat of faith, the noble lady who had formerly been carried by the hands of eunuchs set out riding on a donkey.

I pass over the journey through Coele-Syria and Phoenicia, for I have not set out to write her itinerary; I shall name only those places which are contained in the sacred books. Leaving Berytus, a Roman colony, and the ancient city of Sidon, she entered on the shore of Zarephath the little tower of Elijah, and there, having worshipped the Lord and Saviour, she came across the sands of Tyre, where Paul had knelt, to Acco, which is now called Ptolemais, and through the plains of Megiddo, which witnessed the slaying of Josiah, she entered the land of the Philistines. She wondered at the ruins of Dor, once a most powerful city, and, by contrast, at Strato's Tower, called Caesarea by Herod, king of Judaea, in honour of Caesar Augustus, where she saw the house of Cornelius, now a church of Christ, and the little dwelling of Philip and the chamber of the four virgin prophetesses; then Antipatris, a half-ruined little town which Herod had named after his father; and Lydda, turned into Diospolis, famous for the raising of Dorcas and the healing of Aeneas; not far from it Arimathea, the village of Joseph who buried the Lord; and Nob, once a city of priests, now the tomb of the slain; Joppa too, the harbour of Jonah in his flight, and (to touch on something from the fables of the poets) the witness of Andromeda bound to the rock. Resuming her journey, she came to Nicopolis, which was formerly called Emmaus, where the Lord, recognized in the breaking of bread, dedicated the house of Cleopas as a church. And setting out from there she went up to lower and upper Beth-horon, cities founded by Solomon and afterwards destroyed by various storms of war, looking on her right at Aijalon and Gibeon, where Joshua son of Nun, fighting against five kings, commanded the sun and the moon, and condemned the Gibeonites to be drawers of water and hewers of wood because of the deceit and treachery by which they had obtained the covenant. In the city of Gibeah, razed to the ground, she stayed a little, recalling its sin, the concubine cut in pieces, and the six hundred men of the tribe of Benjamin saved for the sake of the apostle Paul.

Why do I linger? Leaving on her left the mausoleum of Helena, queen of Adiabene, who had helped the people with grain in a famine, she entered Jerusalem, the city of three names: Jebus, Salem, Jerusalem, which was afterwards raised from the ruins and ashes of the city by Aelius Hadrian as Aelia. And when the proconsul of Palestine, who knew her family very well, had sent his attendants ahead and ordered the governor's residence to be prepared, she chose a humble cell, and went round all the places with such ardour and zeal that, had she not been hastening to the rest, she could not have been drawn away from the first. Prostrate before the cross, she worshipped as if she saw the Lord hanging there. Entering the tomb of the resurrection, she kissed the stone which the angel had rolled away from the door of the tomb, and, like one thirsting for longed-for waters, she licked with her mouth, in faith, the very place of the body where the Lord had lain. What tears she shed there, what groans of grief she poured out, all Jerusalem is witness, the Lord himself is witness, to whom she prayed. Going out from there she went up to Zion, which means 'citadel' or 'watchtower.' This city David once stormed and rebuilt. Of the city stormed it is written: 'Woe to you, city of Ariel' (that is, lion of God, once most mighty) 'which David stormed'; of the city built: 'Its foundations are on the holy mountains; the Lord loves the gates of Zion above all the dwellings of Jacob'; not the gates we see today dissolved into dust and ashes, but the gates against which hell does not prevail, through which the multitude of believers enters to Christ. There was shown a column supporting the portico of the church, stained with the Lord's blood, to which he is said to have been bound and scourged. The place was pointed out where the Holy Spirit came down upon the hundred and twenty souls, so that the prophecy of Joel might be fulfilled.

