Marcella of Rome

Saint Marcella of Rome, a venerable ascetic, was a Christian woman of the Roman aristocracy of the fourth century who opened her house on the Aventine as a place of prayer and Scripture study for women. She died in 410 from the beatings she suffered when the Goths took Rome. She is honoured by the Orthodox and Catholic Churches, and her commemoration is on 31 January.

Family and her resolve to give herself to God

She was born between 325 and 335 into a noble family that lived in a palace on the Aventine Hill. She grew up in Rome under the influence of her mother Albina, an educated, wealthy and merciful woman. She was still a child when Bishop Athanasius of Alexandria, then in exile, visited Rome, in the years 340 to 343, and later she met Peter II of Alexandria, which kindled in her a desire for the monastic life. As is known, she had been married but was left a widow after only a few months. She refused a proposal from the consul Cerealis, resolved to give herself to God, to read the Scriptures, to pray, to visit the churches of the apostles and martyrs, and to live in abstinence, without wine or meat.

The house on the Aventine

Her palace became a place of Christian activity. Together with her mother, Marcella formed in the house a community of women, after the example of Eastern monasticism, in which Paula, Lea, Fabiola and Eustochium, among others, took part. Tradition says that the house stood near where Santa Sabina now stands and that it became a shelter for weary pilgrims and the poor. Lea, another wealthy widow, supported the house.

In 382 Pope Damasus called Saint Jerome to Rome, and he lodged for a time in Marcella's hospitable house and gave readings and lessons for her community. Marcella took lessons in philology, in interpretation of Scripture and in catechesis. In her house Jerome first met Paula. When Paula and her daughter Eustochium left for the Holy Land, they asked Marcella to join them, but she stayed in Rome to look after her community, and she moved with her pupil Principia to a smaller house on the Aventine. After Jerome left, the priests of Rome consulted her to clarify biblical texts, and she also took part in public debate in the Origenist controversy.

Jerome wrote her many letters, among them those numbered 23, 25, 26, 29, 34 and 127, and almost a third of his surviving letters are addressed to women. We learn about Marcella chiefly from them, above all from letter 127 to Principia. She did not hesitate to criticize his views and spoke to him as an equal.

Her end

On 24 August 410, when Alaric's Goths took Rome, soldiers searched her house for treasure they believed hidden, though she had long before given it to the poor. Marcella, eighty-⁠five years old, was beaten and scourged. Other soldiers, who had some reverence for holy things, took her and Principia to the basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, one of those that Alaric had named a sanctuary. Marcella died a few days later of her injuries, in the arms of Principia, as Jerome told in his letter to her.

She was included in the Roman Martyrology, perhaps because she did not live long after being scourged. Her commemoration is on 31 January.