The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity

Gerontius, Life of Melania the Younger

Summary:

The Life of Melania the Younger opens with a dedication to an unnamed ‘holy father’. In the prologue the author explains that his aim is to present the virtues of an ascetic woman.

1-4. Melania, a girl of senatorial rank, is expected to produce a successor of the family line and is married at the age of about fourteen to Valerius Pinianus, a man from consular family. From the beginning of her life, she wants to live in chastity. Pinianus promises that, after they have had two children, they will renounce the world.
5-6. Melania keeps vigil in the martyrium of Saint Laurence (see E01997), and then gives birth to a boy who dies shortly after. Pinianus, seeing his wife is unwell, decides to fulfil his promise now. Their daughter also dies.

7-8. After the death of Melania’s father, they move out of Rome to a suburban property, and, led by Melania,the couple begin to renounce the world, first clothing themselves in cheap garments.
9-10. They lead a pious and charitable life and begin to sell off their possessions, though their slaves, instigated by Severus, Pinianus' brother, make this difficult.
11-15. The empress Serena admires Melania and, together with the emperor Honorius, her brother, helps them with the sale of their property across the empire. Melania's yearly income had been 120,000 gold pieces.
16-18. They are tempted by the lure of wealth to stop, but persist.

19-20. They buy monasteries and islands for monks, and furnishings for churches. Having sold their Italian possessions, they move to Africa, where they sell their African possessions and, advised by Augustine others, make donations to monasteries.
21-22. They move to Thagaste to be with its bishop, Alypius, who is learned in scripture and theology. They endow his bishopric and found two monasteries, one for 80 monks and the other for 130 virgins. Melania begins to mortify her body with fasting

23-33. Gerontius describes at length and in detail the piety and rigourous asceticism of Melania in these years.

34. Melania and Pinianus desire to see the Holy Land. After an excursus describing things that had happened previously (when they left Rome and sailed for Sicily), they leave Africa after seven years. Arriving in Alexandria, they meet bishop Cyril and abba Nestoros, who cures people using blessed oil (see E01998).
35-36. Arriving in Jerusalem, they stay at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here Melania lives together with her mother, meeting only holy men. The couple continue to sell their possessions.
37-39. Melania and Pinianus travel to Egypt, visiting monastic centres and Alexandria.
40-41. Back in Jerusalem, Melania shuts herself in a cell on the Mount of Olives built by her mother, where she lives for fourteen years, during which time her mother dies. She builds a female monastery on the Mount of Olives and gathers ninety virgins there, though she chooses another to be its superior.
42-47. Gerontius describes at length Melania's kind and pious behaviour, and the spiritual guidance she gave to the sisters of the monastery.
48. She builds an oratory for the monastery and provides it with relics (see E01999).
49. Pinianus dies and is buried in the apostolium which Melania had built (see E02000); she spends the next three or four years there. She founds a male monastery, also on the Mount of Olives.

50-52. She gets letters from her uncle Volusianus and travels to Constantinople. Bishops and clergy en route honour her, and she is miraculously helped by saint *Leontius in Tripoli (see E02001).
53-55. Before entering Constantinople, she visits the martyrium of *Euphemia at Chalcedon (see E02002). In the city she manages to persuade her dying uncle to be baptised.

56-57. Despite the emperor and empress seeking to detain her, she travels to Jerusalem, arriving, as she desired, in time for Easter. She build a martyrium for her monks (see E01999).
58. She meets the empress Eudocia at Sidon, where she stays at the martyrium of *Phocas (see E02004).
59. In Jerusalem, Melania's prayers cure the empress of a twisted foot that was preventing her from attending the dedication of Melania's martyrium.
60-61. Gerontius recounts a handful of other cures effected by Melania, including ending the protracted and life-threatening labour of a woman struggling to deliver a stillborn child.
62. Gerontius tells us how Melania explained how she avoided pride.

63. She celebrates the Nativity in Bethlehem and predicts her death.
64. The next day, she goes to the martyrium of *Stephen to celebrate his feast-day (see E02003).
65. She repeats her prediction to the sisters and leaves them a spiritual testament.
66. On the sixth day of her illness, a Sunday, she takes communion.
67-68. The bishop of Jerusalem visits and she commends care of her monasteries to him. The monks and nuns of her monasteries visit. Others come, and she dies a peaceful death.
69. Gerontius describes the humble clothes in which she was buried, and tells how she would be received in heaven.


Summary (of the Latin text): Katarzyna Wojtalik.

Service for the saint
Chant and religious singing

Saint’s feast

Cult building - dependent (chapel, baptistery, etc.)
Cult building - monastic

Miracle during lifetime

Bodily relic - unspecified

Women
Ecclesiastics - bishops
Ecclesiastics - lesser clergy
Ecclesiastics - abbots
Ecclesiastics - monks/nuns/hermits
Pagans
Monarchs and their family
Eunuchs

Source

Bibliography