Prostitutes Saints

Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend
Author(s): Ruth Mazo Karras

Source: Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Jul., 1990), pp. 3-32
Published by: University of Texas Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3704459
Accessed: 26-11-2019 13:31 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
University of Texas Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to Journal of the History of Sexuality
This content downloaded from 200.3.152.56 on Tue, 26 Nov 2019 13:31:15 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend
RUTH MAZO KARRAS

Department of History
Uxiversity of Pennsytvania
THE S I N N E R who became a saint always had a certain attraction for

medieval Christians. A sanctified prostitute presented a paradox, for Chris-
tianity rejected any positive aspects of sexual pleasure even within marriage
and considered sex outside marriage even more abominable. Nevertheless,
Christianitywas areligionofconversion, repentance, andforgiveness:
Christ "came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance" (Mark
2:17). Saints who had been sinners embodied the message that corlfession,
contrition, and penance could wipe away the worst of sins, and saints who
had been prostitutes embodied it most dramatically. 1
The late medieval church added few penitent saints to its calendar. By
the thirteenth century, the papacy controlled the canonization process
tightly and stressed a life of heroic virtue as one of the requirements for
sanctity. Although there were still saints who came to holiness late in life,
even a few who had led lives of sexual sin,2 most contemporary saints in the
central and late Middle Ages were either in religious orders or lay people of
Portions of this article were presented to the Medieval Faculty Seminar of the University
of Pennsylvania, the Twent ,v-fourth International Conference on Medieval Studies at Western
Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 1989, and the conference on "The Cult of the Saints
in the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance: Formation andiransformation," Center for Medi-
eval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, October
1989. I thank the participants at these presentations, John Boswell, Elaine Beretz, and
Christopher Karras, for valuable suggestions.
lSee James A. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval E?wrope (Chicago,
1987), on official church attitudes toward sexual behavior. On the general theme of penitent
saints, see Erhard Dorn) Der sundiBe Heili,ge in der Legende des Mittelalters, Medium Aevum
Philologische Studien, 10 (Munich, 1967).
2Margaret of Cortona, for example, was a nobleman's mistress.
[JournaloftheHistoryofSexualityl990,vol. l,no. 1]
t 1990 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved 1043-4070/90/0101-0002$01.00
4 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
virtuous life. The Golden Le,gend of Jacobus de Voragine, the most popular
hagiographical compendium both before and after the advent of printing,
emphasized virtue through the entire lives of contemporary saints.3 This
did not wipe penitent saints off the hagiographical map, but it meant that
the prostitutes and others who were venerated were those whose lives were
set in the distant past.
The prime example ofthe prostitute saint was Mary Magdalen, probably
the most popular saint (after the Virgin Mary) in all of medieval Europe.
Five other prostitute saints also appeared prominently in medieval
hagiographical literature. Four of the stories-Mary of Egypt, Thais, Pe-
lagia, and Mary the niece of Abraham came from the literary tradition of
the Vitge Patrum, tales of the desert fathers of late antiquity, and were re-
told throughout Europe. Afra of Augsburg was known mainly in Germany.
Mary Magdalen's story provides the key to reading all the legends and thus
to an understanding of medieval prostitution, and it will be discussed fol-
lowing the others.
HAG I O G RAP HY, CULTURAL H I STO RY, AN D P RO STITUTI O N
Hagiography provides a rich source for medieval culture. Although the ex-
tant saints' lives are products of an elite milieu, they did reach a wide
spectrum of society: not just those who could read them, but also those
who heard sermons by preachers who had read them, and those who
viewed dramatic performances of them. Any medieval text can construct
medieval society for a modern audience, but hagiographical texts, because
of their great currency, constructed it for many medieval people as well.
Examination of how hagiographical texts created social meaning cannot
ignore problems related to the genre. Saints' lives followed conventions,
borrowed from their models, and contained stereotypical elements. The
goals of the biographies to make a case for canonization or to cdify the
reader might be at cross-purposes with an accurate account of the sub-
ject's life. The texts cannot be taken as reflections of actual events in the
world. The chronological distance at which the prostitute saints were
placed also frustrates any attempt to use their stories as evidence for the
experience of the prostitute in the Middle Ages or even in late antiquity.
But the same features that vitiate the factual reliability of the narratives
make them particularly valuable for the history of the construction of sexu-
ality in medieval culture. The distance in time and space betwecn audience
and subject means that in analyzing the hagiographical discourse one can
3Donald Weinstein and Rudolph M. Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western
Christendom,1000-1700 (Chicago,1982);SherryL.Reames, The"LeBendaAurea":AReenc-
aminatton of Its Paradoxical History (Madison, WI, 1985 ), pp. 198-99.
Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medievatl Le,gend 5
ignoresome questions about the context: these saints were not connected
with powerfil families or contemporary institutions. The medieval au-
thors were free to develop their briefsources into more elaborate narratives
without direct political pressure.4 We may read the texts for the way they
constructed sexuality and, in particular, prostitution, kalowing that they
were situated in medieval gender and power relations in general but that
the authors had no anc to grind with regard to the individual subjects.
The narratives' most obvious and deliberate point dealt with conversion
and repentance. In most of the texts used here, the saint's life before her
conversion played a relatively small rolt; prostitution merely providcd the
background against which penitence stood in stark contrast. Yet thc rela-
tively briefaccounts ofthe life of prostitution linked the stories together, in
the medieval as well as the modern view, and provided the context in which
the audience understood the saints' later lives and works. It constitutcd a
greater share of the meaning than it did of the length of the texts.
An examination of hagiographical texts is particularly helpful to an un-
derstanding ofthe meaning of prostitution in medieval culture and society.
Legal texts, ordinances, and court records provide the material for social
historians' studies, but such an understanding cannot be gleancd from
these records alone.5 Even the denotation ofthe word itselfis problematic.
In literature and in common parlance meretrinc, like "whore" today, could
be a promiscuous woman, one who earned her living by sexual favors, or
simply one whose sexual morals the speaker wished to impugn. Canon law
officially defined the prostitute as a promiscuous woman, regardless of any
financial clement, but secular law clearly recognized a class of professional
prostitutes, and even church courts treated prostitutes differently from for-
nicators and took the fact of payment as evidence that a woman belonged to
the former group.6 But more than just the definition of a word or a set of
terms is at stake here. The biographies ofthe prostitute saints can illuminate
the meaning of the institution of prostitution for medieval socicty and
culture. Financial exchange was not as negligible a factor as canon Iaw
would make it, but indiscriminate sexuality was the key.
4The cult of Mary Magdalen was promoted by the monks of Vezelay ezho preserved her
relics and by ecclesiastical authorities in Provence where she supposedly ministered, but the
hagiographical texts connected with these institutions did not deal with her life of prostitu-
tion. Only the portion of her life after the death and resurrection of Christ was put to political
use.
5For recent work on medieval prostitution see, for example, Leah Lydia Otis, Prostitution
in Medieval Society: TheHistory of an Urban Institution in Languedoc (Chicago, 1985); Jacques
Rossiaud, Medieval Prostitution, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Oxford, 1988); Ruth Mazo Karras,
"The Regulation of Brothels in Later Medieval England," Si,gns 14 ( 1989): 399-433.
6London Commissary Court Act Books, 1470-73, 9064/1, fol. 80r, Department of
Manuscripts, Guil&all Library, London.
6 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
THE PROSTITUTE SAINTS OF LATE ANTIQUITY
The four desert saints and Saint Afra, whose lives were set in the first f
centuries ofthe Christian era, embodied the notion ofthe female in gener
as lustful and promiscuous. The prostitute could represent Everywoman
more easily than, for example, the murderer could represent Everyman.
The prostitute represented Everyman as well, for the primarily monastic
authors who developed the theme of woman as temptress recognized that
men too, both monastic and secular, sinned through lust. But the mecha-
nism for their downfall was a woman; the blame fell on her The penitent
prostitutes' stories also reflected a concern with money and exchange in the
market. Medieval thinkers, literary as well as philosophical or juridical,
were profoundly troubled by the profit motive and the question of how to
behave morally in a money economy.7 As thinking in monetary terms be-
came more common, people became acutely aware of an element of
financial exchange implicit in many types of sexual acts and explicit in pros-
titution. Medieval society ascribed greed as well as lust to the prostitute.8
These two contradictory motivations for sin the financial and the li-
bidinous- appeared in many ofthe medieval versions ofthese saints' lives,
though the case of Mary Magdalen indicates that it was female sexual in-
satiability that gave rise to the other passions.
Mary of Egypt's story revealed most clearly the way the High Middle
Ages conceived of prostitution and female sexuality. All theversions in the
medieval West drew more or less directly on a Greek text attributed to the
seventh-century author Sophronius.9 In most versions Mary's own story
appeared within a frame, the story of the monk Zosimus. While seeking
7For the impact of money on society and culture, see John W. Baldwin, Masters) Princes and
Merchants: TheSocial ViewsofEetertheChanterandHisCircle, 2 vols. (PrincetonNJ, 1970);
Lester K. Little, Reli,gioxsPovertyand theProfitEconomyinMedievalEurope (Ithaca, NY, 1978);
Jacques LeGoff, Iour Money ar Iour Life: Economy and Religion in the Middle Ages, trans. Pa-
tricia Ranum (New York, 1988); John A. Yunck, TheLineaf e of LadyMeed: TheDevelopmentof
Mediaeval T4enality Satire (South Bend, IN, 1963); R. A. Shoaf, Dante, Chaucer and the Cur-
rencyofthe Word:Money,ImagesandReferenceinLateMedievalPoetry (Norman, OK, 1983); R.
Howard Bloch, The Scandal of theFabliatc (Chicago, 1986); Joe} B. Kaye, "The Impact of
Money on the Development of Fourteenth-Century Scientific Thought," Journal of Medieval
History 14 (1988): 251-70.
8Marie-Therese Lorcin, Fafons de senti7t et de penser: Lesfabliassfranfais (Paris, 1979), pp.
61-66, concludes that in the fabliaux "la putain est une incarnation de Convoitise beaucoup
plus que de Luxure."
9On the popularity of Mary of Egypt in Germany, see Konrad Kunze, StudienzxrLeyende
derheili,gen MariaSe,ptiaca im deutschen Sprachyebiet, Philologische Studien und Quellen, 49
(Berlin, 1969), p. 13; in Spain, B. Bussell Thompson and John K. Walsh, eds., La vida desanta
MariaEgipfiaca) Exeter Hispanic Texts, 17 (Exeter, 1977), p. xiii. On the historicity and ori-
gins of the story, see Margareta Wietzorek, Die Legenden der Tha?s ?wnd derMariaSe,gyptiaca in
den romanischen Literaturen vorxe1Dmlich des Mittetalters (Lengerich, 1939), pp. 7-12; Anne
Marie Sargent, "The Penitent Prostitute: The Tradition and Evolution of the L«fe of St. Mary
theEgRptian" (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1977), pp. 1-8. The various Latin versions
Holy Harlots: Prostitgte Saints ix Medieval Legend 7
spiritual perfection in the desert, Zosimus saw a naked figure who tried to
flee from him. After he covered her with his cloak, she told her story. Born
in Egypt, she lived as a prostitute for many years in Alexandria, and then
paid her passage with her body on a ship to Jerusalem. There an invisible
force barred her from entering a church; only with the intercession of the
Virgin Mary could she enter. In the church a voice told her to cross the
Jordan and her sins would be forgiven. A charitable man gave her enough
money to buy three loaves of bread, which lasted for seventeen years in the
wilderness; for another thirty years she lived without eating or drinking.
After Mary told her story, Zosimus left. He returned the following year by
arrangement to give her communion, but on his return in the second year
following he found her dead and buried her with the help of a lion.
The moral message of the story varied depending on the context in
which it was told. Where Zosimus played the central role, the story lauded
the eremitic over the cenobitic life: she was a more perfect ascetic than he,
even though she was a woman and a former sinner. To the medieval reader
Mary the Egyptian had sunk to the depths of sin; as she confessed to
Zosimus in an agony of lamentation and self-reproach, she had committed
not only fornication but also adultery (intercourse with married men or
priests) and incest (intercourse with two men who were related to each
other).l° On her voyage to Jerusalem she seduced all the men on board,
even those who originally had no intention of sinning with her. 1 1 She par-
ticipated in all sins, particularly gluttony and other sins ofthe flesh, but it
was the sexual that identified her and allowed her to stand as such a shining
example of conversion. The message of asceticism and repentance remained
central to allversions ofthe tale, but the story sometimes appearedwithout
the Zosimus frame as a miracle of the Virgin, with a message of her inter-
cessory power, again all the more striking because of the severity of the
Egyptian's sin. One group of texts adapted Sophronius's story freely, omit-
ting Zosimus or making him a minor character, deemphasizing the Virgin,
and going into great detail in the description of Mary of Egypt and the
account of her early life.
and the relation of the vernaculars to them are discussed in Jerry Craddock, "Apuntes para el
estudio de la leyenda de Santa Maria Egipciaca en Espana," Hounenaje a Rodrt,guez-Monino
(Madrid, 1966), 1:99-110; and Sargent, pp. 9-12, 109-11. The Golden Leyend and other
Latin collections formed the basis for many vernacular versions: see diagram of textual rela-
tions in Kunze, Studien, pp. 166-67, and discussion of French versions in Peter F.
Dembowski, ed., La vie de sginte Marie tJEflyptienne: Versions en ancien et en moyen fais,
Publications romanes et francJaises, 144 (Geneva, 1977).
l°Rutebeuf, La Vie de sainte Matie IwEflyptienne, ed. Bernadine A. Bujila, University of
Michigan Contributions in Modern Philology, 12 (Ann Arbor, MI, 1949), p. 47, lines 63-64.
1 1Ibid., p. 50, lines 143-48; Dembowski, ed., text T, p. 39, lines 295-306; Honorius of
Autun, "Speculum Ecclesiae," in Patrolo,gia Lating Cursxs Completxs (hereafter Pl ), ed. J. -P.
Migne (Paris, 1854), 172:906.
X RUTH MAZO KARRAS
In the Latin translation of Sophronius, Mary told Zosimus that she