Then, having distributed money to the poor and her fellow servants according to her small means, she went on to Bethlehem, and on the right side of the road she stood at the tomb of Rachel, in which she brought forth Benjamin, not, as his mother called him when dying, Benoni, that is, 'son of my pain,' but, as his father prophesied in the Spirit, 'son of the right hand.' And from there, entering the Saviour's cave, when she saw the sacred inn of the Virgin and the stable in which 'the ox knew its owner and the ass its master's manger,' so that there might be fulfilled what is written in the same prophet, 'Blessed is he who sows beside the waters, where the ox and the ass tread,' she swore in my hearing that with the eyes of faith she saw the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes, crying in the manger, the Magi worshipping God, the star shining above, the virgin mother, the attentive foster-father, the shepherds coming by night to see the Word that had come to pass, and even then consecrating the beginning of the evangelist John: 'In the beginning was the Word,' and 'the Word was made flesh'; the little children slain, Herod raging, Joseph and Mary fleeing into Egypt. And with tears mixed with joy she said: 'Hail, Bethlehem, house of bread, in which was born that bread which came down from heaven. Hail, Ephrathah, most fruitful and fruit-bearing region, whose fertility is God. Of you Micah once prophesied: And you, Bethlehem, house of Ephrathah, are you not least among the thousands of Judah? From you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, and his going forth is from the beginning, from the days of eternity. Therefore you will give them up until the time when she who is in labour gives birth; she will give birth, and the remnant of his brothers will return to the sons of Israel. For in you was born the ruler who was begotten before the morning star, whose birth from the Father surpasses all time. And the origin of David's line remained in you so long, until the virgin gave birth and the remnant of the people who believed in Christ turned to the sons of Israel and freely proclaimed: It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you, but since you reject it and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, we turn to the Gentiles. For the Lord had said: I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. And at that time the words of Jacob about him were fulfilled: A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up, and he shall be the expectation of the nations. Well did David swear, well did he make vows, saying: If I enter the tent of my house, if I go up to the bed of my couch, if I give sleep to my eyes and slumber to my eyelids and rest to my temples, until I find a place for the Lord, a dwelling for the God of Jacob. And at once he set out what he desired, and with prophetic eyes he saw coming the one whom we believe has already come: Behold, we heard of him in Ephrathah, we found him in the fields of the wood. For the Hebrew word zoth, as I learned from you teaching me, signifies not Mary, the mother of the Lord, that is, 'her,' but himself, that is, 'him.' Hence he says confidently: We will go into his tabernacles; we will worship in the place where his feet stood. And I, a wretched sinner, have I been judged worthy to kiss the manger in which the Lord cried as a little child, to pray in the cave in which the virgin in childbirth brought forth God as an infant? This is my rest, for it is my Lord's native place; here I will dwell, for the Saviour has chosen it. I have prepared a lamp for my Christ. My soul shall live for him, and my seed shall serve him.' Not far from there she went down to the Tower of Eder, that is, 'of the flock,' near which Jacob pastured his flocks, and where the shepherds keeping watch by night were found worthy to hear: 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.' And while they kept their sheep they found the Lamb of God, of pure and spotless fleece, which, when all the earth was dry, was drenched with heavenly dew, whose blood took away the sins of the world and, sprinkled on the doorposts, drove the destroyer of Egypt away.

And at once she set out with quick step along the old road that leads to Gaza, that is, to the power or riches of God, and silently turned over in her mind how the Ethiopian eunuch, prefiguring the peoples of the nations, changed his skin, and, while he was reading the Old Testament, found the spring of the Gospel. From there she crossed to the right. From Beth-zur she came to Eshcol, which means 'cluster of grapes'; from there the spies carried a cluster of wonderful size, as a testimony to a most fertile land and as a type of him who says, 'I have trodden the winepress alone, and of the nations there was no man with me.' Not long after she entered the little dwellings of Sarah, seeing the birthplace of Isaac and the remains of Abraham's oak, under which he saw the day of Christ and was glad. And rising from there she went up to Hebron, that is, Kiriath-arba, that is, 'the town of the four men,' Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the great Adam, whom the Hebrews hold, according to the book of Joshua, to be buried there, though many think the fourth was Caleb, whose monument is shown at the side. She did not wish to go on to Kiriath-sepher, that is, 'the bond of letters,' because, despising the letter that kills, she had found the Spirit that gives life. She marvelled rather at the upper and lower springs which Othniel, son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, received in exchange for a southern and dry possession, and by the channels of which he made the dry fields of the Old Testament well-watered, so that they might find the redemption of old sins in the waters of baptism. The next day, at sunrise, she stood on the brow of Caphar-barucha, that is, 'village of blessing,' to which place Abraham accompanied the Lord. Looking down from there over the wide desert and the land once of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim, she gazed at the balsam vineyards of En-gedi and at Zoar, 'the heifer of three years,' which was formerly called Bela and was renamed in the Syrian tongue Zoar, that is, 'little.' She remembered Lot's cave and, turning to tears, warned the virgins her companions to beware of wine, 'in which is debauchery,' and whose work the Moabites and Ammonites are.

