The life of St Melania the Elder
There she came to know some of the leading figures of that first generation of desert monasticism, among them Pambo, Paphnutius, Isidore, and Evagrius, and she gave away much of her fortune to Egyptian Christians suffering under Arian persecution.
When the Orthodox monks of Egypt were driven into exile, Melania went with them, sharing their hardship rather than remaining in safety, and she eventually settled in Jerusalem, where she built a convent on the Mount of Olives and gave the rest of her life to that community. She reposed there around the year 410. Her example reached beyond her own lifetime: her granddaughter, who came to be known as Melania the Younger, took up the same path of renunciation largely because of what she had seen and heard of her grandmother's life.
