PART TWO

Current Scholarship of the Old English Mary of Egypt

The survival of three manuscript witnesses to the Old English Life of Mary of Egypt suggests this anonymous prose life of a repentant prostitute-turned-saint was received favorably in Anglo-Saxon England, yet few scholars have researched or written about it. Publications on the Old English Mary of Egypt represent the work of both textual and literary scholars and comprise source studies, linguistic analyses, and literary interpretations, with comparison and contrast to the saints' lives of Ælfric a primary focus of researchers in both textual and literary fields. All of these studies have been based on either the text of Cotton Julius E. vii or on Skeat's edition of the Julius version, with occasional references to Otho B. x coming from Skeat's apparatus. Although textual scholars will most immediately benefit from the new textual evidence I have discovered in Otho B. x, literary scholars will indirectly gain new insights as well.

Source Studies

In his essay, "On the Sources of Non-Ælfrician Lives in the Old English Lives of Saints, with Reference to the Cotton-Corpus Legendary," Hugh Magennis attempts to determine which Latin manuscript may have been the source of the anonymous saints' lives in Ælfric's Lives of Saints, including Mary of Egypt. Basing his study on Patrick Zettel's landmark argument for the Cotton-Corpus Legendary as the major Latin source used by Ælfric, he compares the two copies of the Cotton-Corpus version of Mary of Egypt [21] as well as two additional Latin versions [22] and two early printed versions of Paul the Deacon's Latin text [23] to Skeat's edition of the Old English version in Cotton Julius E. vii. Noting that the two printed versions differ in the first several pages because they are based on different translations of the Greek original, he skips over the first 282 lines of Skeat's edition (294). The readings cited by Magennis that occur in both Old English manuscripts are virtually identical, so it is unfortunate he elects to ignore Skeat 1-99, lines corresponding to Otho B. x ff. 25(26) and 26(56), two folios not collated in Skeat's edition. The results of his study are accordingly incomplete.

A theoretical approach to source study is presented by Colin Chase in "Source Study as a Trick with Mirrors: Annihilation of Meaning in the Old English 'Mary of Egypt'." Chase contends that "the radically post-Gutenberg concept of the source or primary text" is not as useful in the analysis and interpretation of medieval texts as is "comparison of what [he] prefer[s] to call variant versions" (23-24). To supports his argument that comparison of "variant versions...yields insights...more likely to derive from recognition of contrasts than of congruence"(24), he compares lines from the Old English Mary of Egypt to parallel lines in the Greek and Latin versions. The Old English text he compares is Skeat 49-50: hé nanre maran lare bysene ne beþorfte on his mode ("he needed not in his mind the example of any more teaching"). Chase prefaces his comparison of versions by stating that "the culture within which even traditional texts are repeated becomes implicit in their meaning, offering to later generations an invaluable key to understanding" (29). Chase then translates the seventh-century Greek as "not at all needing the teaching of another," the seventh-century Latin as "I don't need the teaching of anyone else very much," and the ninth-century Latin as "not requiring another's teaching in anything" (29). Chase points out that the addition in the Old English of bysene ("example") "has given a slightly different sense to spiritual discipleship in the Old English Mary story than it had in the earlier versions"(29). He notes that,

The semantic net that constitutes a text extends beyond its physical boundaries to include the whole culture of which it is a part. The disturbing element is that this net is impossibly complex and even subject to variation according to the way a given text might be understood in different places at the same period. Demonstration of an exclusive reading of a text becomes as impossible as the establishment of the text itself (30).

Chase concludes his essay by recommending that scholars "edit scribal versions -- not diplomatic texts, but readable versions which recognize the radical connection of a text with its culture" (32). Chase would, I suspect, have been pleased to learn that Otho B. x preserves a different, albeit somewhat problematic, version of the lines he uses as his example, and would have quite possibly modified his argument to encompass not only multi-generational variants, but different contemporary interpretations as well.[24]

Comparisons to Ælfric

As his title implies, in "Contrasting Features in the Non-Ælfrician Lives in the Old English Lives of Saints," Magennis presents a study of Ælfric's style and usage in his saints' lives in comparison to and contrast with that of the anonymous saints' lives in Julius E. vii. In his analysis of Mary of Egypt, he frequently refers to the "literary mediocrity" of the translation, basing his criticism on its contrasts with Ælfric's style (333) and its "Latinate nature" (334), characterized by "a high degree of dependence on participial constructions" and a "frequent resort to absolute phrases" (333). Although many of the examples of vocabulary and usage he includes were destroyed in Otho B. x, the few examples that do survive are identical in both manuscripts.[25] Magennis characterizes the translation as "much inferior to the lives by Ælfric" (336), and concludes his analysis by declaring "it is not the work of an experienced translator."