lived promiscuously for seventeen years but did not lose her virginity for
the sake of money. She never accepted money to sleep with anyone, because
she thought she would have more customers if she did not charge. She
lived by begging or spinning. Her desire to go to Jerusalem stemmed from
a wish not to see the holy places but to attract more lovers. 12 From the elev-
enth century on, this version found its way into English, Spanish, French,
Portuguese, and German, as well as into Latin meter. 13 Even versions that
told the story much more briefly, such as Adgar's Anglo-Norman collection
of miracles of the Virgin from the late twelfth or early thirteenth century,
picked up the detail of her not charging for sex: "She received everyone,
and not for goods, / But to fillfill her mad desire.''l4
The other textual tradition, beginning with a late twelfth-century
French text, clearly made Mary the Egyptian a prostitute working for mon-
ey. This text, which Peter Dembowski has labeled "T," existed in many
manuscripts and was translated into Italian and Spanish as well as abbrevi-
ated in French prose.
She took a dwelling with the prostitutes,

There she sold her body.
She was white as a flower,
Had the love of the young men,
All the young men came to the brothel
For her beauty.
She received them willingly,
Not just for their money,
But for her pleasure
She had them with her all night.l5
12Paulus Diaconus, trans., "Vita sanctz Mariz egyptiact meretricis," PL, 73:680 (En-
glish translation in Benedicta Ward, Harlots of the Desert, Cistercian Studies Series, 106
[Kalamazoo, MI, 1977], pp.35-56).
l3Aelfrzcvs Lives of the Saints) ed. Walter W. Skeat, Early English Text Society, Original
ries (hereafter EETS O.S.), 114 (London, 1890), 2:23-25 (this text is not actually by
Vlfric); Thompson and Walsh, eds.; Dembowski, ed., texts O, Z, U, Y; J. J. Nunes, "Textos
antigos portugueses VII," Revista Lusitana 20 (1917): 183-205; and J. Cornu, "Anciens
textes portugais: Vie de sainte Marie Egyptienne," Romania 11 (1882): 366-81; Konrad
Kunze, Die Legende der heiligen MariaAegyptiaca: Ein Beispiel hayiographzsclver Uberliefe7^ung in
16 unlveroffentlichten deutschen, niederlandischen und lateinischen Fassungen, Texte des spaten
Mittelalters und der fruhen Neuzeit, 28 (Berlin, 1978), pp. 12-49; Flodoard of Reims, 'iDe
triumphis Christi sanctorumque Palzstinz," PL, 135:544.
l 4Adgar, Marienlegenden, ed. Carl Neuhaus, Altfranzosische Bibliothek, 9 (Heilbronn,
1886), p. 194 (all translations are mine except as noted).
15Dembowski, ed., text T, p. 35, lines 111-24 (all translations are mine except as noted).
A number of prose versions based on T, in both French and Spanish, contain the same details:
Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Le,gend 9
The passage evoked not the vague notion of a lustfill life but a brothel such
as one might find in medieval towns. The Spanish text added the detail that
other prostitutes received her well and feted her when she arrived in
Alexandria. 16
The idea that Mary the Egyptian operated out of a brothel, the likes of
which might have been familiar to the audience, became more common in
the fifteenth century. An often-printed German version that originated
around 1400 depicted her as working in a "common house," and William
Caxton's late fifteenth-century translation of the Vitge Patrum also de-
scribed her joining a brothel: "and durynge the tyme of seuentcne yeres
and more she hadde contynuelly made resydence atte the open bordell of
the same towne wyth other comyn wymen there beynge. In Abandonnynge
and usynge her propre body to all that came And wyth noo other thynge
gate her lyuynge."17 In the earlier Middle Ages, writers who translated or
retold the story did not question their sources' statement about Mary's re-
fiasal to accept money for sex, but by the fifteenth century the increasing
awareness and institutionalization of prostitution made such a detail unre-
alistic. Verisimilitude outweighed the theological point, and the texts
constmcted the prostitute as a professional.
Those versions that followed the original treated Mary's sin as aggra-
vated by her refilsal to accept payment. Although canon lawyers did not
believe that financial need could ever excuse a woman's becoming a pros-
titute as it could a man's becoming a thief, financial need could at least make
the sin more understandable.l8 The texts made her accept the blamc for
those she led into sin: when she refused payment for sex, otlt of fear that a
charge would stand in the way of her gratification, she both enticed men
Roger Walker, ed., Estowia de santa Mana E,gif iaca (Ms. Escurialense h-I-13) 2d ed. r Exeter His-
panic Texts, 15 (Exeterr 1977); Dembowskir ed., texts X and V. Walker suggests (p. Ii) that in
Spain, at least, this group oftexts formed an important part ofthe expansion ofthe vernacular
cultr that they were meant for recitation to the illiterate and for this reason expanded upon the
moral lessons. The version of the trouvere Rutebeuf, who certainly hleW T but whose pocm
differed from it, implied but did not state explicitly that she accepted money: Rutcbeuf? p. 47,
lines 54-57. Rutebeuf 's text, however, gave a much briefer account of her previous I if e. See
Suzanne Nash, "Rutebeuf's Contribution to the Saint Mary the Egptian Legend," French
Rel7ieu744 (1971): 695-705, esp. 704-5.
16Vida desantaManor E,gipciaca, ed. Manuel Alvar, Clasicos Hispanicos, ser. 2, 19 (Madrid,
1972), 2:53, lines 151-54.
17Kunze, Die Le,gende, p. 110; Vitas Patrum, trans. William Caxton (London, 1495), fol.
68r. On Caxton's source, see Constance L. Rosenthal, "The Vitae Patrum in Old and Middle
English Literature" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylstania, 1936)1 p. 134. Similarly, a Mid-
dle Vutch prose version of the fifteenth century, although its source follows Sophronius
closely, also depicted her charging her customers: Kunze, Die LeBende, p. 98.
l8James A. Brundage, "Prostitution in the Medieval Canon Law," Si,gns 1 (1976): 835-
36.
10 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
and made the sin easier for them. 19 Yet later versions that
as a motive were not sympathetic-they did not mention the
cial necessiicy-but combined the profit motive with that of
ofthe importance of commerce did not imply an understand
money economy contributed to sexual exploitation.
Even without monetary exchange, Mary of Egyptts activities still
amounted to prostitution. Texts such as the GoldenLe,gend, which gave only
a very briefaccount ofthe Egyptian's life of sin! treated her as a prostitute:
"I was born in Egypt, andwhen I was in the age oftwelve years I went into
Alexandria, and there I gave my body openly-to sin by the space of seven-
teen years, and abandoned it to lechery and refused no man."20 Abandon-
ment of the female body to all underpinned the medieval understanding of
prostitution. Not merely promiscuity but indiscriminate promiscuity was
required. Many ofthe texts, both Latin and vernacular, referred to Mary of
Egypt as "common," "public," or available to all.2l This understanding of
the prostitutes as common to all, the property of all men in a sense because
they were the property of none, was reflected in regulations of brothels
across medieval Europe that forbade prostitutes to refuse any customer or
even to have particular lovers.22
Though other prostitute saints from the Vitge Pgtrum tradition never
attained the popularity of Mary of Egypt, retellings of their legends in Eu-
ropean vernacular traditions followed some of the same patterns. The life
of Thais was the most widely known. As the standard Latin version re-
counted: "There was once a prostitute by the name of Thais, of such beauty
19W. M. Metcalfe, ed., Legends of the Saints ia Scortish Dialect, Scottish Text Society, 13
(Edinburgh,1896))1:309;CarlHorstmann,ed., TheEarlySouthEnglishLe,gendaryorLivesof
Saints, EETS O.S., 87 (London, 1887), p. 261; HeilaBra Manna Sogur, ed. C. R. Unger
(Oslo, 1877), 1:487. This story assumed that the price was an obstacle to men having sex with
prostitutes. Modern authors, both feminist and nonfeminist, have noted that men often seek
out prostitutes precisely because they do charge, which makes the relationship with a pros-
titute different from that with another woman.
20Jacobus a Voragine, Le,gendaAurea (hereafter LA), ed. Th. Graesse (Dresden, 1846), p.
248; The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints as En,glished by William Caxton, ed. F. S. Ellis
(London, 1900; reprint, New York, 1973), 3:107. On the relation of Caxton's translation to
the original, see Sister Mary Jeremy, "Caxton's Golden Le,gend and Varagine's Le,gendaAurea,"
Speculum 21 (1946): 212-21; for this particular passage, Caxton's rendering is accurate.
2lIn addition to those already cited: Hildebert of Lavardinr "De Maria LEgyptiaca," PL,
171:1329;WilhelmFriedmanved.,AltitalientscheHeilisgen-Lesgenden,Gesellschaftfiirro-
manische Literatur, 14 (Dresden, 1908), p. 7; The Sovth EnBlish Legendary, ed. Charlotte
d'Evelyn and Anna J. Mill, EETS O.S., 235 (London, 1956), 1:136; J. Schatz, ;'Bruchstucke
einer bayrischen Predigthandschrift aus dem 12. Jahrhundert," Beitra,ge zur Geschichte der
deutschen Spro«che und Literat?r 52 ( 1928): 345 ; Der arme Hartmann, Rede Yom Gloxven, ed.
Priedrich von der Leyen, Germanistische Abhandlungen, 14 (Breslau, 1897), p. 203, line
2265; Georg Stephens, Ett forn-svenskt legendanum (Stockholm, 1847), 1:455.
22Karras (n. 5 above), pp. 405, 425-
Holy Harlots: Prostitxte Saints in Medieval Le,gend
ll
t lla dlos ynam taht

