· Woman’s Need of a Faith · · Rome in its Decadence · · The Reaction of Roman Women · · Marcella · The Church of the Household · · Asella · Fabiola · Paula · · Eustochium · Blæsilla · St. Jerome · Melania · · The Convent at Bethlehem · · Translation of the Latin Vulgate · · Hebrew Studies · Death of Paula · · Tragical Fate of Marcella · · Revolution in Roman Society · · Spread of Convents · Christian Ideals · · Value of Able Women in the Early Church · · St. Chrysostom · Olympias · · Intellectual Decline of Women in the Dark Ages · · Influence of the Renaissance · · Condition Tempered by Chivalry · · Elevated by the Renaissance · [Illustration: Decorative image] I “The majority of men, and especially of women, whose imagination is double, cannot live without a faith,” said the Abbé Galiani, “and those who can, sustain the effort only in the greatest force and youth of the soul.” How far this may be true it is needless to discuss here, but it is certain enough that women have been the strongest agents in the religious movements of the world. A tender heart may go with a skeptical mind, but the fine type of womanhood, in which reason is tempered with love and imagination, inevitably turns to some faith for support in seasons of moral decadence as in moments of sorrow and despair. This has never had a more striking illustration than in the reaction of a large class of Roman women from the vices, follies, and debasing pleasures of a civilization falling into ruin, toward an extreme asceticism. At this moment in its history the golden age of Rome was long past, and the world was to wait more than a thousand years for another brilliant flowering of the human intellect on the same soil. But glory of a different sort set its seal upon the women of the darkening ages. To the enthusiasms of patriotism and passion, culture and ambition, succeeded the enthusiasms of religion.