Born in Antioch to pagan parents, she was endowed by God with great physical beauty. She amassed wealth through a life of profligacy. On one occasion, she happened to enter the Church of Saint Julian and heard a sermon by Bishop Nonnus concerning the Last Judgment; she was so deeply shaken that she came to loathe herself. Overcome by a profound sense of her own sinfulness and the fear of God, she begged Saint Nonnus to baptize her. Her godmother was the blessed Romana, a deaconess of that church, who strengthened her in the Christian faith. Before long, she distributed her vast wealth among the poor and departed for Jerusalem, where—living as a monk named Pelagius—she shut herself away in a cell on the Mount of Olives. After three years of rigorous ascetic struggle, she was visited by James, a deacon of Saint Nonnus. Three days later, she fell asleep in the Lord, surrendering her soul to Him around the year 461.

Saint Thais the Penitent.