The life of St Paula of Rome
After the death of her daughter Blaesilla three years later, Paula left Rome for the Holy Land with her remaining daughter Eustochium. Jerome, already on his way east, rejoined them, and together they traveled through Palestine and Egypt before settling in Bethlehem, where Paula founded two monasteries, one for women under her own direction and one for men under Jerome's. The nuns in her care sang the entire Psalter from memory each day, and Paula herself became known for a fasting so severe, and an almsgiving so generous, that she sometimes gave away supplies her own community needed for its subsistence. She and Eustochium grew skilled enough in Hebrew and Greek that Jerome came to rely on them in his work of translating Scripture. She died in Bethlehem in the year 404.
