Unknown Pilgrims

Author(s): N Shanta
Publisher: Sri Satguru Publications Delhi

Page 71

General Introduction
carefully saved the gold she received to be used for the needs of the church and of the community she was planning for the future. She then sojourned awhile with the ascetics of Egypt and arrived in Jerusalem about the year 374. Three years later she organised the building of a monastery on the Mount of Olives and there she gathered some fifty virgins. In this monastery, along with her companions, she spent long years in prayer and penance, offering generous hospitality to pilgrim-visitors. Close to the women's monastery there was a men's monastery under the leadership of Rufinus who had accompanied Melanie from Rome.34
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Ten years after the arrival of Melanie in Jerusalem another Roman widow Paula and her daughter Eustochium settled in Bethlehem. These two founded a monastery whose members were divided into three categories according to their social rank. The best instructed studied Greek and even Hebrew in order to be able to sing the psalms in the original language.35 Paula and her daughter acted also as secretaries to St Jerome, who kept up a regular correspondence with Rome and other parts of the world.36
Melanie the Younger, grandchild of Melanie the Elder desired from her earliest years to consecrate her life to God, but her parents, who were extremely wealthy, gave her in marriage at the age of fourteen to one of her cousins, Pinian. After the death of both their children, the couple decided, on the initiative of Melanie, to live in a state of continual chastity and to renounce their possessions. After a long stay in Africa and a visit to the monks of Egypt, they reached Jerusalem in 417 and took up residence on the Mount of Olives. Melanie lived first as a hermit, then proceeded to found a monastery whose members were for the most part former slaves or penitent sinners. She continued to practise rigorous fasts and penances in her
34 Cf. Bagatti, 1971, p. 79; Palladius: The Lausiac History, trans. Meyer, 1965, pp. 123-125; 134.
35 Cf. Bagatti, pp. 79-82; Palladius, p. 118
36 36. Cf.Selected Letters of St Jerome, App. I (trans. Wright, 1954.)