Saint Lea of Rome

Saint Lea is a third century saint in the Roman Catholic Church on the authority of Jerome about whom little is definitively known. The church father Saint Jerome, in a letter to Saint Marcella, said that she was a widow who retired to a Roman convent of consecrated virgins, where she became the prioress. Jerome provides no biography for Lea, for he assumes that Marcella knows it, and concentrates instead upon her death.

In a parallel with Lazarus and Dives, Jerome writes:


He then compares her with a consul who had lived in wealth and would find himself in agony in the afterlife and exhorts Marcella to serve Jesus rather than the world.

Jerome's use of the adjective "blessed" is taken as sufficient evidence for Lea's veneration by the Roman Catholic Church, where her feast day is March 22.

The name Lea is likely a derivation of Leah coming from a Hebrew word meaning "weary"; or from a Chaldean name meaning "mistress" or "ruler" in Akkadian. In Genesis 29, Leah is seen as being Jacob's first wife and the mother of seven of his children.