Melania the Younger


Saint Melania the Younger 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.
The Feast of Melania the Younger is held on 31 December. In Ukraine, by Orthodox Christians, Malanka 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. 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. Melania and Pinianus left Rome in 408, living a monastic life near Messina 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.
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 included sixty large houses, each of them with four hundred agricultural 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.
Further, there is an account of her life by Palladius as well.

Ancestry