I linger too long in the south, where the bride found the bridegroom lying at noon and where Joseph drank with his brothers. I will return to Jerusalem, and by way of Tekoa and Amos I will look at the shining cross of the Mount of Olives, from which the Saviour ascended to the Father, on which every year a red heifer was burned as a whole burnt offering to the Lord and whose ashes purified the people of Israel, on which, according to Ezekiel, the cherubim, passing over from the temple, founded the church of the Lord. Entering the tomb of Lazarus, she saw the house of Mary and Martha, and Bethphage, the village of the priestly jaws, and the place where the wanton colt of the Gentiles received the bridle of the Lord and, spread with the garments of the apostles, offered its soft back for him to sit on. And she went straight down to Jericho, thinking of that wounded man in the Gospel, and, while the priests and Levites passed by with savage hearts, of the mercy of the Samaritan, that is, 'the guardian,' who put the half-dead man on his own beast and carried him to the inn of the church; and of the place Adummim, which means 'of blood,' because much blood was shed there in the frequent attacks of robbers; and of the sycamore of Zacchaeus, that is, the good works of repentance, by which he trampled on his former bloody sins, harmful through robbery, and from the height of virtues looked upon the exalted Lord; and, beside the road, of the places of the blind men who, receiving their sight, prefigured the mysteries of both peoples believing in the Lord. Entering Jericho, she saw the city which Hiel founded at the cost of Abiram his firstborn, and whose gates he set up at the cost of Segub, his youngest son. She looked at the camp of Gilgal and the hill of foreskins and the mystery of the second circumcision, and the twelve stones which, brought there from the bed of the Jordan, had strengthened the foundations of the twelve apostles; and the spring of the law, once most bitter and barren, which the true Elisha seasoned with his wisdom and changed into sweetness and fruitfulness. The night had scarcely passed when, in the most burning heat, she came to the Jordan; she stood on the bank of the river, and as the sun rose she remembered the Sun of righteousness: how the priests set their feet dry in the middle of the riverbed, and how at the command of Elijah and Elisha the waters stood on either side and the stream gave a passage; and how the Lord by his baptism cleansed the waters polluted by the flood and stained by the destruction of the whole human race.

