Melania the Elder

The Venerable Melania the Elder was a desert mother and an important figure of the ascetic movement of the fourth century. She lived in Jerusalem and died before 417. She was a contemporary and acquaintance of Abba Macarius and other Desert Fathers in Egypt, of Blessed Jerome, Blessed Augustine, Paulinus of Nola (her relative) and Evagrius Ponticus, and she founded two monastic establishments on the Mount of Olives.

She was born around 350 in Hispania and became one of the wealthiest citizens of the empire. Her father, Marcellinus, had consular rank. At fourteen she married and moved with her husband, probably Valerius Maximus, to the suburbs of Rome. By twenty-⁠two she had lost her husband and two of her three sons. She became a Christian at Rome and, leaving the remaining son, Valerius Publicola, with a guardian, set out with her servants for Alexandria, to visit the monks of Nitria. She used her wealth and influence to help the monks, priests and bishops of the desert. She stayed about six months with the monks in the desert near Alexandria. When, after the death of Bishop Athanasius in 373, persecution broke out and many monks were exiled to Diocaesarea in Palestine, she followed them and supported them with money; the governor imprisoned her briefly but released her when he learned her rank.

At Jerusalem she built a convent and a monastery on the Mount of Olives for the monk and theologian Rufinus of Aquileia. Because she sided with the teaching of Origen in the controversy of the 390s, Jerome attacked her bitterly, playing on her name and calling her black in name and black in nature; he later tried to erase his earlier praises from his writings. Palladius says of her that she was a very learned woman. Around 400 she went to Rome to see her son, who had married; through her influence her granddaughter, Melania the Younger, later chose the monastic life. She also visited Paulinus and Therasia of Nola and brought him a fragment of the True Cross. Augustine wrote to Paulinus that his kinswoman was in North Africa when her son Valerius died, in 406. She was a spiritual mentor to Evagrius Ponticus, whom she persuaded to go to Egypt to the desert ascetics and with whom she corresponded. Her feast is on 8 (21) June.