SAINT MARCELLA, WIDOW

SAINT MARCELLA, WIDOW - 31 JANUARY

SAINT MARCELLA, WIDOW

Saint Marcella is styled by Saint Jerome the glory of the Roman ladies. Having lost her husband in the seventh month of her marriage, she rejected the suit of Cerealis the consul, uncle of Gallus Caesar, and resolved to imitate the lives of the ascetics of the East.

HER HOLY LIFE

She abstained from wine and flesh, employed all her time in pious reading, prayer, and visiting the churches of the apostles and martyrs, and never spoke with any man alone.

ROME WAS IN A SHORT TIME FILLED WITH MONASTERIES

Her example was followed by many virgins of the first quality, who put themselves under her direction, and Rome was in a short time filled with monasteries.

ELEVEN LETTERS OF ST JEROME

We have eleven letters of St Jerome to her in answer to her religious queries.

THE GOTHS PLUNDERED ROME

The Goths under Alaric plundered Rome in 410. St Marcella was scourged by them for the treasures which she had long before distributed among the poor. All that time she trembled only for her dear spiritual pupil, Principia, (not her daughter, as some have reputed her by mistake,) and falling at the feet of the cruel soldiers, she begged, with many tears, that they would offer her no insult. God moved them to compassion.

SHE DIED IN ST PRINCIPIA'S ARMS

They conducted them both to the church of St Paul, to which Alaric had granted the right of sanctuary with that of St Peter. St Marcella, who survived this but a short time, which she spent in tears, prayers, and thanksgiving, closed her eyes by a happy death, in the arms of St Principia, about the end of August, in 410, but her name occurs in the Roman Martyrology on January 31.

Source: Fr Butler's Lives of the Saints

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