Unlike Their Mothers: The Struggle Against Time of the Two Melanias

There are many books about the construction and perception of time in Mediterranean societies of past centuries. Recently, two have been published, both dedicated to the Christian invention of time. Principal aim of these publications is to describe and understand how notions and practices of time changed in late antiquity, basically due to Christianity. To all this, however, we could add an even more general consideration that goes beyond the monastic sphere alone, concerning the wider and more varied world of asceticism. The “ascetic turn” gave new life to the eschatological temporality that seemed to be in decline. But ascetic temporality, although different and opposed to that “of the world,” was not uniform. There was, for example, the predominant male ascetic time and the less documented female ascetic time. Both faced challenges in establishing themselves, as there was always something or someone hindering the acceleration they sought to impose. However, in the case of women, the “braking action” that was opposed seemed decidedly stronger. There is a rich bibliography on the relationship between eschatology and Christian asceticism, but the gender divide that characterized it still seems to be little explored. In this respect, the stories of Melania the Elder and Melania the Younger are significant. All the issues briefly outlined here are embodied and embedded in the language and narratives that form the imaginary of these two famous “holy women.” We will never know whether the two protagonists were aware of the time shift that their behavior caused, but it seems difficult to believe that the authors who mention the two Melanias in some of their writings were unaware of that. While not explicitly talking about “ascetic time,” the biographers/hagiographers of the two women choose—or were compelled—to emphasize how much the decision of the two Melanias to abandon the lifestyle of the world is made on the basis of a “time factor.”