rauq eht fo esuaceb
iw dellif netfo saw
dna noitatuper reh
s dna revol a sa fles
f deksa eh rebmahc
Surprised at her response that no one could see them but God, he asked
why, if she believed in God, she was a prostitute. She broke down and re-
pented (after a sermon). She then burned all her goods before retiring to
the desert. The bulk ofthe story, as with Mary of Egypt) concerned her life
in the desert and her great asceticism.23
Most ofthe medieval versions ofthis story, including the Golden Legend)
followed the original translation from the Greek quite closely.24 They made
her a woman of refinement and beauty and kept her price high: the shilling
Paphnutius gave her in Caxton's translation of the Golden LeZgend was far
more than the typical price of a prostitute in the fifteenth century.25 The
value of the gold and other goods she burned amounted to hundreds of
pounds. Whether or not the texts stressed her high price or her riches,
though, they all made clear the financial motive in her life of sin: she was
not only a "comon strompyd" or "comoun of here body" but, more ex-
plicitly, "inaccessible to none, except one who brought nothing."26 Like
the stories of Mary of Egypt) the texts blamedThais for the sins of her cus-
23'(Vita sanctz Thaisis meretricis," PL, 73:660 (my translation; for translation of the
whole text, see Ward [n. 12 above], pp. 83-84). There are other versions in Greek: see F. Nau,
"Histoire de Thais,"Annales dxMusee Ggimet 30 (1903): 86. On the historicity ofthe legend,
see Nau, pp. 51-74; and Oswald R. Kuchne, "A Study of the Thais Legend with Special
Reference to Hrotsvitha's PapDnawtixs" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1922), pp. 9-
18.
24For example, Henri d'Arci, "Life of Thais," in Paul Meyer, "Notice sur le manuscrit Fr.
24802 de la bibliotheque nationale contenant divers ouvrages composes ou ecrits en An-
gleterre,"Notices et extrorits des mounuscnts de la bibliotheqxe nationate 35 (1986): 147; Metcalfe,
ed., 2:215; Marbod of Rennes, "Vita sanctt Thaisis," PL, 171:1630. Hrotswitha of Gan-
dersheim's version, the tenth-century Latin drama edited under the title PapDnxtixs, had more
literary merit than any of the others, but the story did not vary significantly. See Hrotsvitbae
Opera, ed. Helene Homeyer (Munich, 1970), pp. 328-49 (trans. Larissa Bonfante, ThePlays
of Hrotswitha of Ggndershetm [New York, 1979], pp. 105-46). Peter Dronke, Women Writers of
the MiddleA,ges (Cambridge, 1984), p. 71, argues that Hrotswitha's version was a feminist
interpretation ofthe life of Thais.
25 Caxton's Golden Legend, 5:241; see Karras, pp. 417-18. The version in Henri d5Arci's
VitaePatrxm referred to her high price (p. 147).
26An Alphabet of T&les: An EnWish 15th Centx7ty Transl6ation of the Alphabetum Narro-
tionum) ed. Mary Macleod Banks, EETS O.S., 126-27 (London, 1904), p. 3; Jacob's Well, ed.
Arthur Brandeis, EETS O.S., 115 (London, 1900), p. 22; Marbod of Rennes, col. 1629;
"Narracio de meretrice," British Library MS Harleian 4196, fol. 96v (a metrical version which
does not name Thais but tells the same story).
12 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
tomers, both their bloodshed and their sexual sins. She sent them to hell
and would have to account for their souls as well as her own.27
The ascetic life Thais undertook after her conversion involved being
walled in a cell . The ninth-century writer Hrotswitha of Gandersheim viv-
idly expressed the implication:
Can there be anything more difficult,

Or of a greater discomfort,
Than to have to take care of all my bodily functions
In the same place, without ever leaving it?
I am sure that very soon it will be impossible to live here,
Because of the terrible smell.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I know it's rig

Since I am filthy from my sins.28
The detail of having to excrete in the cell occurred in the other versions
also, although Hrotswitha put it most bluntly.
Of all the lives of prostitute saints, that of Thais was most concerned
with the role of money. The texts made clear that she took whichever lover
paid her most, stressed the money Paphnutius brought her, and equated
renouncing her life of prostitution with burning her gold. The use of excre-
ment as an image in this story was not coincidental: it resulted from the
financial aspect of her sin. The importance of money in the story did not
arise from the economic changes of the High Middle Ages, since Hrots-
witha wrote in the tenth century, but later versions made the role of money
much more specific. She despoiled men not of their wealth generally but of
a specific payment for a specific act: "She was always ready to take /
whoever would the first payment make."29
Although money played an important role in the medieval versions of
the Thais legend, at least one version presented her main sin as neither lust
nor greed but, rather, pride. The Walloon Poeme moral went into lengthy
and detailed digressions on the danger of beauty: many beautiful women
behaved in a manner offensive to God, for beauty often brought pride in its
wake, and pride in beauty (or in jewels and clothing) was a sin specific to
women.30 Pride provided another motive besides lust and greed for pro-
27Henri d'Arci, p. 147; Alphabet of Tales, p. 3; Carl Horstmann, "Die Evangelien-

Geschichten der Horniliensammlung des Ms. Vernon," Archiv pir die Erforschung der neueren
Sprachen 57 (1877): 279; Hrotswitha, ed. Homeyer, 1:14-15, p. 335; Alphonse Bayot, ed.,
Le poeme moral, 7, Academie royale de langue et de litterature francaises de Belgique, Textes
anciens, 1 (Brussels, 1929), p. 38.
28Hrotswitha, ed. Homeyer, 6:12-13, pp. 343-44; Bonfante, trans., p. 134.
29Metcalfe, ed., 2:215, lines 11-12.
30Le poeme moral, 8, p. 39.
Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend 13
miscuity indeed, it might even lead to lust and greed through the desire
to show off beauty. But Thais was not simply a beautiful woman whose
pride led her to fall; she became a common prostitute, available to every-
one, with money as a specific motive.
Mary the niece of Abraham, also one ofthe desert saints, became a pros-
titute for financial but not avaricious motives.3l The story, like that of
Mary the Egyptian, had a frame: the story of Abraham. This holy monk
found himself the guardian of his orphaned niece. He placed her in a nun-
nery, where, twenty years later, a false monk seduced her. Ashamed to
confess her sin and do penance, she fled to a city and supported herself by
prostitution. Her uncle heard of her whereabouts and went to see her, dis-
guised as a lover. After they retired to her room he revealed his identity, and
she repented and returned to the desert with him to do penance.32
Hrotswitha provided the fullest development of the story in her play
Abraham, whose plot closely followed that of her PgpDnutius. Here too she
stressed the financial element:
She has chosen as her home the house of a certain pimp,

Who "protects" her with tender care.
And well he might:
For every day that passes she brings him a good profit
From the men who frequent her as lovers.33
When Abraham asked his friend whether he should take money with him to
pay the innkeeper, his friend replied, "You would not be allowed to meet
with Mary otherwise."34 The desert ascetics regarded money as totally
alien, like sexuality; the two were equivalent, and medieval texts repeated
and reinforced the connection.
The legend of Pelagia presented her as an actress, a profession notorious
in antiquity and the Middle Ages for loose morals, but lacking the explicit
Snancial exchange that accompanied prostitution in the case of the other
3 lThis saint is sometimes referred to as Saint Mary the Harlot. There was no conflation of
Mary the niece of Abraham with Mary the Egyptian. Medieval people read the name Mary in
both cases as an allusion to the Virgin rather than to Mary Magdalen: Mary the Egyptian in
text T compared herself extensively to the Virgin Mary, contrasting her own sin with the lat-
ter's purity (Dembowski, ed., p. 43, lines 465-77); Hrotswitha uses a monk to comment on
the appropriateness of the name Mary for a vowed virgin (Hrotswitha, "Abraham," 1:5, in
Homeyer, ed., p. 304).
32As "Vita S. Mariz Meretricis," this episode is printed separately in thePL, 73:651-59
(see translation in Ward [n. 12 above], pp. 92-101), while the remainder of Abraham's life is
found at 73:283-92. On the relation ofthe Mary story to texts of Abraham's life, see Andre
Wilmart, "Les redactions latines de la vie d'Abraham ermite," Revue Benedictine 50 ( 1938):
222-45.
33Hrotswitha, "Abraham," 4:3, in Homeyer, ed., pp. 311-12; Bonfante, trans.,
34Hrotswitha, "Abraham," 4:6, in Homeyer, ed., p. 312; Bonfante, trans., p. 91.
14 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
saints. Most of the texts, both the Golden Leyend and vern
which described Pelagia's life before her conversion, emphas
and riches, her gold, gems, and perfilmes, but not promiscu
Flodoard of Reims's Latin metrical version did call her a pro
Middle English version described her as sinning for money
responsible for the sin of the men she tempted:
She was a fair enough woman

And drew many a man to sin
For she made her body common
In lust of the flesh and lechery.
* . . . . . . . . * * . . . . . . * * . . . . . .
And she did a go
Pelagia happened to hear Bishop Nonnus give a sermon and wrote him a
letter. He then converted her and she became a desert ascetic. During her
eremitic life she disguised herself as a man; only after her death did her fel-
low ascetics discover her sex.
The combination of the name Pelagia with the themes of sexual license
arld of transvestism has led to the suggestion that this legendary saint was
based on the Greek goddess of love.36 The medieval Western versions of
the story did not contain anything to connect the saint with the goddess,
nor was there any awareness that any of the several Saint Pelagias in the
calendar shared a name with Aphrodite.37 All of the prostitute saints em-
35Horstmann, "Die Evangelien-Geschichten," p. 300, lines 5-8, 16. The original Latin
translation of her story did not explicitly call her a prostitute (PL, 73:663-72; see Ward,
trans., pp. 66-75). For Flodoard, see 'sDe triumphis Christi Antiochae gestis," PL, 135:587,
re-edited with French translation by Jean-Pierre Rothschild and Armand Strubel in Peta,gie la
penitexte: Metamorphoses d'Brle leyende, ed. Pierre Petitmengin, vol. 2 (Paris, 1984), p. 72, line
19; p. 80, line 137. Flodoard also called herpelex (p. 76, line 81; p. 80, line 164). She was also
called a prostitute and connected with a brothel in a tenth- or eleventh-century text, "La pas-
sion de saint Hippolyte, martyr de Porto," ed l Fransois Dolbeau, inBelagie lapenitenteJ, 2: 110.
Other versions referred to her profession: the Old English Martyrolofly, ed George Herzfeld,
EETS O.S., 116 (London, 1900), p. 190, called her a mima; Caxton's fifteenth-century trans-
lation ofthe VitaePatrutn caHed her a "Jougleresse or Daunceres" (n. 17 above), fol. 62v; Old
Prench versions called her "de corps et de couraige non chaste" and similar terms, but did not
mention money (Jean-Pierre Bordier, ed., "La vie de sainte Pelagie en ancien et en moyen
fransais," in Pelagie lapexitente, 2:183, p. 203).
36Hermann Usener, Leyenden der heili,gen Pela,gia (Bonn, 1879) pp. o-xxiv. "Pelagia"
means "ofthe sea" and was one ofthe names given to Aphrodite in her aspect as a sea goddess.
On transvestite saints in general, see John Anson, "The Pemale Transvestite in Early Monas-
ticism: The Origin and Development of a Motif" Viator 5 (1974): 1-32.
371his Saint Pelagia was not a historical personage; her legend seems originally to have
been based on a homily of Saint John Chrysostom about a converted prostitute. The name
and the feast day may have been taken from one of several other Saint Pelagias, who were
virgins. See Hippolyte Delehaye, The Leyends of the Saints: An Introduction to Ha,gioflraphy
trans. V. M. Crawford (London, 1907), p. 201.
Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Lesgend 15
bodied some of the same characteristics- extreme beauty coupled with

