Feast day: 8 June
Melania the Elder was born in Hispania (the Iberian peninsula), around the year 350 AD, and became one of the wealthiest citizens of the empire. Her father Marcellinus was of consular rank and she was related to St Paulinus, Bishop of Nola. She was married at fourteen and moved with her husband (probably Valerius Maximus, signo Basilius, of a powerful patrician family) to the suburbs of Rome. Her husband and two out of three sons had died by the time she was 22.
She became a Christian in Rome and leaving her son, Valerius Publicola, with a guardian set off to Alexandria, accompanied by her servants, to visit the monks at Nitria. Christine Schenk CSJ writes that she “used her wealth and influence to help monks, priests and bishops in the Nitrian desert.”
She stayed with the monks in the desert near Alexandra, Egypt (today this area is known as Wadi Natroun), for about six months. When persecution broke out after the death of Bishop Athanasius in 373 and many of the monks were exiled to Diocaesarea in Palestine, Melania followed and supported them financially (Athanasius had been a firm opponent of Arianism; the Emperor Valens, who was an Arian, persecuted Trinitarian Christians). The governor briefly imprisoned her but released her when he became aware of her social status.
Melania built a convent in Jerusalem and a monastery on the Mount of Olives for the monk and scholar Rufinus of Aquileia. Because of her involvement in the controversy over Origen 1 in the 390s, Jerome wrote vitriolically about her, calling her “black in name and black in nature”. He tried to delete his earlier lavish praises of her from his writings. Palladius of Galatia described her as “a very learned lady who loved the world” (Palladius was a chronicler, a contemporary of Melania, who lived in what is now modern Turkey).
In about 400 Melania left for Rome to see her son, who had married. Her granddaughter, known as Melania the Younger, under her grandmother’s influence would take up religious life. Melania also visited Paulinus and Therasia of Nola and brought him a relic of the True Cross. Augustine of Hippo wrote to Paulinus that his kinswoman was in North Africa, when her son Valerius died in 406. Melania was a spiritual mentor of Evagrius of Pontus, author of some Eastern Orthodox texts. She persuaded him to go to Egypt to join the desert ascetics and carried on a correspondence with him while he was there.
Melania the Elder, desert mother, is venerated as a saint.
St Melania the Elder, pray for us.
1 Origen (185-253) was a theologian and scholar, some of whose writings were later declared to be heretical. An example would be that the Son is inferior to the Father. This belief later developed into Arianism.