Jerome's name is connected with one of the most interesting chapters in the history of the 4th century because of the fact that under his influence a group of women came into promi nence whose names have been famous ever since, for the broadening of woman's sphere in life which they brought about. Three women particularly, Eustochium, Paula and Fabiola, under Jerome's directions, devoted themselves to work that up to this time had been unknown for women. Fabiola represents the social in terests, and Eustochium and Paula the intellec tual interests of the Christian women of the time. Fabiola, after a rather scandalous experi ence in which she obtained a divorce according to the Roman law, had married again and thus cut herself off from the Church. After the death of her second husband, she did heroic public penance, and then, under the influence of Saint Jerome, devoted her immense wealth and her personal service to the sick poor, erecting a hospital and consecrating herself particularly to the care of those whose maladies made them avoided by others. No wonder that her funeral (400) was an enthusiastic tribute of the rever ence and veneration with which she came to be regarded by the Roman people. Paula and Eustochium, mother and daughter, of a Roman house, related on one side to the Julian gens and on the other to the Scipios and the Gracchi, had welcomed Saint Jerome when he came to Rome. On his return to Palestine, they fol lowed him there, and erected monasteries and a hospice near where Christ was born. Three of the buildings were occupied by nuns under the supervision of Paula, all of them meeting every day in the common oratory for prayer. Mean time Eustochium and Paula, and especially the first named, who knew Latin and Greek and Hebrew very well, helped Saint Jerome in a number of ways. Many of Saint Jerome's com mentaries we owe to Eustochium's influence and Saint Jerome acknowledged this by dedicating to her his Commentaries on the Prophets. This was the first organization of women for intel lectual work, and is therefore noteworthy. About the same time Hypatia attracted atten tion at Alexandria for her learning, but unfor tunately fell under the fanatical hatred of a Christian mob, and was brutally murdered. Some letters of Synesius, afterward Bishop of Ptolemais, show his admiration for her, and as he consulted her about the construction of an astrolabe, mathematics and astronomy seem to have been her special studies. Very little is known about her and above all her relations with the Prefect Orestes and the influence which that had in bringing down upon her the mob is not well understood. About the same time, there seems to have lived at Alexandria a Chris tian maiden, Saint Catherine, whose deep learn ing exercised great influence. She was made the patroness of Christian students, who were ac customed to invoke her before studying, writ ing or preaching. She was a favorite patroness of Bossuet, and the senior classes of Catholic universities still keep her day, 25 November, as their feastday.
Christianity afforded an opportunity for the exercise of feminine influence in the intellectual and social life which had not been possible be fore. A whole group of Roman women owed a fine opportunity for the development of what was best in their personalities to Christianity. Eustochium and Paula, already mentioned, left Rome hut not because there was not a congenial atmosphere there. Marcella, who is sometimes spoken of as the foundress of the first convent, belonged to one of the noblest families in Rome, whose mother, Albina, had entertained Athana sius many years before when he had been corn pelted to flee from Alexandria. Marcella having lost her husband a few months after marriage, returned to the seclusion of a country villa and gave herself to ascetic practice. When her grief had moderated somewhat, she opened her palace on the Aventine again and made it a centre for the Christian women of Rome. The picture of the influence exerted socially, especially for the ailing poor and for the intellectual interests of Christianity in this palatial retreat on the Aventine not far from the present Santa Sabina, shows what Christianity could accomplish when allowed to exert its influence untrammeled.