lust that medieval people associated with the pagan love goddess, but
Pelagia did so to no greater degree than Mary of Egypt or Thais.
The connection of prostitution with the goddess of love appeared ex-
plicitly in the life of Afra, the one prostitute saint indigenous to Europe.
According to her biography, written in the late eighth century, she lived in
Augsburg at the time of the persecution under Diocletian in 303-5.
Bishop Narcissus and his deacon Felix, fleeing from Roman soldiers, took
refuge in her house. At first she took them for customers, but after Nar-
cissus explained Christianigr to her, she expressed a wish to convert and
eradicate her sins. The other prostitutes irl the house also converted. Afra
protected Narcissus and Felix from the soldiers and finally died a martyr for
her refilsal to sacrifice to the Roman gods. 38 Afra's legend attributed her life
of sin to a pagan family tradition, as described by her mother, Hilaria: "My
parents were of the Cypriot race, and came from there with the rites of
Venus, and Venus cannot be worshipped except by those women who were
fornicators. Therefore I, consecrating my daughter to the rites of Venus,
serving the goddess Venus and making herself agreeable in prostitution,
allowed her to remain in the brothel.... For, the more lovers a woman
who serves Venus can have, the more she can please Venus, as the priests of
Venus say."39 This explanation was a product of a medieval hagiographer's
imagination; the Afra who lived in the fourth century was not a prostitute
at all, let alone a devotee of Venus.40 But those who retold and read the
story of Afra in the Middle Ages understood her as a servant or priestess of
Venus.4l
38"Conversio et Passio Afrae," in Passtones Vitaeque SanctommAeviMerovinflici etAnti-

quiorum Aliqxot, ed. Bruno Krusch, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum
Merovingicarum, 3 (Hannover, 1896), pp. 41-64; "Passio Afrae Vetustior et de Passione Af-
rae Armenia," inPassiones Vitgeque SanctorgmAeviMerovin,gici, ed. B. Krusch and W. Levison,
MGH SS Rer. Merov. 7, pp. 192-204.
39"Conversio Afrae," pp. 57-58.
40The connection with Venus probably comes from a misreading ofthe Hieronyman mar-
tyrology. A scribe mistakenly wrote "Afra venerea," because the name of Saint Veneria of
Antioch precedes her in the martyrology. The author of the "Conversio" then made up the
story to explain "Afra venerea" (Andreas Bigelmair, "Die Afralegende," Archiv fxr die
Gesc1viclyte desHochstiftsAu,gsb 1 [1910]: 139-221, esp. 204-19; Andreas Bigelmair, "Die
H1 Afra," in Lebensbilder axs dem Bayerischen ScXabenn ed. Gotz Freiherr von Polnitz
[Munich, 1952], 1:1-29, esp. 22-23, 26-27).
41A Latin metrical life of ca. 1200 and several German lives: Anton L. Mayer, "S. Afrae
vita metrica,"Historische Vierteljahrschnft28 (1933): 385-411;DerHeili,genLeben und Leiken
anders,genannt dgs Passional (Leipzig, 1913), p. 229; Das Marterbxch, ed. Erich Gierach,
Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters, 32 (Berlin, 1928), pp. 303-4; Priedrich Wilhelm, ed.,
"Sankt Afra, eine schwabische Reimlegende," in Analecta Germanica:, ed. P. Expeditius
Schmidt and Anton Glock (Amberg, 1906), pp. 43-169; other references in Bigelmair, "Die
H1. Afra," pp. 17-18. Der arme Hartmann (n. 21 above), p. 203, just made her a prostitute,
not mentioning the Venus element.
16 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
Afra's early life did not hold as much prurient interest for authors during
the High Middle Ages as did those of the other prostitute saints because
her main sin was not promiscuity but paganism.42 The attribution of Afra's
prostitution to paganism in effect, to not knowing any better meant
that she did not have to expiate her sin with asceticism. Ill her legend she
made this clear: the Roman judge at her trial said that she could not be a
Christian because she was a prostitute, but she responded that she had left
that profession and that the merciful Christian God had forgiven her.43
The more sympathetic treatment of Afra by medieval authors stemmed
in part from the difference in the circumstances of composition ofthe origi-
nal stories. Afra's story was set in a more familiar world. The audience could
entertain exotic fantasies about the brothels of Alexandria or Antioch but
could more easily envision the mundanity ofthose of Augsburg. The desert
fathers who wrote the lives of the desert saints were much stricter in their
asceticism than anyone in the medieval West. I'elagia, like Afra, abandoned
her prostitution simultaneously with becoming Christian, yet she still had
to take up heroic asceticism; this was expected in legends of the desert
saints but apparently was not as necessary in the legends of European ones.
The key to the differences between Afra and the other saints, though, was
the motivation behind her prostitution; having nothing to do with either
lust or money, it was more easily redeemable. Afra's story resembled those
of other converts in late antiquity, women and men from various walks of
life who died for the faith; her prostitution was incidental, only a detail of
her paganism. She did not represent a sin particular to femininity.
The images of these five saints in Western art do not contribute a great
deal to the understanding oftheir lives as prostitutes, because all but a very
few depicted the later parts oftheir lives. By far most ofthe images of Mary
the Egyptian in medieval art were as a penitent; cycles generally began with
the angel barring the door to the church to her, or with her praying to the
Virgin or buying the loaves of bread. A window at a Parisian church, no
longer in existence, allegedly showed her selling her body to pay her pas-
sage, but this is the only such example known.44 Thais appeared very late in
42Der arme Hartmann, p. 203, lines 2240-41, 2265-66, referred to her and to Mary of
Egypt in identical terms but went on to describe in detail Mary's life of sin, while in the case of
Afra, he moved directly to her conversion. Similarly, the tale of Afra included in some manu-
scripts of the Golden Le,gend was very brief; it gave the details about her worship of Venus but
did not go into detail about her repentance for her great sin.
43"Passio Afrae," p. 62.
44Louis Reau, Icono,graphie des Saintsn vol. 3 of L'icono,0raphie de l'art chretien (Paris, 1959),
p. 886. He seems to have gotten the story from Pierre DuSour [Paul Lacroix], Histoire de la
prostitution (Brussels, n.d.), 3:313, who dated the destruction to 1660 and said the window
was more than three centuries old. At Bourges a now destroyed window showed her standing
in a doorway and then embarking with the pilgrims: Arthur Martin and Charles Cahier,
Mono,graphiedelaCathedraledeBoursgesn vol. 1, VitrauxduXIIIesiecle (Paris, 1841-44), p. 248
and pl. 11. See also Sylvain Clement and A. Guitard, Vitraux de Bourges (Bourges, 1900), pp.
Western art, although when she did appear money played a role in her ico-
nography: in a fourteenth-century manuscript of the Golden Le,gend she
burned her worldly goods, and in a German translation ( 1482) of the Vitae
Patrum she accepted a bag of money from a man.45 Pelagia before her con-
version appeared in a twelfth-century passional from Stuttgart mounted
on an ass and holding a lyre, an image that alluded to her career as an enter-
tainer but only indirectly to her loose sexual morals.46 Afra usually ap-
peared as a martyr.47
MARY ALAGDALEN
The most important penitent in the "celestial gynecacum" was Mary Mag-
dalen, perhaps the most popular saint in the Middle Ages after the Virgin
Mary.48 The Magdalen, as the medieval West knew her, combined three
New Testament figures: Mary of Magdala, out of whom Christ cast seven
devils and who was the first to see Christ after his resurrection (Luke 8:2;
Mark 16:9; John 20:17); Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazams and Mar-
tha, who "hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from
her" by listening to the teachings of Christ while her sister busied hcrself
with looking after the guests (Luke 10:38-42); and the figure identified
only as "a woman in the city, which was a sinner," who washed Christ's feet
with her tears at the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7: 37-38).49 The
xi, 40; and Jean Verrier, La cathedrale de Bourges etses vitraux (Paris, 1 951), p. ii, fig. 1. A manu-
script in the British Library (Royal 10.E.iv, fol. 269) shows her betveen two demons and then
continues with her prayer before the Virgin.
45H.M. 3027, fol. 142r, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA (photograph consulted at
Index of Christian Art, Princeton University, I>rinceton, NJ ); Albert Schramm, Der
Bilderschmuck der FruDdrucke (Leipzig, 1920-21), 4:Abb. 1017 (printed by Anton Sorg of
Augsburg, 1482).
46Albert Boeckler, ed., Das StuttBarter Passionale (Augsburg, 1923), Abb. 23. Mary the
niece of Abraham, who was not at all common in Western medieval iconography, also ap-
peared in this passional (Abb. 32): in a scene leading up to her fall from chastity, a monk spoke
tO her through her uZindow and tempted her.
47There is at the Saint Jacob church in Straubing a fifteenth-celltury image after a design
by Holbein the Elder, showing both her conversion and her martyrdom. In one thirteenth-
century window, from Freiburg, she appeared holding an ointment jar, which played no role
in her legend; it may be a reference to Mary Magdalen. Rcau, pp. 25-26; Karl Kunstle,
Ikonographie derHeiligen (Freiburg, 1926), p. 35.
48See Victor Saxer, Le culte de Marie Madeleine en occident des ori,gines a la jin du moyen age,
Cahiers d'archeologie et d'histoire, 3 (Auxerre, 1959), on the wide popularity of her cult.
Though the Virgin surpassed her in holiness, sinners could more easily identify with the Mag-
dalen. On the relation between Mary Magdalen and the Virgin Mary, see Marina Warncr,
Aloae of All Her Sex (New York, 1985), pp. 224-35.
4tThis scene is often conflated, in both legend and art, with the one at Bethany where a
woman anoillted Christ's head and Judas Iscariot complained that the costly oil should have
been sold alld the money given to the poor (Maw. 26:7-8; Mark 14:3). John 11:2 identifies
18 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
identification of the "sinful woman" with Mary of Bethany