It would take long if I wished to speak of the valley of Achor, that is, 'of tumult and crowds,' in which theft and avarice were condemned; and of Bethel, 'the house of God,' in which Jacob, naked and poor, slept on the bare ground, and with a stone placed under his head (the stone which in Zechariah is described as having seven eyes and in Isaiah is called the cornerstone) saw a ladder reaching up to heaven, on which the Lord leaned from above, stretching out his hand to those who were climbing and casting down the careless from the height. On Mount Ephraim she venerated, opposite each other, the tombs of Joshua son of Nun and of Eleazar son of Aaron the priest (the one buried in Timnath-serah on the north side of Mount Gaash, the other in Gibeah of his son Phinehas), and she wondered greatly that the distributor of possessions had chosen for himself the rough mountain country. Why should I tell of Shiloh, where a ruined altar is shown to this day, and where the tribe of Benjamin anticipated Romulus's rape of the Sabine women? She passed through Shechem (not Sychar, as many wrongly read), which is now called Neapolis, and entered the church built on the side of Mount Gerizim round Jacob's well, on which the Lord sat thirsty and hungry and was satisfied by the faith of the Samaritan woman, who, having left her five husbands, the five books of Moses, and the sixth, whom she boasted she had, the error of Dositheus, found the true Messiah and the true Saviour. And turning aside from there, she saw the tombs of the twelve patriarchs, and Sebaste, that is, Samaria, which Herod named Augusta in Greek in honour of Augustus. There lie the prophets Elisha and Obadiah, and John the Baptist, than whom none greater has arisen among those born of women. There she trembled at many wonders. For she saw demons roaring under various tortures, and before the tombs of the saints men howling with the voices of wolves, barking like dogs, roaring like lions, hissing like serpents, bellowing like bulls; others whirling their heads and touching the ground behind their backs with the crown; and women suspended by the foot whose clothes did not fall over their faces. She pitied them all and, shedding tears for each, prayed for the mercy of Christ. And, weak as she was, she climbed on foot the mountain in whose two caves, in a time of persecution and famine, the prophet Obadiah fed a hundred prophets with bread and water. With a quick journey she hastened through Nazareth, the nurse of the Lord; Cana and Capernaum, familiar with his signs; the lake of Tiberias, sanctified by the Lord's sailing; and the desert in which many thousands of people were satisfied with a few loaves, and twelve baskets, for the twelve tribes of Israel, were filled with the leftovers of those who ate. She climbed Mount Tabor, on which the Lord was transfigured. She saw in the distance the mountains Hermon and Hermonim and the wide plains of Galilee, in which Sisera and all his army were overthrown by Barak's victory. The torrent Kishon divided the middle of the plain, and nearby the town of Nain was shown, in which the widow's son was raised. Day will fail me before speech, if I wish to run through all the places which the venerable Paula visited with incredible faith.

I will pass on to Egypt, and stop a little at Succoth and at the spring of Samson, which he brought forth from the molar tooth of the jawbone, and I will wash my parched mouth, so that, refreshed, I may see Moresheth, once the tomb of the prophet Micah, now a church. And I will leave on one side the Horites and Gittites, Mareshah, Idumaea, and Lachish, and, through the very soft sands that draw away the footprints of travellers and the wide waste of the desert, I will come to the river of Egypt, Sihor, which means 'turbid,' and pass through the five cities of Egypt which speak the language of Canaan, and the land of Goshen and the plains of Tanis, in which God did wonders, and the city of No, which afterwards became Alexandria, and Nitria, the town of the Lord, in which the stains of very many are daily washed away by the purest nitre of virtues. When she saw it, and the holy and venerable bishop Isidore the confessor came to meet her with countless crowds of monks, many of whom were raised to the rank of priest or Levite, she rejoiced indeed for the glory of the Lord, but confessed herself unworthy of so great an honour. Why should I speak of the Macarii, the Arsetes, the Serapions, and the other names of the pillars of Christ? Whose cell did she not enter? At whose feet did she not throw herself? In each of the saints she believed she saw Christ, and whatever she bestowed on them she rejoiced to have bestowed on the Lord. Wonderful ardour, and a courage scarcely credible in a woman! Forgetting her sex and bodily weakness, she wished to live with her maidens among so many thousands of monks. And perhaps, since all would have welcomed her, she would have obtained it, had not a greater longing for the holy places drawn her back. And because of the burning heat she sailed from Pelusium to Maiuma and returned with such speed that you would have thought her a bird. Not long after, intending to stay for ever in holy Bethlehem, she lived for three years in a narrow lodging, until she built cells and monasteries and founded a lodging for pilgrims beside the road, because Mary and Joseph had found no lodging. Let this be the description of her journey, which she made with many virgins and her daughter as companions.

