Melania the Younger

Saint Melania the Younger (born in Rome c. 383, died in Jerusalem on 31 December 439) is a Christian saint and Desert Mother who lived during the reign of Emperor Honorius, son of Theodosius I. She is the paternal granddaughter of Melania the Elder.

Saint Melania the Younger
Miniature from the Menologion of Basil II
Bornc. 383
Rome
Died(439-12-31)31 December 439
Jerusalem
Venerated inRoman Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, Eastern Catholic Churches
Feast31 December

The Feast of Melania the Younger is held on 31 December (the Julian calendar's 31 December falls on 13 January on the Gregorian calendar). In Ukraine, by Orthodox Christians, Malanka ("Melania's Day") is celebrated on 13 January, and on 31 December by other Christians.

Life

Melania was born to Valerius Publicola – the son of Valerius Maximus Basilius and Melania the Elder) and his wife Albina.[1] She married her paternal cousin, Valerius Pinianus, at the age of fourteen. After the early deaths of two children, she and her husband embraced Christian asceticism and maintained a celibate life thereafter. Upon inheriting her parents' wealth, she donated it to ecclesiastical institutions and to the poor through anonymous intermediaries.[2] Melania and Pinianus left Rome in 408, living a monastic life near Messina (Sicily) for two years. In 410, they travelled to Africa, where they befriended Augustine of Hippo and devoted themselves to a life of piety and charitable works. Together they founded a convent of which Melania became Mother Superior, and cloister of which Pinianus took charge. In 417, they traveled to Palestine by way of Alexandria, living in a hermitage near the Mount of Olives, where Melania founded a second convent. After the death of Pinianus c. 420, Melania built a cloister for men, and a church, where she spent the remainder of her life.

Melania had "vast domains in Sicily" and also held land in Britain.[3][4] She also owned grand estates in Iberia, Africa, Numidia, Mauretania and Italy. Gerontius describes one of her estates as follows: "On one side lay the sea and on the other some woodland containing a variety of animals and game, so that when she was bathing in the pool she could see ships passing by and game animals in the woods... the property [also] included sixty large houses, each of them with four hundred agricultural slaves."[5] Thus, this one property contained 24,000 slaves.

Today, the town of Sainte-Mélanie in Canada is named in her honour.

Hagiography

An account of Melania's pursuit of the ascetic life survives in a hagiography or biography, written by Gerontius c. 452.[5]

Further, there is an account of her life by Palladius (d. A.D. 431) as well.[6]

Ancestry

See also

Notes
  1. Valerius Maximus Basilius was a descendant of Octavia the Younger and C. Claudius Marcellus Minor, through their granddaughter Valeria Messallia (daughter of Claudia Marcella Minor).
  2. Septimia was the great-granddaughter of Pomponius Bassus, the great-great-grandson of Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, which made her the Emperor's descendant.

References
  1.  Schlitz, Carl (1913). "St. Melania (the Younger)". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
  2. Butler, Alban (1962). Butler's lives of the saints. 4. P.J. Kenedy & Sons. p. 647. OCLC 18475812.
  3. Applebaum, Shimon (1958). "Agriculture in Roman Britain" (PDF). The Agricultural History Review. 6 (2): 82, note 2. JSTOR 40262739.
  4. Piggott, Stuart; Thirsk, Joan (2011). Prehistory to AD 1042. The Agrarian History of England and Wales. 1. Cambridge University Press. p. 23.17. ISBN 978-1-107-40114-3.
  5. White 2010, Gerontius, "Life of Melania the Younger".
  6. White 2010, Palladius, "Life of Melania the Younger".

Sources

Further reading
  • Elizabeth A. Clark, The Life of Melania the Younger. New York, 1984.
  • Rosemary Ruether, "Mothers of the Church: Ascetic Women in the Late Patristic Age," in Women of Spirit: Female Leadership in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, Rosemary Ruether and Eleanor McLaughlin, eds., New York, Simon and Schuster, 1979.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.