Acta Sanctorum

Talida

5 January · commentary
Latin source: Heiligenlexikon
St. Talida (also called Amata), abbess at Antinoe in the Thebaid during the fifth century, who spent eighty years in her monastery and presided over sixty nuns. The account from the Paradise of Heraclides praises the immense love she inspired in her community, such that no lock was needed on the monastery door. 5th century

ON ST. TALIDA, OR AMATA, ABBESS AT ANTINOE IN THE THEBAID.

In the Fifth Century.

Commentary

Talida, or Amata, Virgin, at Antinoe in the Thebaid (St.)

[1] The name of Amma Talida, or Amata, the Virgin, has been inscribed in the Martyrology of Usuard by the Carthusians of Cologne, and in the German Martyrology, the manuscript Florarium, and the Catalogue of Ferrarius. The following is reported about her in chapter 48 of the Paradise of Heraclides, in the Appendix to the Lives of the Fathers: "In the city of Antinoe there are twelve monasteries of virgins living in perfect manner of life, in which I saw a certain woman named Amata, She lived 80 years in a monastery. She presides over 60 religious. a handmaid of Christ, an elderly woman who had already spent eighty years in her monastery, as her neighbors and she herself reported. Sixty women lived with her and, living in the purity of abstinence through her teaching, they all loved her so much that it was not even necessary to fasten a lock on the vestibule of the monastery, as was done in other monasteries. For the immense love and teaching of the old woman alone kept them all there, preserving their bodies and minds for the glory of incorruption."

[2] A confidence in chastity that is to be admired but not rashly imitated. "This same old woman of whom I speak was so pure in mind and body from the thought and passion of sin that when I had entered her dwelling and sat down, she sat beside me without distinction, and even placed her hands upon my shoulders -- so astonishing was the immense confidence of chastity that was there in Christ."

[3] Palladius also treats of the same woman in the Lausiac History, or book 8 of the Lives of the Fathers, chapter 8, and calls her Amma Talida. "Amma" is an appellative and signifies a spiritual mother; "Talida" is her proper name. Vincentius also mentions her in the Speculum, book 17, chapter 92, and calls her the holy Virgin Amata, as does our Raderus in his unpublished Index of Saints. Guilielmus Gazaeus, in the Calendar of Female Saints which he appended to his Cimelium, records her on the 11th of March and says she led an austere life and died without any sensation of pain, and that she had composed herself as she ought to be buried. Where he obtained this information, I do not know.