Saint Marcella

Saint Marcella
Born	325 Ancient Rome
Died	410
Venerated in	Roman Catholic Church
Feast	January 31

Marcella (325–410) is a saint in the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church. She is known primarily for her role in the founding of monasticism. After the death of her husband, she commenced a life of abstinence and many other women in Rome at the time followed suit. Most of what we know about Marcella is from the letters of Saint Jerome.

Growing up in Rome, Marcella was influenced by her pious mother, Albina, an educated woman of wealth and benevolence. Childhood memories centered around piety, and one in particular related to the patriarch of Alexandria, Athanasius, who lodged in her home during one of his many exiles. He may have taken special interest in her, thinking back to his own youthful practice of playing church. Athanasius interacted with his hosts on theological matters and recounted anecdotes of his own monastic life. His most spellbinding stories, however, were the miraculous tales of the desert monks. As a parting gift he left behind the first copy of his biography, Life of St. Anthony.

Marcella's wealth and beauty placed her at the center of fashionable Roman society. She married young, to a wealthy aristocrat, but seven months later he died. After her husband's early death, Marcella decided to devote the rest of her life to charity, prayer, and mortification of the flesh and was convinced that God was directing her to a life of poverty and service. She left behind her fashionable dresses for a coarse brown garment and abandoned her usual extravagant hair styling and makeup. Along with other women, Marcella formed a community known as the brown dress society, spending their time praying, singing, reading the Bible, and serving the needy. Her palatial home was now a refuge for weary pilgrims and for the poor.

Summoned by Pope Damasus I (who arranged lodging at Marcella's hospitality house), Jerome arrived in Rome in 382. It was an exhilarating time for Marcella, a woman of letters who had immersed herself in both Greek and Hebrew, to be entertaining one of the great minds of the age. Jerome spent the next three years in what he called her "domestic church," translating the Bible into Latin. She learned under his teaching even as she critiqued his translation. He spoke and wrote of her Christian devotion and scholarship and commended her influence on Pope Anastasius I — particularly in his condemning Origen's doctrines, which Jerome declared a "glorious victory." Indeed, his admiration of Marcella was unbounded, not only for her intellectual acumen but also for her deference to men who might be threatened by her vast store of knowledge.

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