Apollinaria
(550 - 600) Rome
Saint - Feast day - 5 Jan.
Also called Apollinaris Syncletica, left her wealthy home in Rome to live the life of a hermit in the desert near Jerusalem. She then journeyed to the lavra of St. Macarius in Scete (Syrian Orient) and, so disfigured was she by her ascetic life, that she was thought to be a man, lived transvestite as a monk, and assumed the name of Dorotheus. Accused by her sister to have been made pregnant (!) she was discovered.
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