Magdala, combined with the ubiquitous identification of her
had the effect of making a (redeemed) fallen woman the first
Christ.50
All medieval authors assumed that Mary Magdalen's unspecified sins
were sexual.5l Though they often included pride and the enjoyment of
other carnal pleasures besides sex- sometimes all seven deadly sins all
the representations of Mary Magdalen's early life saw the sin of lust (lax-
uria) and sexual looseness as the key. MaryMagdalen was never depicted as
a professional prostitute making her living by sexual intercourse. Yet she
became the patron saint of repentant prostitutes.52 Her social class differ-
entiated her from prostitutes who commonly practiced in medieval towns,
thus muting some ofthe possibility of repentance and salvation her life rep-
resented, yet at the same tzme, because of her sexual morals, the texts
categorized her as a common prostitute.53
Few texts of the many about Mary Magdalen dealt to any great extent
with her life before her conversion, but those that did are significant be-
cause the New Testament's silence on the subject allowed free rein to the
authors' imagination 54 Odo of Cluny, upon whose tenth-centuryhomilies
Mary the sister of Lazarus as the one who had anointed Christ and washed his feet with her
tears but does not indicate to which occasion this refers.
50Eastern Christianity maintained the separation among these three figures, but the West
identified them as one, at least as early as Saint Augustine, and definitively since Gregory the
Great in the late sixth century; see Saxer, pp. 2-6.
slSee Hans Hansel, Die Maria-Ma,gdalen6[-Legende: Eine Quellenuntersuchun,g (Bottrop,
1937), p. 25. The liturgy-as opposed to homiletic, narrative, and dramatic works down-
played this aspect, emphasizing the casting out of the seven demons, the raising of Lazarus,
and the events after the Resurrection, but not her life before her conversion or even her anoint-
ing of Christ's feet (Saxer, p. 55). Saxer's appendix of liturgical texts does contain a text
referring to her as a sinner (p. 366).
52Saxer, pp. 221-24, 267; A. Simon, L'ordre des penitentes de Sainte Marie-Madeleine en
Allem6lBne (Fribourg, 1918).
53Of 160 medieval hymns to Mary Magdalen, using various expressions of her former life
such as "peccatrix" and "impudica," three called her "meretrix," which clearly does mean
';prostitutet'' or at least '<promiscuous" (Joseph Szoverffy, "'Peccatrix Quondam Femina': A
Survey of the Mary Magdalen Hymns," Traditio 19 [ 1963]: 92).
54Before the twelfth century the life of Mary Magdalen emerged mainly through homilies
and sermons rather than formal biography. When Latin hagiography about her did develop, it
concentrated mainly on the later part of her life, after she, along with Martha, Lazarus, and
others, traveled to Marseilles. The legend of Mary Magdalen in Provence became extremely
popular all over Europe, and most ofthe miracles attributed to her date from this period of her
life. SeeBibliothecaHgio,graphicaLatina, ed. Socii Bollandii (Brussels, 1900-1901), 2:804-
10, on the Latin versions of her life and miracles; Paul Meyer, "Legendes hagiographiques en
francJais," in Histoire litteraire de 1 France (Paris, 1904), 33: 388, on French translations from
Latin sources; and Paul Meyer, "Legendes pieuses en Provencal" in ibid., 32:78-108. Other
versions ofthe narrative follow the Bible more closely and begin with the scene where a repen-
most later versions of Mary Magdalen's life drew directly or indirectly, de-
scribed her as coming from a good family and having a good name, which
she ruined by her foul deeds. These he attributed not to any especially sinil
nature but rather to the combination of riches and youth, which together
provided a great temptation to sin. Various versions gave other reasons for
her sin.55 In the late medieval English Digby Plgy of Mary Magdalexe, the
death of her father sent her into the despair that allowed demons alle-
gorical figures of the seven deadly sins and the world, the flesh, and the
devil to tempt her into sin.56 The Golden Le,gend followed Odo in at-
tributing her sin to the combination of riches and beauty but noted that
some blamed it on a jilting at the akar: "Certain authors maintain that
Mary Magdalen was betrothed to Saint John the Evangelist, and that he
was about to take her to wife when Christ, coming into the midst of the
nuptials, called the Evangelist to Him; whereat the Magdalen was so wroth
that she abandoned herself to sinfill pleasure.t'57 Jacobus de Voragine did
not accept this explanation, but other writers did.58
tant Magdalen anoints Christ's feet; this is found particularly in English mystery plays and
some of the Prench passions and in both French and English sermon traditions.
550do of Cluny, "In veneratione sanctse Mariae Magdalenz," PL, 132:714. Honorius of
Autun in the twelfth century (col. 979) believed her a married woman. She fled her husband's
abuse and went to Jerusalem, where she became a common prostitute (v2W1garis meretnx); the
seven demons sought her out because of her depravity. None ofthe vernaclllar traditions, how-
ever, picked up this explanation.
56"Saint Mary Magdalen," in The Late Medieval Reli,gioxs Plays of Bodleian MSS Digby 133
and E Museo 160, ed. Donald C. Baker, John L. Murphy, and Louis B. Elall, Jr., EETS O.S.,
283 (Oxford, 1982), p. 39, lines 454-55. On the origins of the Digby play, see Clifford
Davidson, "The Middle English Saint Play and Its Iconography," in The SaintPZay inMedieval
Europen ed. Clifford Davidson, Early Drama, Art and Music Monograph Series, 8 (Kal-
amazoo, MI, 1986), pp. 73-75. Several of the German plays also include the Devil as a
character tempting Mary Magdalen: Das Kunzelsauer Fronleichnamspiel, ed. Peter K.
Liebenow, Ausgaben deutscher Literatur des XV. bis XVIII Jahrhunderts, Reihe Drama, 2
(Berlin, 1969), p. 105; "Alsfelder Passionsspiel," in DasDrama des Mittelattersn ed. Richard
Froning, Deutsche National-Litteratur, 14 (Stuttgart, n.d.), p. 630; DasEgererFronleichnam-
spiel, ed. Gustav Milchsack, Bibliothek des litterarischen Mereins in Stuttgart, 156 (Tubingen,
1881), p. 103; "Ludus Mariae Magdalenae in Gaudio" (Erlau IV), in Erlauer Spiele, Sechs alt-
deutsche Mysterien nach einer Handschrift des XF. Jhs., ed. Karl Ferdinand Kummer (Vienna,
1882), pp. 96 ff. See also Sister Mary John of Carmel Chauvin, "The Role of Mary Mag-
dalene in Medieval Drama" (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of America, 1951), p. 33.
57LA (n. 20 above), p. 416; Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger, trans., The GoldenLe,g-
end of Jacobus de Voragine (New York, 1948), p. 363.
58For example, the Festial of John Mirk, an early fifteenth-century English text: Theodore
Erbe, ed., Mirkns Festial: A Coltection of Homilies, EETS E.S., 96 (London, 1905), p. 203.
Caxton's translation ofthe GoldenLeyend (4:87-88) apparently acceptedthe explanation too,
since it omitted Jacobus's repudiation of it. The tradition of John the Evangelist as the bride-
groom at the wedding at Cana was common in the Middle Ages, but not Mary Magdalen as
the bride. Helen Meredith Garth, SaintMaryMaBdalen inMedievalLiterature) Johns Hopkins
20 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
These explanations for Mary Magdalen's life of sin emphasized her no-
ble family origins and great riches. Some texts went into great-detail about
her family. Nobility and wealth contributed to her sin: in many ofthe texts,
particularly the French mysteries and the German passion plays where
Mary boasted of her beauty, she sinned mainly through pride, including
pride of birth. Yet despite the drawbacks of nobility that impede a saintly
humility, the stress on her noble family did serve to differentiate her from a
common prostitute. Her life of sin could hardly compare to that of a poor
woman who turned to prostitution to live. Birth in a humble cottage was
not a popular hagiographical topos; at least to the social group that created
the texts, noble birth implied noble character and the requisite spiritual
qualities for saintliness. Medieval authors generally tried to make their
saints as noble as possible, and not many came from humble origins.59 Yet a
noblewoman's potential for nobility of character made a failure to live up to
that standard more shocking than sin by a commoner. As the South English
Le,gendary explained, Mary Magdalen's neglect of her class status com-
pounded her sin: "She became the woman of greatest folly known to
memory; she did not reject even the worst wretch although she was of high
family. 60
Mary Magdalen's class standing, nobility, wealth, and beauty made her
in the medieval mind more appropriate as a special friend for Christ than if
she were a common prostitute. Even after her conversion her love for
Christ, although clearly spiritual, was described in some of the same terms
used to refer to her earlier courtly dalliance. The English Lamentatyon of
Mary Magdaleyne (attributed to Chaucer but actually probably written be-
tween 1460 and 1480) used phrases such as "my own true turtle-dove / My
life's joy" and "my most excellent paramour / Fairer than rose, sweeter than
lily flower" to express the Magdalen's love for Christ. She proclaimed her
love for him in very physical terms; medieval audiences were used to bodily
metaphors for spiritual relationships (like the love of God for humankind),
but the carnal language gave additional meaning to the scene in light of
University Studies in Historical and Political Science, ser. 67, no. 3 (Baltimore, 1950), p. 30;
Marga Janssen, "Maria Magdalena in der abendlandischen Kunst: Ikonographie der Heiligen
von den Anfangen bis ins 16. Jahrhundert" (Diss., Freiburg im Breisgau, 1961), p. 37. The
tale appears in the greatest detail, with illustrations, in the Alemannic poem Der Saelden Hort
and in a fourteenth-century Italian devotional romance. Der Saelden Hort, ed. Heinrich
Adrian, Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters, 26 (Berlin, 1927), pp. 124-35; Domenico Cavalca,
"Vita di S. Maria Maddalena," in Vite di alcuni santi scrztte nel buon secolo della linBua toscana,
vol. 4 of Volgarizzamento delle vite de ss. padri (Milan, 1830), pp. 2-4 (trans. Valentina
Hawtrey, The Life of Mary Magdalen [New York, 1904], pp. 2-5).
59Weinstein and Bell (n. 3 above), pp. 196-97.
60The South En,glish LeBendary, ed. d'Evelyn and Mill (n. 21 above), 1:303, lines 19-20.
Mary Magdalen's earlier history.6l The love language that Mary Magdalen
used in lamenting over the dead Christ in medieval religious drama derived
from the Song of Songs, always interpreted allegorically in the Middle
Ages.62 This language could have been understood quite differently when
placed in the mouth of a woman speaking to a man than when placed in the
mouth of the soul speaking to God. When Mary Magdalen bewailed Christ
as her true love, the words would have resonated with the erotic even
though the audience understood them spiritually.
Even though Mary Magdalen came of noble family background, in
many of the texts about her early life she forfeited her claim to that back-
ground because of her immorality. The GoldenLe,gend, and many other texts
which drew on it, took the passage in Luke 7 involving the unnamed sinful
woman to mean that Mary Magdalen had "lost her name." Although Luke
did not say that this woman had no name, the identification with a known
character required an explanation of why her name was not used in this
episode: "And for so much as she shone in beauty greatly, and in riches, so
much the more she submitted her body to delight, and therefore she lost
her right name, and was called customably a sinner."63
The texts clearly linked "losing her name" with sexual sin.64 In some she
lost even her given name; the sexually sinful woman became generic, no
longer an individual, but subsumed in the evil of her sex. In others, how-
ever, she lost only her family narne: "Her family name she lost / and was
called, as such a one should be / Mary the sinfill."65 That sexual misconduct
6lTheLamentateonofMaryMaegdaleyne,ed.BerthaSkeat(Cambridge,1897),p.36,1ines
41-42; p. 51, lines 678-79. See also Garth, pp. 68-73, on the mutual love of Mary Mag-
dalen and Christ.
62See Maria Norberta Hoffmann, Die Ma,gdalenenszenen im geistlichen Spiel des deutschen
Mittelalters (Wurzburg, 1933), pp. 22-23; see also Rosemary Woolf, TheEnglishMysteryPlays
(London, 1972), p. 334; Peter F. McDonald and David Mills, "The Drama of Religious Cere-
monial," in Medieval Drama, vol. 1 of The Revels History of Drama in English (London, 1983),
pp. 107-8.
63LA, p. 408; Caxton's Golden Legend, 4:74. In the passion play from Maastricht in the
Netherlands, Martha admonishes her sister and says, "Your name is turned about / And yo
are called a sinner" ("Fragment van een in nederrijnsch dialect geschreven Paaschspel
[Maastricht Passion]," in De middelnederlandsche dramatische Poszie, ed. H. E. Moltzer
[Groningen, 1875], p. 522, lines 878-83).
64Many texts, especially English, coupled the loss of name with specific identification of
her offense as sexual: The South English Leyendary, ed. d'Evelyn and Mill, 1:303; Osbern
Bokenham, Legendys of Hooly Wummen, ed. Mary S. Serjeantson, EETS O.S., 206 (London,
1938), p. 148; Metcalfe, ed. (n. 19 above), 1:258, from Cambridge University Library
GgII.6; Carl Horstmann, ed.,AltenglischeLecgenden, N.F. (Heilbronn, 1881), p. 81; Stephens
(n. 21 above), 1:263; "Rappresentazione della conversione di S. Maria Maddalena," in Ales-
sandro d'Ancona, ed., SacreRappresentazionideisecoliXIVnXVeXVI (Florence, 1872), 1:256.
65Carl Horstmann, ed., Sammlung altenCglischerLegenden (Heilbronn, 1878), p. 163, from
Auchinleck manuscript, Edinburgh Advocates Library. Similarly, an Italian play equated
22 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
brought shame to the family accorded well with medieval views of female
chastity as a commodity to be guarded and then sold not by the woman
herself but by her male kin. Christianity valued female chastity in itself as a
religious ideal even when it conflicted with family strategies) as biographies
of female saints who remained virgins! despite their fathers' attempts to
marry them off, indicate. In practice, however, such conflict arose only
rarely and the Christian emphasis on chastity reinforced the patriarchal
family's need to control its daughters' sexuality.
Mary Magdalen's fall into promiscuity, although it was considered a
grave sin as well as dishonor on her family, did not make her a prostitute in
the sense oftaking money. Her sexual license was certainly indiscriminate:
"I was never slow to sin, / but always ready, / Peasant, townsman, clerk or
priest!"66 Yet she refiased money: in one German play, when an admirer of-
fered her silver and gold, she responded that she had riches enough of her
own, and in the fifteenth-century Arras passion she explicitly offered her
body without fee to anyone:
I am abandoned to all.
Let everyone come, do not fear.
Here is my body which I present
To anyone who wants to have it,
I don't want to sell it,
I don't want to have gold or silver,
Let each one do his will with it,
I can't offer it any more than this:
It is ready to receive all
Without refilsing anyone.67
Here she refilsed money not because it was demeaning but because she did
not need it. The passage echoed the words of Christ in instituting the sacra-
ment, "This is my body," and the contrast between Christ arld the sinfill
Magdalen served to emphasize her depravity.68 In the Digby Play of Mary
Ma,gdglene, she did not refer to money but did take care to distinguish her-
selffrom the lower class of women even while she searched for a lover; when
name, honor, and family: "Rappresentazione di un miracolo di S. Maria Maddalena," in