Now let her virtue be described more fully, which is properly her own; and in setting it out I declare, with God as judge and witness, that I add nothing and exaggerate nothing in the manner of those who praise, but rather leave out much, lest it exceed belief, and lest among detractors who always gnaw at me with their molar tooth I be thought to invent and to deck out Aesop's crow in others' colours. Humility, which is the first virtue of Christians, she practised so completely that anyone who saw her, and who had longed to see her because of her fame, would not have believed it was she, but the last of her maids. And though she was surrounded by thronging choirs of virgins, in dress, speech, bearing, and gait she was the least of all. From her husband's death until the day of her falling asleep she never ate with any man, even though she knew him to be holy and placed in the height of the episcopate; she did not go to the baths except when in danger. Even in the most severe fever she had no soft bedding, but rested on the hardest ground on spread goat's-hair cloths; if that can be called rest which joined days and nights in almost continual prayer, fulfilling that word of the Psalter: 'Every night I will wash my bed; I will water my couch with my tears.' You would have thought there were springs of tears in her; she so lamented light sins that you would have thought her guilty of the gravest crimes. And when we often warned her to spare her eyes and keep them for reading the Gospel, she would say: 'The face must be disfigured which, against God's command, I have often painted with rouge, white lead, and antimony; the body must be afflicted which has given itself to many delights; long laughter must be repaid by continual weeping; soft linens and costly silks must be exchanged for the roughness of goat's hair. I who pleased my husband and the world now desire to please Christ.' If among such great virtues I wished to praise her chastity, I would seem superfluous; even while she was in the world she was an example to all the matrons of Rome, and she so conducted herself that not even the gossip of slanderers dared to invent anything about her. Nothing was more merciful than her spirit, nothing kinder toward the lowly. She did not court the powerful, yet she did not look down on them with proud disdain seeking a little glory. If she saw a poor man, she supported him; if a rich man, she urged him to do good. Her generosity alone exceeded measure; she paid interest and often borrowed to pay it, so as not to refuse alms to anyone who asked her. I confess my error: I used to reproach her for being too lavish in giving, quoting the apostle: 'Not that others should be eased and you burdened, but by equality at this time, that your abundance may supply their want, and that their abundance may supply your want'; and the Saviour's saying in the Gospel: 'He who has two tunics, let him give one to him who has none'; and that she must take care lest she should not always be able to do what she gladly did; and many things of this sort, which she answered with wonderful modesty and very few words, calling the Lord to witness that she did everything for his name, and that it was her prayer to die a beggar, to leave not one coin to her daughter, and to be wrapped at her funeral in a borrowed shroud. Finally she would add: 'If I ask, I shall find many to give to me; but if this beggar does not receive from me what I can give him even out of what is another's, and he dies, of whom will his soul be required?' I wished her to be more careful in her household affairs, but she, more ardent in faith, joined herself to the Saviour with her whole mind, and, poor in spirit, followed the poor Lord, giving back to him what she had received, having become poor for his sake. In the end she obtained what she wished, and left her daughter in heavy debt, which Eustochium still owes and (trusts) that she will repay, not by her own strength, but by the faith and mercy of Christ.

Many matrons are wont to give presents to their own trumpeters and, lavishing their generosity on a few, withhold their hand from the rest. From this fault she was altogether free; for she divided her money among individuals as each needed it, not for luxury but for necessity. No poor person went away from her empty-handed. This she achieved not by the greatness of her riches but by prudence in distributing, always repeating: 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy'; and, 'As water quenches fire, so almsgiving quenches sins'; and, 'Make friends for yourselves of the mammon of unrighteousness, that they may receive you into eternal dwellings'; and, 'Give alms, and behold, all things are clean for you'; and the words of Daniel warning King Nebuchadnezzar to redeem his sins by alms. She did not wish to spend her money on these stones which will pass away with the earth and the world, but on the living stones which roll upon the earth, of which, in the Apocalypse of John, the city of the great King is built, and which Scripture says are to be turned into sapphire, emerald, jasper, and other gems.