AD 385

Jerome’s departure from Rome

Jerome leaves Rome amid clerical and family opposition

Jerome wrote his defence aboard ship at Ostia, while accusations about Paula and Eustochium were still circulating in Rome.

August 385, aboard ship at Ostia

By August 385 Jerome had left Rome and was aboard ship at Ostia, bound east. From there he wrote Letter 45 to Asella, defending himself against accusations concerning his relationships with Paula and Eustochium.

He asked Asella to defend his reputation among the Roman ascetic circle.

In the same letter he complained that Rome had praised him before he entered Paula’s household and vilified him afterwards.

No surviving sentence of exile

Damasus, Jerome’s patron, had died in December 384, removing his strongest protection inside the Roman church.

Modern scholarship describes a Roman church prosecution probably instigated by members of Paula’s family, against a background of escalating opposition to Jerome’s ascetic programme and his influence over Paula’s household. The death of Paula’s daughter Blaesilla after she adopted ascetic practices intensified hostility, though its medical cause cannot be established.

No surviving act of a Roman synod sentences Jerome to exile, and Letter 45 is a partisan self-defence: the exact charges and procedure cannot be recovered with certainty.

Paula followed later

Paula and Eustochium did not sail as Jerome’s companions. They followed him to Palestine afterwards and worked with him there.

Jerome remembered Paula’s young son stretching his hands toward the departing ship while another daughter pleaded from the shore.

Jerome travelled east and established himself at Bethlehem in 386; Paula and Eustochium sponsored the foundation of a monastery, women’s communities and a hospice.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 7 sources not yet audited Date corrected

How this was checked

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Date corrected. The research places this at 0385-08.

What the sources leave uncertain

Jerome’s August 385 departure is directly attested, but no surviving act of a Roman synod formally sentences him to exile.
Jerome’s Letter 45 is a partisan self-defense. Modern reconstruction supports church prosecution or effective expulsion, but the exact charges and procedure cannot be recovered with certainty.
Blaesilla’s death intensified opposition to Jerome, but claims that his fasting instructions medically caused her death are retrospective and cannot be verified.
The precise sailing interval between Jerome and Paula is not firmly documented; the sources agree that she followed rather than accompanying his initial departure.