Feast December 31 | Name Melania Younger | |
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Parents Valerius Publicola, Caeionia Albina Similar People Pope Leo I, Pope Clement I, Pope Sixtus III, Pope Honorius III, Pope Anicetus | ||
Saint Melania the Younger (born in Rome c. 383, died in Jerusalem on December 31, 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.
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The Feast of Melania the Younger is held on December 31 (the Julian calendar's December 31 falls on January 13 on the Gregorian calendar). In Ukraine, Malanka ("Melania's Day") is celebrated on January 13.
Life
Melania was born to Valerius Publicola - the son of Valerius Maximus Basilius and Melania the Elder) and his wife Albina. She married her paternal cousin, Valerius Pinianus, at the age of fourteen. After the early deaths of two children, she and her husband embraced a 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. Melania and Pinianus left Rome in 408, living a monastic life near Messina (Sicily) for two years. In 410, they traveled 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. Moreover, she 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." Thus, this one property contained 24,000 slaves.
Hagiography
An account of Melania's pursuit of the ascetic life survives in a hagiography composed by Gerontius c. 452.
Further, there is an account of her life by Palladius (d. A.D. 431) as well.
