Those who embraced monasticism in Rome did so in one of two ways. Some
sold their possessions, adopted coarse garments, and subsisted on the
plainest food, but they did not leave the city and were still to be seen
upon the streets. Jerome writes to Pammachius: "Who would have believed
that a last descendant of the consuls, an ornament of the race of
Camillus, could make up his mind to traverse the city in the black robe
of a monk, and should not blush to appear thus clad in the midst of
senators." Some of those who remained at Rome established a sort of
retreat for their ascetic friends.

But another class left Rome altogether. Some took up their abode on the
rugged isles of the Adriatic or the Mediterranean. Large numbers of them
went to the East, principally to Palestine. Jerome was practically the
abbot of a Roman colony of monks and nuns. Two motives, beside the
general ruling desire to achieve holiness, produced this exodus to the
Holy Land, which culminated centuries later in the crusades. One was a
desire to see the deserts and caves, the abode of hermits famous for
piety and miracles. Jerome, as I have shown, invested these lonely
retreats and strange characters with a sort of holy romance, and hence,
faith, mingled with curiosity, led men to the East. Another motive was
the desire to visit the land of the Saviour, to tread the soil
consecrated by his labors of love, to live a life of poverty in the land
where He had no home He could call his own.

St. Paula was one of the women who left Rome and went to Palestine. The
story of her life is told in a letter designed to comfort her daughter
Eustochium at the time of Paula's death. The epistle begins: "If all the
members of my body were to be converted into tongues, and if each of my
limbs were to be gifted with a human voice, I could still do no justice