Mary of Egypt

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The Temple of Portunus in Rome was preserved by being rededicated to Santa Maria Egiziaca in 872.

Mary of Egypt (ca. 344 – ca. 421) is revered as the patron saint of penitent women most particularly in the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches, but also in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. She was born in Egypt, and at the age of twelve ran away to Alexandria where she lived an extremely dissolute life from approximately 356 to 373. Some authorities refer to her as a prostitute during this period, but in her vita she states that she often refused the money offered for her sexual favors. She was, she said, driven "by an insatiable desire and an irrepressible passion" and that she mainly lived by begging, supplemented by spinning flax.

At the end of that time she travelled to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. She undertook the journey as a sort of "anti-pilgrimage," stating that she hoped to find in the pilgrim crowds at Jerusalem even more partners in her lust. She paid for her passage by offering sexual favors to other pilgrims, and she continued her habitual lifestyle for a short time in Jerusalem. Her vita relates that when she tried to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre for the celebration, she was barred from doing so by an unseen force. On seeing an image of the Virgin Mary in the narthex and hearing a voice, she was seized with repentance and retired to the Syrian desert to live the rest of her life as a hermit.

Her life was related by her to St. Zosimas of Palestine when he encountered her in the desert approximately one year before her death. On Holy Thursday of the following year she met him on the banks of the Jordan River near his monastery, crossing the river by walking on surface of the water to reach him, and he gave her Holy Communion. The next year Zosimas travelled to the same spot where he first met her some twenty day's journey away, and found her lying there dead. According to an inscription written in the sand next to her head, she had died on the very night he had given her Communion and had been somehow miraculously transported to the place he found her. He buried her body with the assistance of a passing lion. On returning to the monastery he related her life story to the brethren, and it was preserved among them as oral tradition until it was written down by St. Sophronios of Jerusalem.

In iconography she is depicted as a deeply tanned, emaciated old woman with unkempt gray hair, either naked or covered by the mantle she borrowed from Zosimas. She is often shown with the three loaves of bread she bought before undertaking her journey into the desert. Her feast day is April 1. The Orthodox Church also commemorates her on the fifth Sunday of Great Lent.

[edit] In popular culture

Mary of Egypt is the subject of an opera by John Tavener.

Robert Graves speculates in "The White Goddess" that Mary of Egypt can be identified with "Mary Gipsy", a virgin with a blue robe and a pearl necklace. Otherwise know as Marina, Marian or "Maria Stellis". She is supposedly a remote descendant of Aphrodite, the love goddess from the sea.

In Ben Jonson's play "Volpone" one of the characters uses the expression "Marry Gip". Commentators have taken this to mean "Mary of Egypt".

There is also an attempt by folklore writers to link Mary of Egypt with the Morris dance. In 1280 Adam de la Halle wrote "Li Gieues de Robin et de Marion" (The Game of Robin and Marion). In the writings of folklorists this merges with the story of Robin Hood and Marion, who become characters associated with May day games and Morris dancing. The popular Queen of the May custom then becomes a covert way of perpetuating a pagan goddess of love. This theory has recently been proposed by Margaret Allenby-Jaffe in "National Dance" (2006), though several Morris dance websites also mention it.