Magennis devotes an entire essay to the content of the story in "St. Mary of Egypt and Ælfric: Unlikely Bedfellows in Cotton Julius E. vii?" Contrasting Ælfric's active, communal approach to monasticism with the ascetic, contemplative focus of Mary of Egypt, Magennis observes that the inclusion of this anonymous life in Julius E. vii, a manuscript primarily devoted to saints' lives by Ælfric, "reflects something of the variety of hagiographical material in circulation in late Anglo-Saxon England (material which scholarly preoccupation with Ælfric tends to overlook)" (111). It also, he notes, suggests "a more eclectic tradition of transmission of vernacular Christian writing than that associated with Ælfric himself" by its inclusion in both Julius E. vii and Otho B. x (110).

In addition to its different approach to monasticism, the Life of Mary of Egypt, Magennis observes, also contrasts with Ælfric's attitude toward sexuality. Whereas Ælfric's female saints are asexual virgins who frequently defy civilian male authority, Mary not only is sexually experienced but assumes an authoritative role over Zosimus by virtue of her dramatic turning from a life of sinfulness to a life of sanctity. Magennis cites a phrase from Sk 523, þe bryne þære flæsclican gehwyrfednysse ("the burning of fleshly inclination"), as an example of "an attitude of disapproval" of sexuality in Mary of Egypt, yet states that the writer considers Mary "particularly admirable because she has come so far, from the enslavement of sexual appetite to spiritual perfection" (109).[26]

Mary Clayton develops the theme of contemplative monasticism in Mary of Egypt further in "Hermits and the Contemplative Life in Anglo-Saxon England." Following a history of the importance of the eremitic life in early Western Europe and Anglo-Saxon England through the eighth century,[27] she discusses literary sources that explicate Ælfric's elevation of the active over the contemplative life as a preferred model. Noting that Ælfric "seems to have deliberately refrained from presenting the life of the contemplative hermit as an ideal" (162), she observes that although available in the sources known to him, the Life of Mary of Egypt was ignored by Ælfric, primarily because it celebrates asceticism as an ideal means of achieving spiritual perfection.[28] Clayton also notes that in spite of official disapproval of eremitic practice during the period of the Benedictine reform, the "life of Mary of Egypt...was considered of sufficient importance to be translated into Anglo-Saxon and incorporated in the principal surviving manuscript of the Lives of Saints" (162).[29] Her emphasis on the inclusion of Mary of Egypt in the Julius E. vii manuscript overlooks the fact that the version surviving in Otho B. x provides additional evidence for her argument.

Anglo-Saxon Female Sexuality

In "Chastity and Charity: Ælfric, Women, and the Female Saints," Clare Lees writes about Mary of Egypt in the context of the relationship between female hagiography and Anglo-Saxon sexuality. As she observes,

Female saints confront and overcome the deadliness of their bodies and the deadliness of their sexuality time and again. In representing the desire to transform the pleasures of the sexed body into those of the spirit, Anglo-Saxon Christianity demonstrates an intimate acquaintance with the problems of the flesh, its desires and vicissitudes...[t]he transformation of sexuality into the gift of chastity is the prime component of the female saint's life. Women have sexuality where men don't, and women who become saints redirect it toward God (147).

The passages she quotes do not survive in Otho B. x. The first addresses the danger of "looking at the saint" (Skeat 204-20)(149), the second uses Mary's inscription in the sand of instructions to Zosimus concerning her burial (Skeat 748-54) as an example of how "[f]emale desire is transformed into spiritual discourse"(150).[30] Lees's equation of Mary's denial of her once obsessive sexuality with the unblemished virginity of Ælfric's female saints presents a convincing interpretation of the unique relationship between female sexuality and sanctity in Anglo-Saxon England.

