ST. MAXENTIA V. M.

THIS saint was a Scottish, or rather Irish lady, and is said to have been of royal extraction. To preserve her virginity, which she had consecrated to God by vow, she retired into France, where she lived a recluse near the river Oise, two leagues from Senlis. She was pursued, discovered, and murdered by a child of Belial who had not been able to shake her virtuous resolution. One of the continuators of Fredegarius mentions in the seventh century her veneration1 at the passage of the Oise, which town is, from her precious relics which are honored there, called Pont-Sainte-Maxence. Her festival was kept in Ireland and England on the 24th of October: in some places in England on the 16th of April, to which Wilson transfers it in the second edition of his English Martyrology: in Scotland, and in the diocese of Beauvais, it is celebrated on the 20th of November, as appears from the Breviaries of Aberdeen and Beauvais. See Henschenius, t. 2, Apr., p. 402.