Venerable Pelagia (+c. 457)

The Venerable Pelagia was converted to Christianity by Nonnus, bishop of Edessa (commemorated on the Saturday of Cheesefare). Before her baptism she led the dancers of Antioch in Palestine; she was very rich and lived a dissolute life.

Once Pelagia, richly dressed, passed with a troop of young men and girls in front of a church at whose doors the hierarch Nonnus was sitting, teaching the people. The faithful turned their eyes away from the woman known throughout the city as a harlot, but Nonnus gazed after her for a long time. The saint pointed out to those gathered how diligently this woman cared for her appearance and the adornment of her body, and added sorrowfully that we Christians strive less to wash our souls with tears of repentance and adorn them with virtues.

Nonnus recognised the loftiness of Pelagia’s soul, and afterwards prayed for a long time in his cell for her deliverance from perdition.

The next day, when the hierarch was preaching from the ambo about the dread Judgement and the eternal reward of the souls of sinners and of the righteous, Pelagia came into the church. Nonnus’s words filled the blessed one with the fear of God; contrite and in tears she came to him and asked for baptism. The bishop, convinced of the penitent’s sincerity, baptised Pelagia, and also spoke with her of the temptations and struggles that await every person who sets out towards holiness.

By night a demon stood before Pelagia and tried to persuade her to return to her former life, but the saint prayed, made the sign of the cross, and the devil vanished. The blessed mother gathered all her property and brought it to the hierarch, and he advised her to distribute the treasure to the poor: “Let what was ill gotten be wisely spent.” After this Pelagia went away to Jerusalem and settled on the Mount of Olives. There the saint laboured in seclusion under the name of the monk Pelagius, and reposed in peace around the year 457.