That is what the synaxárion calls her. During her life of sin, however, she was called by her adoring followers, Margarita, “the pearled one,” and she was the most sought after actress in Antioch, the city where the followers of Jesus were first called Christians, “little Christs.”From the Greek Archdiocese website,
This Saint was a prominent actress of the city of Antioch, and a pagan, who lived a life of unrestrained prodigality and led many to perdition. Instructed and baptized by a certain bishop named Nonnus, she departed for the Mount of Olives near Jerusalem, where she lived as a recluse, feigning to be a eunuch called Pelagius. She lived in such holiness and repentance that within three or four years she was deemed worthy to repose in an odour of sanctity, in the middle of the fifth century. Her tomb on the Mount of Olives has been a place of pilgrimage ever since.
Apolytikion in the Plagal of the Fourth Tone
In thee the image was preserved with exactness, O Mother; for taking up thy cross, thou didst follow Christ, and by thy deeds thou didst teach us to overlook the flesh, for it passeth away, but to attend to the soul since it is immortal. Wherefore, O righteous Pelagia, thy spirit rejoiceth with the Angels.
Kontakion in the Second Tone
With fasting didst thou consume thy body utterly; with vigilant prayer didst thou entreat thy Fashioner that complete forgiveness of thy former deeds be granted thee, which, O Mother, thou didst receive. The path of repentance hast thou shown to us.
I found the account of her life for the first time when I was a lad of about 22 years, written in the book The Desert Fathers by Helen Waddell. The chapter on her was entitled, The Life of St. Pelagia the Harlot, and it was paired with the story of another ‘desert mother,’ The Life of St. Mary the Harlot. The latter was not the same as the Mary of Egypt that we are all familiar with from her commemoration on the last Sunday of Lent, but rather a consecrated virgin who was under the care of her old uncle who was a monk. She was tempted by a young, fallen monk, who raped her, after which she ran away from her uncle's hermitage in shame and became a prostitute. The uncle, Abba Abraham, tried to find her, and he succeeded. He went to the brothel dressed as a Roman soldier and asked for her by name. Thus disguised, he got into her room, and revealing himself as her uncle and spiritual father, he reasoned with her, bringing her to her right mind. Trusting in the grace of Christ to forgive all our sins, Mary returned with her uncle, and resumed a life of holiness.
Both of these harlot stories are great reading, and demonstrate the reality of Christ in everyday life, He who is among us, looking for His lost sheep. Abba Abraham went with Him, and found and rescued his neice Mary.
Today the Church commemorates another Pelagía the Virgin-martyr, as well as another
converted harlot, Thaïs of Egypt, thus throwing down all our imaginary barriers between virginity and harlotry with ironic strangeness.The story of Pelagía the Harlot can be downloaded as a Símandron publication PDF by clicking HERE. See also the song, Pelagía.
Some girls and young women who are raped seem to react by becoming promiscuous or sexually abstinent. They go to one extreme or the other (abstinence also ruling out marriage). St. Pelagia seems to have gone in both directions. These are traumatized individuals. They are trying to cope, although in self-destructive or dysfunctional ways. I am not negating the quality of sin in prostitution--on the part of the prostitute and on the part of the men who visit her. But, I think the church could do a service to young women if it upheld saints like Pelagia as individuals who overcame and were saved from the impact of sexual attack, rather than emphasizing harlotry versus virginity. How many women attending church on Sundays, how many girls in the streets, might find hope if they understood the trauma aspect of Pelagia's life?
ReplyDeleteMelanie, I think possibly you are talking about the girl known to us as St Mary the Harlot, not about St Pelagia, but your points are well taken. Although St Pelagia may have also been seduced as a young girl, it is St Mary whose experience led her to the life of a common prostitute until her uncle and spiritual father St Abraham rescued her.
ReplyDeleteSt Pelagia, on the other hand, was a famous and beautiful actress and a courtesan as well (that being different from a common prostitute, more like what today's super stars are often like, sexual promiscuous, but willingly).
Somewhere between St Mary the Harlot and St Pelagia of Antioch we find St Mary of Egypt, who was a common prostitute but probably was never devout until her conversion. All three women escaped lifestyles of sexual dysfunction (as we would call it nowadays) and gave up sexuality altogether, probably the only option in those days.
The Church continues to uphold sexual virginity as an exalted virtue, but of course the opposite of virginity is not harlotry, but marriage, for both men and women. I think that even the Church understands virginity, though, to be something more than sexual abstinence. But because the Church has not stepped up to the plate and addressed these issues directly—I am not sure why—we have a society today in which the issues of sexuality and sex in general have not advanced any since the Dark Ages. As a result, we have the gender issues we are burdened with today.
Thanks for your comments.