Lives of the Saints: three virgins

From Rev. Alban Butler’s The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints; edited by Dan Leo, Assistant Professor of Theology, Olney Community College; author of Famous Heretics: A Biographical Dictionary; Olney Community College Press. 

Illustrated by rhoda penmarq; a penmarq studios™ presentation. 

Imprimatur: Fulton J. Sheen, Titular Archbishop of Neoportus.

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Saint Pega, Virgin, of England SHE was sister to St. Guthlack, the famous hermit of Croyland, and though of the royal blood of the Mercian kings, forsook the world, and led an austere retired life in the country which afterwards bore her name, in Northamptonshire, at a distance from her holy brother. Some time after his death she went to Rome, and there slept in the Lord, about the year 719. Ordericus Vitalis says, her relics were honoured with miracles, and kept in a church which bore her name at Rome; but this church is not now known. From one in Northamptonshire, a village still retains the name of Peagkirk, vulgarly Pequirk; she was also titular saint of a church and monastery in Pegeland, which St. Edward the Confessor united to Croyland. She is called St. Pee in Northamptonshire, and St. Pege at Croyland. **** St. Gudula, Virgin, Patroness of Brussels ST. AMALBERGE, mother of this saint, was niece to Pepin mayor of the palace. Gudula was educated at Nivelle, under the care of St. Gertrude, her cousin and god-mother; after whose death, in 664, she returned to the house of count Witger, her father, and having by vow consecrated her virginity to God, led there a most austere holy life, in watching, fasting, and prayer.  By her profuse alms, in which she bestowed her whole revenue on the poor, she was truly the mother of all the distressed; though her father’s castle was two miles from the church of our Saviour at Morzelle, she went thither early every morning, with a maid to carry a lantern before her; and the wax taper being once put out, is said to have miraculously lighted again at her prayers, whence she is usually represented in pictures with a lantern.  She died on the 8th of January, not in 670, as Miræus says, but in 712, and was buried at Ham, near Villevord. **** St. Marciana, Virgin and Martyr   SHE was a native of Rusuccur in Mauritania, and courageously despising all worldly advantages, to secure to herself the possession of the precious jewel of heavenly grace, she was called to the trial in the persecution of Dioclesian, which was continued in Africa under his successors, till the death of Severus, who was declared Cæsar in 305, and slain in 309. St. Marciana was beaten with clubs, and her chastity exposed to the rude attempts of Pagan gladiators, in which danger God miraculously preserved her, and she became the happy instrument of the conversion of one of them to the faith: at length she was torn in pieces by a wild bull and a leopard, in the amphitheatre at Cæsarea in Mauritania. next: Four More Forgotten Saints