The Lives of the Saints Volume 1 - St. Patrick's Basilica

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to overcome nature, and remained always perfectly resigned in her soul
to the will of God. Her son Toxotius married Læta, daughter to a priest
of the idols, but, as to herself, she was a most virtuous Christian.
Both were faithful imitators of the sanctity of our saint. Their
daughter, Paula the younger, was sent to Bethlehem. to be under the care
of her grandmother, whom she afterwards succeeded in the government of
that monastery. St. Jerom wrote to Læta some excellent lessons[4] for
the education of this girl, which parents can never read too often. Our
saint lived {232} fifty-six years and eight months, of which she had
spent in her widowhood five at Rome, and almost twenty at Bethlehem. In
her last illness, but especially in her agony, she repeated almost
without intermission certain verses of the psalms, which express an
ardent desire of the heavenly Jerusalem, and of being united to God.
When she was no longer able to speak, she formed the sign of the cross
on her lips, and expired in the most profound peace, on the 26th of
January, 404. Her corpse, carried by bishops, and attended with lighted
wax torches, was interred on the 28th of the same month, in the midst of
the church of the holy manger. Her tomb is still shown in the same
place, near that of St. Jerom, but empty: even the Latin epitaph which
St. Jerom composed in verse, and caused to be engraved on her tomb, is
erased or removed, though extant in the end of this letter which he
addressed to her daughter. Her relics are said to be in the possession
of the metropolitical church at Sens, and the feast of St. Paula is kept
a holiday of precept in that city on the 27th of January; on which day
her name is placed by Ado, Usuard, &c., because she died on the 26th,
after sunset, and the Jews in Palestine began the day from sunset: but
her name occurs on the 26th in the Roman Martyrology, &c. See her life
in St. Jerom's letter to her daughter, called her epitaph, ep. 86, &c.
Footnotes:
1. Ep. 22, ol. 54.
2. Rebellibus lachrymis injurian facis possidenti.
3. Nulla sic amabat filios, &c. St. Heir {} epitaph. Paulæ.
4. Ep. 57, ol. 7.
ST. CONON, BISHOP OF THE ISLE OF MAN.
IF we can give credit to some lives of St. Fiaker, and the old breviary
of Limoges, that saint was son of Eusenius, king of Scotland, and by his
father committed in his childhood, with his two brothers, to the care of
St. Conon, from which saintly education he received that ardent love and
perfect spirit of piety, by which he was distinguished during the whole
course of his life. Conon, by the purity and fervor in which he served
God, was a saint from his infancy. The Isle of Man, which was a famous
ancient seat of the Druids, is said to have received the seeds of the
Christian faith by the zeal of St. Patrick. St. Conon, passing thither