Melania the Younger

Melania was born to Valerius Publicola – the son of 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]