Saint Pammachius

Almost everything known about Pammachius comes from letters written to him. santiebeati says as much, naming the correspondence of Jerome and of Paulinus of Nola as nearly the only record. ⁸ Several of Jerome's letters to him survive, and one from Saint Augustine. ²⁴⁵⁶¹¹

He was born in Rome about 340, into one of the most distinguished senatorial families. ⁸ Jerome calls him "the glory of the Furian stock," a man whose grandfathers and great-grandfathers had been consuls. ² Butler, citing Jerome, puts it as the family of the Camilli. ⁷ The two had been at school together; Jerome greets him in one letter as "my old fellow-learner, companion, and friend." ⁴ Butler says Pammachius left school in 370, when Jerome went into the desert, and entered the senate, where he rose to proconsular rank. ⁷

He married Paulina, the second daughter of Saint Paula. ⁷ That made him, in Jerome's phrase, "brother-in-law to the first, son-in-law to the second, husband to the third" of three women Jerome admired: Eustochium the virgin, Paula the widow and Paulina the wife. ² Jerome says Paulina suffered several miscarriages and that she wanted children so that she might bring forth virgins for Christ. ²

She died young. Butler gives the year as 393; the life on santiebeati gives 395. ⁷⁸ Jerome's own letter of consolation, dated 397, opens by apologizing for two years of silence. ² Butler, quoting a letter of Paulinus of Nola, says that after the Mass offered for her Pammachius gave a meal to all the poor of Rome. ⁷

What followed is the part of his life Jerome wrote about most. Paulina's jewels, he says, now bought food for the needy, and her silks became plain woolen garments to keep out the cold. ² "That blind man holding out his hand," he writes, "is the heir of Paulina, is co-heir with Pammachius." ² The doors that had once let out crowds of visitors were now besieged by the sick and the maimed, and those were the bodyguard who followed him wherever he walked. ²

He did this without leaving public life. Jerome marvels that a man of consular family moves among the senators in their purple dressed in a monk's dark clothes, and laughs at those who laugh at him. ² He calls him "the commander in chief of all monks" and "the first of monks in the first city of the world." ² The current Martyrology still calls him simply a senator. ¹ Butler adds that he never seems to have entered holy orders, though the 1897 English Martyrology listed him as a priest. ⁷¹⁰

His best-known work was a hospice for strangers at Portus, the harbor at the mouth of the Tiber where travelers to and from Rome landed and embarked. ²³⁸ Jerome had heard of it by 397 and wrote that Pammachius had "planted a twig from the tree of Abraham upon the Ausonian shore." ² The notice on santiebeati dates the foundation to 398, about two years after Paulina died, and says its remains were examined by the archaeologist G. B. de Rossi. ⁸

It was a joint work with Saint Fabiola. In his memorial of her, Jerome describes the two of them competing to set up the tent of Abraham at Portus until they combined their money and their plans: "Each conquered and each was overcome." ³ A house was bought, a crowd came to it, and Jerome says the whole world knew that a home for strangers had been established at Portus. ³ Butler adds that Pammachius served the sick and the poor there with his own hands. ⁷

He was a reader of theology as well as a giver of alms. Butler says he was the first to detect the errors of Jovinian, who held that marriage was equal to virginity, and denounced them to Pope Siricius. ⁷ Jerome, writing to him in 393 or 394, credits the condemnation of Jovinian "under God to your agency." ⁴ Yet the same letter exists because Pammachius had withdrawn copies of Jerome's books against Jovinian from circulation, thinking they praised virginity at the expense of marriage, and Jerome wrote to defend them. ⁴

Two more letters show what Jerome trusted him with. In 395, accused of mistranslating a letter of Epiphanius, Jerome addressed his defense to Pammachius, and it became his statement that a translator renders sense for sense and not word for word. ⁵ In 400 he wrote to Pammachius and Oceanus together to set out his position on Origen. ¹¹

Augustine wrote to him in 401, knowing him, he said, through a single action of his. ⁶ Pammachius had estates in the province of Numidia, where the Donatist schism had begun, and had written to his tenants there in such terms that they returned to Catholic unity. ⁶ Augustine wished that many other senators would do the same. ⁶

The Martyrology credits his piety with the basilica on the Caelian that bears his title. ¹ Kirsch writes that in the second half of the fourth century the senator Byzantius and his son Pammachius made their house there into a Christian basilica, called the titulus Byzantii or the titulus Pammachii, and that the church very early came to be known by the names of the martyrs John and Paul, who were buried in the house. ⁹ The notice on santiebeati adds that an inscription called him a cultor fidei, a cultivator of the faith, and that he and Paulina are almost certainly the two figures painted at the feet of one of the martyrs in the oratory beneath the church. ⁸

He died in 410, Butler says, a little before Rome was sacked. ⁷ The older notice on santiebeati says he died during the siege of Alaric, in 410; the newer life gives August 30, 409 or 410. ⁸

No source consulted for this page names a patronage for Saint Pammachius, and none is claimed here. ¹⁷⁸ The Martyrology remembers him for his zeal for the faith and his generosity to the poor. ¹

Saint Pammachius's feast is August 30. ¹⁸ The current Roman Martyrology commemorates him at Rome that day, and Butler's Lives and the 1897 Martyrology both place him there as well. ¹⁷¹⁰

He stayed where he was. He went on sitting in the senate in a monk's clothes, and the men he had grown up with could see exactly what he had given up. ² Jerome thought that no small thing for a man of his birth, and said so. ²

His grief went into other people's hunger. He made the blind and the lame Paulina's heirs, and Jerome writes that he watered her ashes with almsgiving where other husbands scattered flowers. ² The hospice at Portus was shared work, and Jerome describes its two founders contending only over which would be the kinder. ³

He also disagreed with his friend. He thought Jerome had gone too far against Jovinian and quietly kept the books from circulating, and Jerome answered him at length rather than breaking with him. ⁴ Jerome went on writing to him for years afterward. ⁵¹¹

The Church remembers him at the house he gave away, which became the church of the martyrs John and Paul. ¹⁹