Just as soon as the Christians were no longer the subject of persecution and could with con fidence devote themselves to public expressions of their religious feelings, what is now called social service came to be a feature of public life. From earliest Christianity special care of the poor and the ailing had been provided. Deacons and deaconesses had visited the sick, and rooms in the bishop's house had been set aside for the homeless or for those in special need. In the Eastern cities, where there was less disturbance than in the West, public hos pitals and refuges began to make their appear ance and special buildings were provided for them. A letter of Julian the Apostate reveals his conviction that Christianity could not be displaced, unless the religion of the state would prbvide like facilities for the charitable care of the poor and needy to those which had sprung up under Christianity (361). The extent of the development of this Christian social service will be hest understood from the foundation made by Saint Basil in his diocesan city of Caesarea in Cappadocia. Basil took very seriously the epis
copal obligation of caring for the poor and afflicted. He built a house in the suburbs which gradually became a group of houses, until it came to he called "New Town." Here there was provision for foundlings in what was called the Brephotrophium; for homeless strangers in a Xenodochium; for the ailing in a Nosoco mium ; a Gerontrophium for the aged; an Or phanotrophium for orphans and other build ings for physicians and nurses as well as work shops and industrial schools. Basil even had provided an employment bureau where those out of work might meet those who needed labor and there seems even to have been a definite anticipation of what we now call reconstruction work in the training of cripples to special labor which would enable them to support themselves.
Basil's (Homilies' are full of insistence on the duty of the rich to spend their wealth in a Christian spirit. Indeed, the social obligations of the wealthy were so plainly and forcibly preached by Saint Basil that modern socialists have sometimes claimed him as an early social ist. He was only an expounder of the principles of Christian ethics as to the relations of rich and poor, and his words form the background of Pope Leo XIII's great Encyclical on the relations of Capital and Labor at the end of the 19th century.
Basil himself is a striking type of what Christianity was doing for the intellectual man at this time. Though he had the advantages of a university education at Athens, where one of his teachers was probably Libanius, the best known Sophist of the 4th century, and where among his fellow students were, besides his dear friend Gregory of Nazianzen and Julian, after ward the emperor, known as the Apostate. Basil after his graduation had insisted on living a life of prayer and poverty, even founding a religious community on the family estate at Ammesi. His father, known as Saint Basil the Elder, had spent several years as a hermit and his children, no less than three of whom, Macrina, Basil and Gregory, were afterward honored as saints, three of his sons having become bishops, were all known for their practical piety. Basil attributed some of the highest influences of his life to his sister Macrina. He refused the bishopric at first and after he was made bishop, insisted on living in the most absolute sim plicity of life, cultivating, indeed, even in his episcopal home, the austerities which had made him remarkable just after his graduation from Athens when Saint Gregory Nazianzen declared that he was equipped "with all the learning ob tainable by the nature of man.' A very interesting survival from the 4th century is the little independent republic of San Marino in north central Italy. They suc ceeded in maintaining their independence all during the Middle Ages though not without a hard struggle and were one of the Allied gov ernments, the smallest, in the war with the Cen tral Powers. They still maintain some of the very old customs and have lived in more peace and happiness than the citizens of any state in Europe. Their founder, San Marino, was a Christian missionary, and he left them as their most precious heritage their land "independent of everyone' which he hoped they would not increase. The papal authorities always fostered the little republic, and Pope Pius II (2Enius Silvius Piccolomini) granted them special privi leges. This little democracy with its long heritage of tradition finds itself just abreast of the new spirit of democracy in our time.
As Roman power declined toward the end of the 4th century, the outlying provinces were invaded by neighboring barbarians and the first invasion of England took place from the old low Dutch lands by the Elbe and the Weser Rivers. The first tribes who came were Saxons and suc ceeding invaders from the same locality were called Saxons by the Britons whom they dis placed and by the Irish and the Scotch, though after a while the Angles and the Jutes from the same region made their way to England and gained a foothold. The name by which the invaders called themselves was Angles or Eng lish, hence the name England. The old Germans called everybody whose language they could not understand NA'alsch, a word still used in German for foreigners. This was the name they gave the Britons whom they displaced, who were pushed over into Wales where their descendants still remain, though the Welsh call themselves Cymri. The first English (Anglian) kingdom was that of Kent, founded in 449, and in the next hundred years "the greater part of that land which had been the Roman and Christian province of Britain became the heathen land of the Angles and Saxons.° (Freedman).
In the effort of the Britons to repel these invaders, great fighting was done under one or a series of leaders which formed the basis for the stories of King Arthur so often treated in English literature since. It is more than dubious whether a real character with the traits of the legendary king of that name ever lived but these poetic stories with regard to him have kindled the valor of many generations since.