St. Melania the Younger (c. 383-439)

Melania was born in Rome about 383 to one of its richest families and married at fourteen to Pinian, though she had wished to be a nun. When their two children died she persuaded her husband to live with her as brother and sister in the service of God, and together they sold estates across the empire to feed the poor, set thousands of slaves free and build churches and monasteries in Italy, Africa and the East. At last they settled in Jerusalem, where after Pinian’s death she lived in a cell on the Mount of Olives and founded communities of women and of men beside it. She died there on the last day of 439. Feast: December 31.