MARY OF EGYPT

MARY OF EGYPT, ascetic, St. (5th c.). The (later) penitential “Life” of Mary of Egypt is read on the fifth Thursday of Great Lent (q.v.), and the last Sunday of the same fast is dedicated to her. According to the earlier “Life” by Cyril of Scythopolis (the biographer of Sabas [q.v.]), she was a woman who left Jerusalem to spend eighteen years repenting in the Judaean wilderness. In the later “Life,” probably composed by Sophronius of Jerusalem in the 7th c., she became an Alexandrian courtesan who traveled the world in search of new pleasures and then repented while going to Jerusalem. She spent the remaining thirty years of her life in extreme asceticism (q.v.) alone in the desert. Discovered by the priestmonk Zosima (q.v.), she confided her life’s story and received the viaticum. This second story in particular caught the imagination of the faithful, and Mary has ever since been held up by the Church as a powerful image of repentance (q.v.).