D'Ancona, ed., p. 394.
66Le mystere de lapassion nostresei,gneur, du manuscrit 131 de la bibliotheque Sainte-Genevieve
ed. Graham A. Runnalls (Geneva, 1974), p. 100, lines 174-76.
67Le mystere de la potssion joue aArras, ed. Jules-Marie Richard (Arras, 1891; reprint, Gen-
evat 1976), p. 117, lines 9979-88. The German play referred to is Erlau IV (n. 56 above), p.
108, line 422. One exception to the rllle of her not taking money is in an English text, The
Early South English Le,gendary (ed. Horstmann [n. 19 above], p. 463, line 54) C'Manie riche
men hire lei3en bi//and 3even hire gret mede.'
68I am indebted to Helen Ettlinger for calling my attention to this point.
Hoty Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medievgt Le,gend 23
a gallant in a tavern professed his love, she responded, "Why, sir, do you
take me for a slut?" Immediately thereafter she proved herself at least a loose
woman, if not a prostitute, by allowing him to become intimate with her. A
rich lady with lovers mlght rank above a prostitute socially, but not
morally.69
A number of dramas, both German and French, referred to Mary M

dalen's sexual sin only indirectly. In some, she lamented a life of unsp
past sin; in others, she was presented on stage as a sinful woman, but
sin consisted only in an interest in things of the world. She spoke of
ing many lovers "I will never restrict myself to one" but not exp
about sleeping with them.70 The focus in these scenes on her makeup,
fume, clothing, and frivolity, the outward signs of lust, implied the
sort of sexual sin as the more explicit texts discussed above that spoke o
sinning with her body.7l Mary Magdalen's songs, her praise of he
beauty, and her concern with attracting lovers served as both a critic
women in courtly society (or even women in general) in the late M
Ages and a vivid demonstration to the audience of her sinful nature b
her conversion. The audience admired and enjoyed her dancing and
ing but also understood these as feminine wiles and incitements to th
characteristic of women. By the end of the Middle Ages the identifica
of Mary Magdalen and women in general with sexual sin had beco
pervasive that the dramatists needed only a few symbols to evoke it.
passion play by Jean Michel, from Angers, did not represent Mary
dalen as overtly very sinfill, even by medieval standards, and most sc
69Digby Mary Ma,gdalen (n. 56 above), p. 41, line 520. The editors glossed the
"kelle" (which I translate here as "slut") as "prostitute" (p. 251), but they appear to h
rived the meaning entirely from context ("We know of no other use as here, clearly
woman"'). The word generally means a net or cap, but see the Middle En,glish Dictiona
Sherman M. Kuhn (Ann Arbor, MI, 1956-), s.v. "kelis," a plural meaning "ill-bred
The clear implication is that she does not want to be taken for someone of low status.
tavern scene, see Robert H. Bowers, "The Tavern Scene in the Middle English Digby P
Mary Magdalene," in . . . AU These to Teach: Essays in Honor of C. A. Robertson, ed. Ro
Bryan, Alton C. Morris, A. A. Murphree, andAubrey L. Williams (Gainesville, FL, 196
15-32; Theresa Coletti, "The Design of the Digby Play of MaryMaBdalene," St?wdies i
lolofly 76 (1979): 319.
70Gustave Cohen, ed., Le livre de conduite du re,'Bisseur et le compte des dEpenses pour le mystere
de la passion joue a Mons en 1501, Publications de la faculte des lettres de tumvers°itae
Strasbourg, 23 (Strasbourg, 1925), p. 178.
71The situation is similar in popular songs from France and Spain: she dances and flirts but
does not actually engage in liaisons (Eugene Rolland, Recueil de chgnsons populaires [Paris,
1890; reprint, Paris, 1967], 6:11 ff.). The Scandinavian andEnglish ballads aboutMaryMag-
dalen, in which she appears to have been conflated with the Samaritan woman and in which
she is accused of bearing and killing several illegitimate children, are an indication ofthe close
connection ofthe Magdalen in the popularmindwith sexual immorality in general. See Fran-
cis James Child, TheEnglish and ScottishPopularBallads (New York, 1962), 1:228-30.
24 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
have seen her as coquettish here rather than dissolute. Yet the text was not
sympathetic; it condemned her frivolity and equated it with debauchery
She referred to each of the seven deadly sins in discussing her pleasures;
she talked about music, food, and adornments, to the exclusion of spiritual
goods. She claimed that she kept her honor, her family name
I may keep a round table

and associate with people of honor,
since, because I have so many goods,
it can not cause me dishonor.72
Yet the context of this passage inverted her claim that because she was rich
she could not have been dishonored: as the play showed, she could sin and
she did sin, which for a woman amounted to the same thing. The people at
the house of Simon the Leper who criticized Jesus for letting her wash his
feet said that she was known through the town as a "dishonorable wom-
an."73 Her sins consisted of pleasure and luxury rather than sex, but in her
frank love of her own beauty, her carefree attitude, and her joy in life she
probably did not appear as sympathetic to a medieval audience as to a mod-
ern one.
Other French and German plays also underscored the theme that delight
in the things of this world amounted to sin-for a woman, to sexual sin
specifically. In two of the earliest German drarnas, from Benediktbeuern
and Vienna, Mary purchased perfume and ointment for herselfand sang in
the famous "Mundi delectatio" of the joys of the world in terms that im-
plied not only frivolity but also a touch of debauchery: "The delights ofthe
world are those with which I wish to be inflamed.... Caring for nothing
else, I will look after my body; I will adorn it with various hues."74 Literally,
"delight in the world" was the Magdalen's sin, but her adornment of her
body symbolized that sin in a particularly feminine way, and the subtext
labeled her a promiscuous woman. In the Maastricht passion, when the
Magdalen asked the admonishing Martha why she should give up her plea-
sures, which included adorning her body and hair as well as singing,
72Jean Michel, Le mystere de la passion (Angers 1486), ed. Omer Jodogne (Gemblollx,
1959), p. 114, lines 8522-25.
73Ibid., pp. 162-64.
74Benediktbeuern play in Karl Young, TheDrama of theMedieral Church3 2d ed. (Oxford,
1962), 1:520. 'sWiener Passionspiel," in Das Drama des Mittelalte7ts, ed. Richard Froning,
Deutsche National-Litteratur, 14 (Stuttgart, n.d.), p. 316, drew on the Benediktbeuern play.
See Cornelia Elizabeth Catharina Maria van den Wildenberg-De Kroon, Das Weltleben und
dieBekehrurz,gderManaMaBdalexa im deutschen religiosenDrama und in derbildendenKunstdes
Mittelalters, Amsterdamer Publikationen zur Sprache und Literatur, 39 (Amsterdam, 1979),
pp. 74-93, on Mary Magdalen's worldly life in the German drama in general.
Holy Harlots: Prostitxte Saints in Medieval Le,gend 25
Martha told her, "It is sinfill and impure."75 In the Auvergne passion, Mary
said she was young and beautiful and ought to be enjoying herself; she
wanted "to lead a joyful and amorous life, without hurting a soul."76 She
did not care if some defamed her for such a life and called her sinfill. But
although she meant to say her life did not harm anyone else, her words iron-
ically revealed that she was "hurting a soul": her own. Her denial of any sin
inherent in pleasure, although a hopeful message, was proven wrong by her
later repentance. In the Erlau LudusMariaeMagdalenae in Gaudio) the only
German play exclusively devoted to Mary Magdalen, she sang about the
joys ofthe world and about her beauty, and danced with priests and laymen,
as in the other German plays, but had another reason to add for wanting to
enjoy herself: "Shall I not have control over my body?"77 Such a sentiment
from an unmarried woman upset her family, who thought she should be
under their control; it subverted the whole gender order. The dramas ham-
mered home the message that a woman following her lustful will was, in
fact, out of control; one could exercise self-control in a positive sense and
remain a virgin, but any woman who wished to control the disposition of
her own body, other than by leaving it undisposed, was sinful.
The dramas and other texts ofthe life of Mary Magdalen implicitly made
a distinction that canon law failed to make but that most medieval people
clearly did, between a promiscuous woman and a common prostitute, yet in
making the distinction they reinforced the connection. The Magdalen
both was and was not a prostitute. She was Christ's special friend, a favorite
saint, and an apostle to France. Her beauty and innate nobility contributed
to making her the archetype of the penitent saint. Yet at the same time her
sin of lust made her the equivalent of a prostitute. The fact that the texts
recognized her high social class and the lack of monetary exchange in her
sexuality did not make her less of one but, rather, conveyed the message
that despite the social and economic distinction, all women were the same
in their sinfill sexuality. In addition, her openness to all lovers, of whatever
status, transgressed the bounds of social class as well as appropriate gender
behavior.
The iconography of Mary Magdalen's preconversion life agreed with the
literature in depicting her as a beautifill and wealthy lady. Artists before the
later fifteenth century did not usually depict her worldly life. She most
often appeared in art as an individual figurc rather than in a cycle of her
75"Maastricht Passion" (n. 63 above), p. 522. In the St. Gall Passion, she had a sharp an-
swer for these reproaches of Martha's that her sister criticized out of spite because she was
not as attractive as Mary ("Leben Jesu [St. Gall Passion]," in Schauspiele desMittelalters, ed. F.
J. Mone [Karlsruhe, 1846], 1:80-81).
76La Passion d'Auver,gne, ed. Graham A. Runnalls (Geneva, 1982), p. 135, lines 1191-93.
77Erlau IV (n. 56 above), p. 106, line 335.
26 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
own life or of Gospel scenes; her attributes were a pyxis (oi

