The life of St Melania the Younger of Rome
That double loss brought back the desire she had set aside, and she persuaded her husband to join her in giving up their old life together, the two of them living afterward as companions in a shared pursuit of holiness rather than as an ordinary married couple.
Driven from Rome by invasion in 408, they settled for a time in Sicily among former household servants turned companions in ascetic life, then in North Africa, where Melania grew close to Augustine of Hippo. She sold her vast estates and used the wealth to ransom captives, build monasteries, and support the poor, splitting her efforts between a community of men that Pinianus oversaw and one of women under her own care. In 417 the family traveled to Jerusalem, where she met Jerome, and she and Pinian eventually settled on the Mount of Olives. There she founded a monastery and spent her last fourteen years as a solitary, reposing on the last day of December, 439.
