I finished reading Cardinal
Rampolla’s Life of Melania. It is clear from his description of Rome in the fourth century why Melania decided to give up
the richest estate in the empire in order dedicate herself to the Gospel and help the poor. It is equally clear how this decision threatened
the lifestyle of the powerful elite who hoped to benefit from her wealth. Jilted suitors convinced elite members of clergy
to drive Jerome out of Rome for encouraging noble Roman women to take up the ascetic life rather than submit to their unwelcome advances. Paula and Eustochium went with
Jerome to the visit monasteries in the Egyptian desert in 385 CE, and then onto Palestine
where they founded monasteries on the same model in Bethlehem. Melania the Younger, born in 383 CE was married
young against her wishes, but managed to convinced her pious young husband Pinianus to embrace ascetism
after their two children died in infancy. The couple resolved to live a chaste life as brother
and sister ever after. Along with Melania’s widowed mother
Albina, they fled Rome and followed Jerome and Paula, and Melania’s
aunt Melania the Elder to the East. Poor
old Marcella, now nearly 80 years old, remained behind in Rome and was brutalized during
the sack of Rome two years later. Meanwhile Melania and Pinianus met Saint Augustine, the bishop of Hippo, whose church they soon endowed with riches from the sale of their estate in Sicily.
The people of the parish were so taken by their generosity they began shouting
during Mass for the bishop to ordain Pinianus at once and make him their priest,
an honor which they neither desired nor accepted. The couple quickly moved on to Egypt, and
finally settled in Jerusalem where they met up with Paula and Jerome and
built a double monastery on the Mount of Olives. After the death of her mother, aunt and husband,
Melania visited Constantinople where she performed many miracles and even converted the
Empress Eudoxia to Christianity before the end of her days in 439 CE.
