Saint Maxentia of Beauvais

Maxentia of Beauvais (French: Sainte Maxence) was a 5th-century Irish virgin and hermit who was beheaded when she refused to marry. Her feast day is 20 November. Maxentia of Beauvais was born in Ireland or Scotland, but fled to France to avoid being married to a pagan chieftain. She lived beside the Oise River near Senlis in the Diocese of Beauvais. The pagan chieftain tracked her down, and killed her at Pont-Sainte-Maxence when she refused to marry him. The Monks of Ramsgate wrote in their Book of Saints (1921), The hagiographer Alban Butler ( 1710–1773) wrote in his Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Other Principal Saints, under November 20, Carl Horstmann reproduced a life of the saint from MS. Stowe 949, written about 1615.