Eustochium

The Venerable Eustochium was a Roman woman of noble family and a virgin consecrated to God, a disciple of Blessed Jerome at Bethlehem, who fell asleep around 420. She is venerated as a saint in the Catholic and the Orthodox Church, on 28 September.

She was born at Rome around 368, as Eustochium Julia, of the Julian clan, the daughter of Saint Paula and of the senator Toxotius, the third of his four daughters. She had sisters Blaesilla, Paulina and Rufina and a brother, Toxotius. After her husband's death, around 380, Paula and her daughter lived at Rome as austere a life as the Fathers of the desert. When Jerome came to Rome from Palestine, in 382, they put themselves under his spiritual and educational guidance. Her uncle Hymettius and his wife Praetextata tried to persuade the young woman to give up her austere life and enjoy the pleasures of the world, but in vain. Around 384 she made a vow of perpetual virginity, on which occasion Jerome wrote her the famous letter De custodia virginitatis (Epistle 22). A year later Jerome returned to Palestine, and soon Paula and Eustochium followed him. In 386 they accompanied him on a journey to Egypt, where they visited the hermits of Nitria, to learn their way of life. In the autumn of the same year they returned to Palestine and settled at Bethlehem. Paula and Eustochium at once began to build four monasteries and a hospice near the place where Christ was born (386-389). One of the monasteries was given to the monks, under Jerome's direction; the other three to Paula, Eustochium and the many virgins who gathered around them. Jerome testifies that they did the most menial services. Much time they spent in the study of Scripture, under Jerome's direction. Eustochium spoke Latin and classical Greek with equal ease and could read Scripture in the Hebrew text. Many of Jerome's biblical commentaries exist because of her influence; to her he dedicated his commentaries on the prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel. The letters he wrote for her instruction and spiritual progress are, by his own testimony, very numerous. After her mother's death, in 404, for which Jerome wrote the Epitaph of Saint Paula (Epistle 108), Eustochium led the women's monasteries until her repose on 28 September 419 or 420.