St Pelagia ~ A Bi-Ritual Saint

The Penitent St Pelagia is honoured in both East and West today. Here is her story from both Traditions.

From the East:

Saint Pelagia the Penitent was converted to Christianity by Saint Nonnus, Bishop of Edessa (Saturday of Cheesefare Week). Before her acceptance of Christianity through Baptism, Pelagia was head of a dance troupe in Palestinian Antioch, living a life of frivolity and prostitution.

One day Pelagia, elegantly dressed, was making her way past a church where Saint Nonnus was preaching a sermon. Believers turned their faces away from the sinner, but the bishop glanced after her. Struck by the outer beauty of Pelagia and having foreseen the spiritual greatness within her, the saint prayed in his cell for a long time to the Lord for the sinner. He told his fellow bishops that the prostitute put them all to shame. He explained that she took great care to adorn her body in order to appear beautiful in the eyes of men. “We... take no thought for the adornment of our wretched souls,” he said.

On the following day, when Saint Nonnus was teaching in the church about the dread Last Judgment and its consequences, Pelagia came. The teaching made a tremendous impression upon her. With the fear of God and weeping tears of repentance, she asked the saint for Baptism. Seeing her sincere and full repentance, Bishop Nonnus baptized her.

By night the devil appeared to Pelagia, urging her to return to her former life. The saint prayed, signed herself with the Sign of the Cross, and the devil vanished.

Three days after her baptism, Saint Pelagia gathered up her valuables and took them to Bishop Nonnus. The bishop ordered that they be distributed among the poor saying, “Let this be wisely dispersed, so that these riches gained by sin may become a wealth of righteousness.” After this Saint Pelagia journeyed to Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives. She lived there in a cell, disguised as the monk Pelagius, living in ascetic seclusion, and attaining great spiritual gifts. When she died, she was buried in her cell.

Troparion — Tone 4

Like a fragrant rose growing from thorns, / you were revealed to the Church through your virtuous deeds / becoming a source of joy for the faithful. / You offered your life in sweet-smelling fragrance / To him who made you wonderful. / Entreat Him to deliver us from every soul-destroying passion, / O righteous Pelagia!

Troparion — Tone 8

The image of God was truly preserved in you, O Mother, / for you took up the Cross and followed Christ. / By so doing you taught us to disregard the flesh for it passes away / but to care instead for the soul, since it is immortal. / Therefore your spirit, venerable Pelagia, rejoices with the angels.

Kontakion — Tone 2

You wore out your body through fasting, vigils, and prayer / beseeching the Creator to completely forgive your deeds. / You achieved this, holy Mother Pelagia, / thereby showing us the way to repentance.

From the West:

From Fr Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints:

THIS saint had been a comedian at Antioch, even while she was a catechumen; but afterwards renounced that profession, and became a true penitent. The manner of her conversion is thus related in the Greek Mena, published by the emperor Basil. The patriarch of Antioch having assembled a council of bishops in that city, St. Nonnus,* one of the number, was commissioned to announce the word of God to the people. Accordingly he preached before the church of St. Julian martyr, in the presence of the other bishops. During the sermon, Pelagia passed that way richly adorned with jewels; and her beauty, heightened with all the elegance of dress, drew on her the attention of the whole assembly, except the bishops, who turned away their eyes from so scandalous an object. But Nonnus, looking earnestly at Pelagia, cries out in the middle of his discourse, “The Almighty in his infinite goodness will show mercy even to this woman, the work of his hands.” At these words she stopped suddenly, and, joining the audience, was so touched with remorse for her criminal life, that she shed abundance of tears; and immediately after the sermon she addressed herself to Nonnus, imploring him to instruct her how to expiate her sins, and to prepare her for the grace of baptism. The holy penitent distributed all her goods among the poor, changed her name from Margaret to Pelagia, and resolved to spend the remainder of her life in the exercise of prayer, and the austerities of penance. After her baptism, which she received at the hands of Nonnus, she retired to Jerusalem, and having taken the religious veil,† shut herself up in a grotto on Mount Olivet, in the fifth age. Phocas, a monk of Crete, in the relation of his voyage from Palestine in 1185,1 describes Mount Olivet, and the grotto where the saint completed the martyrdom of her penance, and where her relics were preserved in an urn. St. Pelagia is mentioned on this day in the Roman Martyrology, and in the Greek and Muscovite Calendars; but in an ancient inscription on marble in Naples, on the 5th of October.‡ See her life written by James, deacon of Heliopolis in Syria, an eye-witness of her conversion and penance, ap. Rosweide, Vit. Patr. p. 374. The same is found in an ancient MS. in folio, on vellum well preserved, which formerly belonged to the abbey of St. Edmundsbury in England, and is at present in the author’s possession. This MS. contains a fine collection in Latin of the lives of the Fathers of the desert, which Rosweide published from MSS. found in different libraries of the Low-Countries. It were to be wished that the learned Jesuit had either suppressed, or distinguished by some mark, two or three spurious pieces, which are evidently the work of modern Greeks. See also Theophanes in his Chronology, under the year 432; Nicephorus Callixtus, &c.