PELAGIA, SS.

The name of six saints listed in the Roman martyrology (1961 ed.); three are significant.

Pelagia of Antioch, d. 311? As a girl of 15, Pelagia of Antioch is said to have thrown herself from the rooftop to protect her virginity when soldiers came to arrest her during a persecution of diocletian. St. john chrysostom praised this martyr's action in a homily preached probably in the church erected over her tomb (Patrologia Graeca 50:579–584). Her name is included in the canon of the Milanese Mass.

Feast: June 9.

Pelagia of Jerusalem, also known as Pelagia the Penitent, d. c. 457. According to a probable eyewitness writing under the pseudonym James the Deacon, Pelagia lived a dissolute life as an actress and dancer. Converted by the preaching of St. Nonnus (d. c. 458), an Egyptian bishop living at Antioch, Pelagia, disguised as a man, lived a life of penance in the Garden of Olives. Although a cult to St. Pelagia already existed in 530, the Vita by James the Deacon is the contamination of a sermon of St. John Chrysostom on an anonymous Syrian penitent (Hom. 67 in Mt.; Patrologia Graeca 58:636–637), mixed with the life of Pelagia of Antioch and the theme of the virgin monk. Her story is similar to that of several other saints, including Margaret, Marina, Euphrosyne, and Theodora.

Feast: Oct. 8.

Pelagia of Tarsus, d. 302? This Pelagia is said to have become a Christian after breaking her engagement with the son of Diocletian. When her fiancé then committed suicide, Diocletian summoned her and found her so beautiful that he proposed marriage, then ordered her burned to death when she declined.

Feast: May 4.

H. Usener tried to demonstrate that these three saints are the Christian sublimation of a Venus theme since Pelagia connotes "from the sea." But his theory is untenable.

Bibliography: Acta sanctorum May 1:458–463, June 2:153–162, Oct.4:248–268. h. usener, ed., Legenden der heiligen Pelagia (Bonn 1879). h. delehaye, The Legends of the Saints, tr. d. attwater (New York 1962). a. benetti, S. Margherita dei Lessini e le pievi della Postumia (Verona 1976). p. petitmengin, Péla-gie la pénitente: métamorphoses d'une légende, 2 v. (Paris 1981–84). Die mittelniederdeutsche Margaretenlegende, ed. k. o. seidel and g. drexel (Berlin 1994).

[r. k. poetzel]