book (as a symbol ofthe contemplative life). Shewas often shown as a pen-
itent with long and unkempt hair.78 In cycles of her life the first scene was
usually the anointing of Jesus. In this scene Mary Magdalen sometimes
wore gaudy clothing that some scholars have taken as a sign of her prostitu-
tion but that probably represented her only as a woman fond of adorning
her body; the clothing implied rather than denoted the sexual sin.79
Beginning in the later Middle Ages, Mary Magdalen's sinful life became
a more popular theme among artists, reaching its zenith in the sixteenth-
century Netherlands.80 The idea of showing the worldly pleasures of the
Magdalen may have come from the drama.8l Even when the artists did not
78A particularly well known thirteenth-century image from Florence showed her as a peni-
tent holding a scroll, calling others to penitence, and surrounded by scenes from her life
(George Kaftal, Iconography of the Saints in TuscanPaintinB [Florence, 1952], p. 718, fig. 808).
Even here the sequence contained no scenes before the anointing. The works depicting her as
a penitent in the wilderness, letting her hair grow long did not refer to the nature of her
sin except perhaps by the unkempt hair which contrasted with her earlier personal adornment;
this image was influenced by the iconographic tradition of Mary of Egypt. One image con-
nected her earlier sin to her beautifill hair even more directly: in a fourteenth- or fifteenth-
century French manuscript she initiated her penance by cutting her hair (Grace Frank, "Popu-
lar Iconography ofthe Passion,"PMLA 46 [1931]: 334, pl. 3a).
79Gertrud Schiller, Christian Iconography, trans. Janet Seligman (Greenwich, CT, 1971),
1:158. At least one monument juxtaposed the image of MaryMagdalen anointing Christ's feet
with the image of original sin- Adam and Eve in the garden with the serpent: Walter Cahn,
C'Le tympan de Neuilly-en-Donjon," Cahiers de civilisation medievale 8 (1965): 353, fig. 1. For
early depictions of other scenes of Mary Magdalen's preconversion life, see George Warner,
Queen MaryQs Psalter (London, 1912), pls. 295-96; Clement and Guitard (n. 44 above), p. 45
and pl. 13; A. de Laborde, ed., La bible moralisee illustree, vol. 2 (Paris, 1912), pl. 261.
80Two illustrated manuscripts of the Alemannic poem Der Saelden Hort depicted her rid-
ing out to hunt and playing ball, symbols both of aristocratic recreation and of frivolity
(Wildenberg-De Kroon, Abb. 1-2); a choir robe from Danzig (first halfofthe fifteenth cen-
tury) showed her in fashionable dress, surrounded by men with animal heads, which may
represent demons or the bestial nature of fleshly enjoyment (W. Mannowsky, Der Danziger
Paramentenschatz: ICorchliche Gewander und Stickereien aus die Marienkirche, vol. 1, Die Chor-
mantel [Berlin, 193I], pp. 18-19 and frontispiece); a tapestry from the church of Saint
Ursula in Erirt showcd her riding out from her castle, accompanied by her lovers and by
hunting dogs (Janssen [n. 58 abovel, p. 285); a triptych by the Netherlandish "Master of the
Magdalen Legend," from 1510-20, similarly depicted her preconversion life with a hunting
scene (Max J. Friedlander, EarlyNetherlandish Painting, rev. ed. [New York, 1975], 12:13, pl.
7); she appeared dancing with cavaliers on fifteenth-century stained glass windows at Sable
and Rigny-le-Ferron in France (Janssen, pp. 383, 389); a sixteenth-century illustrated biogra-
phy, made for Louise of Savoyr, the mother of Francis I, also showed her hunting, dancing, and
kissing her lovers (Wildenberg-De Kroon, pp. 38-43 and Abb. 4-6).
8lEmile Male, Religious Art in France: The Late Middle Ages, trans. Marthiel Matthews
(Princeton, NJ, 1986), pp. 35-80, argued that these late medieval depictions of Mary Mag-
dalen's early life were influenced by the mystery plays. Wildenberg-DeKroon (esp. p. 67)
represent Mary Magdalen in actual erotic contact with men, such as kiss-
ing, they showed her engaging in activities that symbolized either erotic
life- the courtly dance or aristocratic worldly pleasure in general, such as
hunting. Single portraits of Mary Magdalen from this period also stressed
her couricliness. Other saints besides Mary Magdalen appeared in very rich
garb, but hers often carried ornament to the extreme as a means of indicat-
ing both her noble origins and her early concern with outward beauty. She
was a lady, definitely not a common woman, and her sins and temptations
were those of opulence rather than poverty. The numerous images of her by
the Master ofthe Female Half-LengthsE, in which she playedthe lute, or by
various Italian portraitists using famous courtesans as models, may have
been merely excuses for depicting beautifill women, but they reinforced
the image of the saint as a rich, well-dressed lady.82
The best-known pictorial representation of Mary Magdalen's sinfiul life
is an engraving by Lucas van Leyden. The main scene showed her dancing;
with a man, surrounded by a crowd including lovers kissing; in the back-
ground she rode out hunting. In the far background angels elevated her, a
scene from her eremitic life; only this tiny image indicated that the whole
represented Mary Magdalen. To a certain extent the engraving fell into the
category of genre rather than devotional art, Lucas using the saint to justify
creating a picture of the dance. However, as Craig Harbison notes, the im-
age made a religious point too: as Mary Magdalen's great sins were
forgiven, so too could God forgive those ofthe viewer. The dance stood for
the whole life of sin; the combination of the preconversion scenes and the
elearation set forth the great changes wrought by repentance.83
Artistic representations merely alluded to Mary Magdalen's sexual sin;
the surface images revealed only frivolity. She spoke with men but not in
particularly amorous positions; other lovers dallied in Lucasts engraving,
not she. In the portraits the symbolism of promiscuity appeared only very
subtly: the lute as reference to the female genitalia, the entabulated music
attempted to show that there was, in fact, no such influence and demonstrated that there are
differences in detail between dramatic and pictorial representations. She found the Mary
Magdalen of art to be older and more elegant than the young, frivolous, but proud and sensual
Mary Magdalen of the drama. But this does not mean that there was no influence.
82Friedlander, 12:18-19, pls. 41-45; Monika Ingenhoff-Dannhauser,MariaMazgdalexa,
Heili,ge und Sxnderin in der italienischen Renatssance: Stxdien zxrIkonoBraphie derHeiliBen won
Leonardo bis Tizian (Tubingen, 1984), esp. pp. 63-64; Lynne Lawner, Lives of the Courtesans:
Portraits of theRenagsance (New York, 1987), p. 167.
83Craig Harbison, "Lucas van Leyden, the Magdalen and the Problem of Secularization
in Early Sixteenth-Century Northern Art," Oud Hotlgnd 98 (1964): 120-21, 126-27. He
argued that the theological point here was the importance of repentance, in response to those
who stressed the contemplative life as the foundation of Mary Magdalen's sanctity.
28 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
that belonged to ribald chansons.84 The iconographic vocabulary of the

time certainly would have allowed artists to depict her sexual depravity
much more directly: contemporary paintings of the Prodigal Son consort-
ing with prostitutes in taverns revealed a graphic eroticism.85 But the
artists did not use this repertoire of images to representMaryMagdalen as
unequivocally prom}scuous. Given the iconographic conventions of the
Middle Ages it required only the pyxis in the hand of a haloed woman to
identify her and evoke the viewer's awareness of her sexual sin, but the art
clearly differentiated between a well-born lady who enjoyed the pleasures
ofthe flesh and a common whore.86
When at the end ofthe MiddleAges MaryMagdalen began to appear in
art as a worldly woman, this served partly to eroticize her as well as to stress
the volte-face of her conversion. The images were far from entirely nega-
tive. The scenes in which she enjoyed the pleasures of the worlul only
necessarily implied sin to a viewer who knew her story or who came to the
image with the idea that pleasure was evil Indeed, some ofthe iniitations
of Lucas van Leyden's engraving had no religious content at all: they merely
showed people having a good time.87 But to the monastically created mi-
sogynist ethos of the late Middle Ages, arly young, beautifill, courtly lady
was undoubtedly a sinner, and Mary Magdalen embodied this gender
definition.
84H. ColinSlim, "MaryMagdalen,MusicianandDancer," EarlyMusic8 ( 1980): 465; see

also H. Colin Slim, "Mary Magdalen, mondaine m?usicale"Report of the Twelfth Congress of the
Intemational Mxsicoloyicat Society, BerkeleyJ 1977, ed. Daniel Heartz and Bomlie Wade (Basel,
1981), p. 818; and Daniel fIeartz, "Mary Magdalen, Lutenist,"Journal of the Lxte Society of
America 5 (1972): 65.
85H. Colin Slim, The Prod,igal Son at the Whores: Mxsic, Art and Drgm6l (Irvine, CA,
1976); see also brothel scenes by Jan van Hemmessen (Friedlander, 12:51).
86Although Mary Magdalen was depicted in art often wearing red (Magdalen Larow,
"The Iconography of Mary Magdalen: The Evolution of a Western Tradition Ulltil 1300"
[Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1982], p. 122), and the stage directions for the liturgical
dramas called for her to wear red (Fletcher Collins, TheProduction of Medieval Church Music-
Drama [Charlottesville, VA, 1972], p. 62), this color was not partlcularly connected with
prostitution in the Middle Ages. Iwan Bloch,DieProstitxtioa (Berlin, 1912), 1: 814-15, gives
the regulations of various European cities about what distinguishing items (3f clothing pros-
titutes had to wear or avoid. In some cases :they were marke.d by wearing red) but lt was often
another color insteadt and sometimes they were forbidden to wear red. See also Engelbert
Kirschbaum, Lexikon derchristlichenIkono,graphie, vol. 2 (Rome, 1970), s.v. ;'Farbensymbolik."
In-any case, Mary Magdalen often appeared wearing other colors,pace Collins) p. 284. IIans
Hansel, 'CMaria Magdalena im Wandel der Zeiten," Forschxn,gen und Fortschritte 11 (1935):
158, suggested that she wore red for love, not for sexuality. The iChabitu meretricio" in which
she was to appear in the liturgical drama of Lras was not necessarily equivalent to a red
dress (version from the Fleury playbook in Young [n. 74 above], 2:200).
87Janssen, pp. 335-37.
THE LADY AND THE WHORE
Not only the motif of the convertcd sexual sinner linked Mary Magdalen
to the other five prostitute saints. There were also numerous explicit paral-
lels. Both art and literature coupled Mary the Egyptian and Mary
Magdalen; indeed, to a certain extent their stories were conflated, and the
legend of the Magdalen's penitent life owed a good deal to the legend of
Mary of Egypt.88 More subtle verbal parallels also show that these texts
were understood in much the same way. Both Marys behaved sinfilly in
order to assert their own freedom; both came from "good" (noble) families
who accused them of bringing shame on their kin; one Swedish text even
says that "another name" of Mary of Egypt was "sinfil woman."89 Pelagia,
whost surface adornment and frivolity, like the Magdalen's, signified much
deeper sin, fell at the feet of Bishop Nonnus in a parallel to the scene in
which Mary Magdalen anointed the feet of Christ; an Old Norse version
made this comparison explicit and also called her "the sinful woman."90
Mary Magdalen was clcarly a type and model for the other saints.
The echoes and parallels do not obscure a indamental difference among
the legends: the emphasis on monetary exchange in the stories of Mary of
Egypt (at least in some ofthe versions), Thais, and Mary the niece of Abra-
ham, and its absence in that of Mary Magdalen (and Pelagia). Mary
Magdalen was not of the class of women who would sleep with men for
money. But her indiscriminate sexuality made her the worst of sinners even
without the monetary element. Reading the legends of the other saints in
light of that of Mary Magdalen reveals that the undoubted distinction be-
twtcn the promiscuous lady and the common prostitute did not make a
difference. The social circumstances were diverse, but the sin was the same.
Though a need to earn a living might provide an explanation for prostitu-
tion, it was not an excuse; nor was noble birth an excuse.
88In art they often appeared together as penitents: Janssen, pp. 136, 321-22; Male, pp.
108-9. Bonaventure coupled them as penitents (see Joan Ferrante, Woman as ImaCge in Medi-
eval Literature [New York, 1975], p. 107); a tsvelfth-century German homiletic handbook
even equated Mary Magdalen, Mary the Egyptian, and Pelagia (Speculum Ecclesiae: Eine
frubmittelhochdeutsche Predi,gtsammlung, ed. Gert Mellbourn, Lunder germanistische For-
schungen, 12 [Lund, 1944], p. 98). See Baudoin De Gaiffier, "Notes sur le culte de Sainte
Marie-Madeleine,"AnalectaBollandiana 78 (1960): 164, n. 1; Jean Misrahi, "AVitaSanctae
MariaeMa,gdalenae (B.H.L.5456) in an Eleventh-Century Manuscript," Speculum 18 (1943):
335-39; and J. E. Cross, "Mary Magdalen in the Old En,glishMartyrology: The Earliest Extant
'Narrat Josephus' Variant of Her Legend," Speculum 53 (1978): 16-20, on the influence ofthe
life of Mary of Egypt on that of Mary Magdalen.
89Stephens (n. 21 above), 1:455.
90Barlaams ok Josaphats Sa,ga, ed. R. Keyser and S. R. Unger (Oslo, 1851), p. 88. See also
Flodoard in Rothschild and Strubel, trans. (n. 35 above), p. 82, lines 183-84, explicitly stat-
ing that she embraced Nonnus's feet as a substitute for Christ's.
30 RUTH MAZO KARRAS
The story of Mary Magdalen did not need to be as explicit

