Saint Pammachius

Saint Pammachius was a Roman senator who lived at the turn of the fourth and fifth centuries, and a friend of Saint Jerome. After the death of his wife he devoted himself to works of mercy. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on August 30 as a man zealous in the faith and generous to the poor.

He came from a wealthy senatorial family; Saint Jerome writes that his grandfathers and great-grandfathers had already been consuls. The year of his birth is not known. In his youth he studied in Rome together with Jerome, who years later called him his old fellow student, companion, and friend. Pammachius married Paulina, a daughter of Saint Paula and sister of Saint Eustochium.

His friendship with Jerome, who settled in Bethlehem, lasted many years. When around 393 Jerome published his books against Jovinian, Pammachius, like other friends, judged that the author had exalted virginity too much at the expense of marriage, and he withdrew some copies from circulation. Jerome thanked him for this concern and replied with a letter in defense of his work. He also addressed to him a letter on the best method of translating, and later dedicated to him his commentaries on the books of the prophets Hosea, Joel, and Amos.

Paulina died young, in the last years of the fourth century. Pammachius did not shut himself up in idle mourning: he gathered crowds of the poor in the basilica of Saint Peter and gave them a meal, which Saint Paulinus of Nola described with admiration in a letter of consolation. According to Jerome, he turned his wife’s jewels and silk garments into bread and clothing for the needy. He himself put on the dark garb of a monk and from then on lived ascetically, although he remained a senator and appeared in that garb among senators dressed in purple. Jerome called him the commander of the monks.

Together with Saint Fabiola he joined resources and plans to open a house for strangers at Portus, the port of Rome at the mouth of the Tiber. A building was bought there that took in poor pilgrims and the sick free of charge; Jerome wrote that they wished to pitch there a tent of hospitality after the example of Abraham. Pammachius also cared for the unity of the Church. He owned estates in Numidia in North Africa and urged the tenants there to abandon the Donatist schism. In 401 Saint Augustine thanked him for this in a letter.

The Roman Martyrology attributes to his piety the founding of the titular church on the Caelian Hill. The church arose in his family’s house and in antiquity was called the title of Pammachius; today it is the Basilica of Saints John and Paul. Some sources also link its origin to Pammachius’s father, the senator Byzantius.

Pammachius died around 409 or 410, at the time when the Visigoths of Alaric were besieging Rome. In Bethlehem, Jerome received the news of his death together with the news of the death of Saint Marcella and of the siege of the city. Pammachius lived long before canonization processes came into being; his memory has been kept by the letters of Jerome, Paulinus of Nola, and Augustine.