Saint Asella

She shut herself away, by the movement of the Holy Spirit, in a cell, where she persevered with great constancy until the end of her life. However narrow this place was, she enjoyed within it the full expanse of paradise. The same space served her for her prayer and for taking her rest. Her delights were to fast, abstinence was her ordinary meal, and when she saw herself obliged, more by a necessity common to all men than to satisfy her appetite, to take some nourishment, bread with salt and cold water were her only food, and she took so little that her hunger was excited rather than appeased. As soon as she had resolved to embrace this way of life and to consecrate herself entirely to God, she disposed of, without waiting for the consent of her parents, her jewels and her gold chains to buy a simple and modest robe, which she could not obtain from her mother; and, by this pious trade, she showed her parents that they should not expect a worldly life from one who thus condemned the world through her attire. She lived so solitary and so removed from the conversation of creatures that she never appeared in public. She always avoided speaking to men; and, what is admirable, she even deprived herself of seeing a sister whom she loved tenderly.

“She employed her hands in some work, so as not to remain idle; but, during her work, she conversed with her heavenly Spouse through prayer, or she proclaimed His praises by reciting psalms with fervor. When the solemnity of feast days, or some particular devotion led her to visit the churches of the holy Martyrs, she went there without being known, and her greatest joy was to be seen by no one. Although she fasted a great part of the year, and even sometimes spent two or three days without eating, she nevertheless practiced such abstinence during Lent that one would have said it was entirely but a single fast. Despite these

SAINT GERTRUDE OR GERETRUDE. 93 Despite her austerities, she continued to live until the age of fifty, without any stomach ailment, without pain in her bowels, without feeling any weakening of her limbs, although she always slept on the hard ground, and without the harshness of the hair shirt causing the slightest deformity in her, but enjoying perfect health and an even more abundant holiness. She was in solitude as if in a paradise, and she found, in the midst of the troubles of the city, the rest that solitaries go to seek in hermitages. There was nothing more pleasant than her severity, nor anything more severe than her joy. Her gaiety was sad and her sadness charming. The pallor that appeared on her face was an indication of her penance, but one saw nothing there that smacked of ostentation. Her words were so well measured that one could say that in speaking she kept silence, and her silence was so judicious that in some way she spoke while remaining silent. Her walk was accompanied by an angelic modesty. She was always dressed in the same way, with a certain negligence that held nothing of affectation, and this same negligence was a Christian cleanliness that condemned the luxury and pomp of worldly people. Finally, by the evenness of her life, she alone deserved to be admired by the whole of Rome, which was then a cit y of pleasur Rome entière Birthplace of Maximian. es, luxury, and magnificence, and where humility passed for a baseness of soul; so that good people gave praise to her virtue, and libertines dared not attack her with their calumnies; widows took her as the model of their perfection, virgins tried to imitate her, married women honored her, the debauched feared her, and priests considered her a marvel of holiness.

This narrative is by Father Giry. — Cf. Saint Saint Jérôme Father of the Church and author of the original biography of Saint Asella. Jerome, *Epistles* XV, cxv, cxi.