because it was so well known. Much could be conveyed with
when she was shown as fun loving, the implication was that
miscuous; the immoral life ofthe other saints had to be mor
But the fact that a life of pleasure meant a life of sexual lic
unique to her. Sexuality, in all these legends, was the woman
lence. Whether it occurred because of pride, greed, or love o
world, all feminine sin was expressed sexually. Thais's pride
did not lead her to steal to obtain jewels and ornaments; Mar
tian's desire to be free from parental rlomination did not lead her to
parricide; Afra's paganism did not lead her to sacrifice to idols; Mary Mag-
dalen's wealth and love of the good life did not lead her to eat sumptuous
and expensive banquets and overindulge in wine; all these women's diverse
sins led them to prostitution. This was the worst and the most typical sin
for a woman.
Stories of prostitutes provided the opportunities for the most dramatic
repentance, much more so, for example, than those of the desert fathers,
whose strict asceticism was in response to what medieval as well as modern
people would have considered fairly minor sins, such as temporary lapses in
charity. The message of repentance and forgiveness in the legends of the
prostitute saints spoke to men as well as to women. MaryMagdalen had the
honor of witnessing the first appearance of the risen Christ to emphasize
the possibility of hope for all sinners, regardless of gender. Unlike the Vir-
gin Mary, free from all sexual taint, the former prostitutes had shared in the
everyday life of the average Christian, including the sexual aspects of that
life. The emphasis on the sexuality ofthese women served to identify them
with women (or people) in general, in a way that virgin saints and es-
pecially the Virgin Mary could not be identified with them. The extremes
of the depths of these women's sin and the holiness of their later lives (or,
in the case of Afra, martyrdom) made the possibility of God's mercy all the
more vivid and provided hope to the audience.9l
The popularity of the cult of Mary Magdalen meant that constant allu-
sions in sermons and in art reinforced the message, even without always
making explicit references to her life as a sinner. Mary of Egypt's story was
well known on its own and as amiracle oftheVirgin, andhercultwas wide-
spread. The other prostitute saints served more as moral examples than as
9lAnton Mayer, "Der Heilige und die Dirne: Eine motivgeschichtliche Studie zu
Hrotsvits 'Abraham' and 'Paphnutius,"' Bayerische Blgtter fur das Gymnasiatschulwesen 67
(1931): 74-80; see Jean-Charles Payen, Le motif du repentir dans la litteraturefranfaise me'di-
evale (des originesal230) (Geneva, 1967), pp. 503-4, on the doctrine of contritionism andthe
role of the repentant prostitute motif in it. See Wiltrud aus der Funten, Mana Ma,gdalena in
derLyrik desMittelalters (Dusseldorf, 1966), pp. 166-215, esp. p. 190, on Mary Magdalen as
exemplum for all sinners.
subjects of cult, but Thais, Pelagia, and (in some manuscripts) Afra ap-
peared in the most popular of hagiographical compendia, as well as in
Vincent of Beauvais's popular encyclopedia. Their lives would have been
used by preachers seeking edifying stories to illustrate a sermon and thus
would be known to the general public as well as to the monks, priests, and
literate nobles or bourgeois who read devotional works. The church had an
interest in spreading the message of repentance as widely as possible, but
what is relevant here is not the purpose or intention of the writers but the
meaning to the readers and listeners. While preachers used the tales to illus-
trate the general theme of God's mercy to the contrite, a more specific
message about gender was also implicit in the tales, to be read by both
women and men. If women took the message as concerning femininity as
well as repentance, it would not have been an encouraging one.
The legends of the prostitute saints provided a place in Christianity for
the erotic, but not a positive one. Christianity attempted to eliminate sexu-
al pleasure from daily life and all sexuality from religion. Mary Magdalen
fillfilled some of the functions that in other religions were embodied by a
goddess of love or the wife of a male divinity.92 But the church only accept-
ed her sanctity after the denial ofthe erotic side of her being (even if echoes
persisted). The linking of prostitution with Venus in the life of Afra hinted
at a connection of prostitution or everl of all sexually active women with a
fimdamental opposition to Christianity. Medieval condemnations of wom-
en's cosmetics supported this idea: both women and men who ornamented
themselves were accused of pride, but it was women prostitutes or those
the preachers equated with them-who were accused of being dissatisfied
with what God had given them or of thinking that they could do better
than God. Not only did such women not live up to Christian moral stan-
dards but they also rejected God, and Christianity did not have a sexually
active feminine divine principle to offer them. Any erotic energy must be
discharged in love of Christ and in works of penance. The church, by stress-
ing the equation offeminine sexual activitywith prostitution and rejection
of God, showed its fiandamental distrust of women; the prostitute saints
could only expiate their past through the strictest asceticism, total denial
not only of sexuality but even of femininity, or through death. These saints
might hold out a message of hope to women, in that they achieved salva-
tion despite not being virgins and showed a way to sublimate sexuality in
spiritual striving, but that message was not as strong as the opposite one
that blamed them for men's sins.
The tales promoted repentarlce and salvation, but not of prostitutes in
particular. They did not suggest that prostitution was legitimate if the
920n the erotic aspects of Mary Magdalen, see Marjorie M. Malvern, Venxs in Sactcloth:
The Ma,gdalene's Ori,gins and Metzmorphoses (Carbondale, IL, 1975).
32 RUTH MAZO KARRSAS
prostitute repented. In the late Middle Ages, when prostitution was in-
stitutionalized in many European towns, prostitutes were required to
listen to sermons attempting to convert them, and religious orders were
established for repentant prostitutes, but no such penitents were can-
onized. The holy harlots were all placed at a chronological distance, muting
somewhat the message of repentance and salvation. Though that message
was directed at men as well as women, the fact that the dramatic conversion
from sin to repentance took place with women displaced all sexual sin onto
women and made feminine sexuality, not just sexuality in general, the
greatest evil. Amurderer could serve as an example of repentance (and often
did so in medieval handbooks of exempla). But few such became saints.
Authors chose sexual sins to depict most dramatically the process of repen-
tance and women as the sinners. The vast majority of female ''sinfill saints"
had committed sexual sirls. Holy virgins and dutiful wives could become-
saints too, of course.93 But the penitents were prostitutes. Sexuality, for
the Middle Ages, constituted a woman's life; if she sinned it would be by
abusing her most salient qualit,v.94 The prostitute could stand for Every-
woman. Sexuality defined the woman and it defined her sin.
The legends of the prostitute saints as retold in the Middle Ages re-
flected some of the concerns of their timen particularly those about money
and sexuality, but they also helped construct a notion of femininity of
which sexuality was an important part. These stories constituted what
teaching about prostitution most medieval people would have received,
and what they learned was that women who enjoyed their sexuality
amounted to prostitutes. The medieval discourse of gender, largely fash-
ioned by monastic writers, distrusted and feared women in general. They
may have been somewhat titillated by descriptions or depictions of the
prostitute saints' beauty and erotic activity before their conversion, but
that only made it easier to blame them for men's sins. By giving such promi-
nence (as the foremost example of repentance) to women completely
abandoned to their sexualVity, medieval clllture emphasized the equation of
women and lust and made the prostitute a paradigm of the feminine.
930n changing types of female sanctity, see Jane Tibbetts Schulenberg, "Sexism and the
Celestial Gynaeccum - from 500 to 1200," Journal of Medieval History 4 (1978): 117-33;
Weinstein and Bell (n. 3 above), pp. 220-38; Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lgdy and the
Pnest, trans. Barbara Bray (New York, 1983), pp. 123-38. Of thirty women saints in the LA
(not counting the eleven thousand virgins), nineteen were virgins, seven were married wom-
en, and four (Mary the Egyptian, Mary Magdalen, Pelagia, and Thais) were sexual sinrlers. Of
the nineteen virgins, five were miraculously preserved from rape or prostitution and the oth-
ers equally miraculously saved from forced marriage.
94In official theology women's main purpose was not sex but reproduction. See, e.g., the
views of Thomas Aquinas, in Brlmdage (n. 1 above), pp. 425-26. This might suggest that the
worst sin for a woman would be infanticide, since it subverted her primary purpose, but no
repentant unfit mothers or abortionists became popular as saints, as did the prostitutes.

Prostitutes Saints

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Prostitutes Saints

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend

Author(s): Ruth Mazo Karras

RUTH MAZO KARRAS

THE S I N N E R who became a saint always had a certain attraction for

HAG I O G RAP HY, CULTURAL H I STO RY, AN D P RO STITUTI O N

THE PROSTITUTE SAINTS OF LATE ANTIQUITY

In the Latin translation of Sophronius, Mary told Zosimus that she

She took a dwelling with the prostitutes,

t lla dlos ynam taht

Can there be anything more difficult,

I know it's rig

27Henri d'Arci, p. 147; Alphabet of Tales, p. 3; Carl Horstmann, "Die Evangelien-

She has chosen as her home the house of a certain pimp,

She was a fair enough woman

And she did a go

bodied some of the same characteristics- extreme beauty coupled with

38"Conversio et Passio Afrae," in Passtones Vitaeque SanctommAeviMerovinflici etAnti-

identification of the "sinful woman" with Mary of Bethany

name, honor, and family: "Rappresentazione di un miracolo di S. Maria Maddalena," in

A number of dramas, both German and French, referred to Mary M

I may keep a round table

own life or of Gospel scenes; her attributes were a pyxis (oi

that belonged to ribald chansons.84 The iconographic vocabulary of the

84H. ColinSlim, "MaryMagdalen,MusicianandDancer," EarlyMusic8 ( 1980): 465; see

THE LADY AND THE WHORE

The story of Mary Magdalen did not need to be as explicit

You might also like