St. Pelagia the Penitent

Pelagia of Antioch was a celebrated actress and dancer in fifth-century Antioch — by the synaxarion's account a woman of extraordinary beauty, immense wealth, and the moral reputation that came with both. The synaxarion preserves the meeting with the bishop Nonnus that began her conversion: she rode through the streets of Antioch on a richly adorned mule, surrounded by her entourage, in front of a church where Nonnus and seven other bishops happened to be sitting. The eight bishops averted their eyes; Nonnus alone gazed at her with intense attention, and when his colleagues remonstrated, he said, "I marveled at her beauty — and even more, that she has labored for it as we have not labored for our own souls."

The synaxarion records that Pelagia, hearing of his sermon some days later, came to him in tears, confessed her life, received baptism, and gave away her vast wealth to the poor of the city. She then dressed herself in men's clothing, took her father's name "Pelagius," and traveled to Jerusalem, where she lived for the remainder of her life as a hermit on the Mount of Olives. Her sex was discovered only after her repose, when the disciples preparing her body for burial recognized that the man Pelagius was the famous woman of Antioch.

She had lived in her cell some twenty years. Her feast is kept on October 8.