The life of St Pelagia the Penitent
One day, riding richly adorned past a gathering of bishops, she drew every eye but one; Bishop Nonnus alone turned away in tears, remarking to those around him how much labor she gave to pleasing the eyes of men while they gave so little to preparing their own souls for God. Struck by a sermon of his she heard some days later on judgment and the fate of the unrepentant, Pelagia came to the church in tears and asked to be received and baptized. She gave away the wealth her former life had gained her to the poor and left the city in secret, traveling to Jerusalem, where she took up residence in a small cell on the Mount of Olives disguised as a man, under the name Pelagius. There she lived out her remaining years in a solitude so complete and a fast so severe that she came to be called, among those who knew only the little that showed on the surface, the beardless monk. Tradition credits a deacon named James with visiting her cell, finding her alive on one visit and finding her dead on a later one, and it is through his account that her story, and her true identity as a woman, discovered only once her body was prepared for burial, came down to the wider Church. This same day is shared, distinctly, with an earlier virgin martyr of Antioch who also bore the name Pelagia, a different woman from an earlier century, not to be confused with this repentant one.
