Saint Fabiola

Fabiola of Rome was a physician and Roman matron of the patrician gens Fabia who lived in the late fourth century and is venerated as a saint in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches, with a feast day on 27 December. After a divorce and a second marriage that the church did not accept, she did public penance at the Lateran basilica on the day before Easter and was received back into communion by the pope. She then gave her wealth to the poor and the sick, founded a hospital at Rome and nursed the patients herself, including people shunned for their diseases. In 395 she went to Bethlehem to study scripture under Jerome, returned to Rome, and with the former senator Pammachius built a hospice at Portus for pilgrims. She died on 27 December of 399 or 400. Jerome wrote a memoir of her, and her legacy illustrates the part early Christian women played in medicine.