In "Holy Harlots: Prostitute Saints in Medieval Legend," Ruth Mazo Karras focuses on the paradox of the sanctified prostitute as an embodiment of "the message that confession, contrition, and penance could wipe away the worst of sin" (3). Although her study is not exclusive to the Old English Mary of Egypt, providing examples from Continental as well as English versions of the story throughout the entire Middle Ages, Karras observes that the earliest vernacular versions, based on the Latin translation of Sophronius's Greek version, depict Mary as especially promiscuous because she "refused to accept payment for sex, out of fear that a charge would stand in the way of her gratification" (9). Echoing Lees, Karras observes that "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" (31).

Narrative Structure

In "Bodies and Boundaries in the Old English Life of St. Mary of Egypt," Andrew Scheil claims to present "an analysis of the vita's narrative structure that explores the enduring attraction of Mary and Zosimus" (138), but his thesis is complicated by a preoccupation with a "dialectic" of opposing dichotomies, "known and unknown, sacred and profane," "the masculine ascetic body and the feminine sexual body" (138), which, he states, "is a hermeneutic strategy used to explore the meaning of masculine bodily experience" (137). Scheil's erratic web of unconvincing arguments is further entangled by frequent misrepresentations of the story, despite the fact that more than half his essay comprises direct quotes of Skeat's edition and translation. For example, in the first paragraph, he writes, "Zosimus encounters an exotic woman with black skin and long white hair" (135), yet the Old English of Skeat's edition (176-177) states þa loccas hire heafdes wæron swá hwíte swá wull and þa ná siddran þonne oþ þone swuran ("the locks of her head were as white as wool, and they [reached] no farther than to the neck"). His characterization of the emaciated septogenarian Mary as "exotic" may simply mean she is "strange" or "uncouth," but he later remarks that "[a]t many points...the text suggests...sexual desire and tensions running underneath the surface of Mary and Zosimus' relationship" (144). Although Zosimus recognizes Mary as his spiritual superior, Scheil credits the monk with "interrogating" Mary into "final mastery over her polluted flesh" (149). Somewhat like a medieval misogynist, Scheil concludes his essay by defining Mary as "an aged, but exotic and erotic Egyptian woman representing all the fantasies, both of pleasure and of nightmare, in the unknown limits of the masculine imagination" (152).

Summary

As the preceding review of current scholarship of the Old English Mary of Egypt illustrates, this anonymous prose life has received scant attention. Brief mention of the text in other publications usually focuses on the codicological issues surrounding its belated inclusion in the Julius E. vii manuscript. For example, according to Joyce Hill,

The non-Ælfrician Mary of Egypt (122v-36r, Skeat XXIIIB)...was added after the main scribe drew up the table of contents on fol. 4v, because it is not listed. Additionally, there is evidence of insertion at the point where the text occurs. The writing of Mary of Egypt is more compressed than elsewhere, and Mary of Egypt ends part way down 136r, with the rest of the recto and all of the verso blank, the blank space completing a four-leaved quire before the next item begins on 137r (Hill 236).

To accommodate Mary of Egypt's omission from the table of contents of Julius E. vii, in his edition Skeat assigns the text the supplementary number XXIIIB and states,

This Homily does not really belong to the set. It will be observed that it is not recognized in the Table of Contents...Moreover, the style varies so much from that of the other Homilies, that it clearly was not written by Ælfric. Nevertheless, it is printed here because, though it does not belong to the set, it belongs to the MS., into which it was thrust by the scribe who wrote it (2:446).[31]

The Life of Mary of Egypt may have been "thrust" into Julius E. vii "by the scribe who wrote it," but no evidence suggests it was a late addition to Otho B. x. However, my transcription and collation with Skeat's edition of the text in Otho B. x does indicate the Otho scribe preserves a subtly different representation of the text than that of the Julius E. vii scribe. Although interest in Mary of Egypt has been minimal, the new textual evidence from Otho B. may inspire future research on this neglected Old English saint's life. Following my presentation of this textual evidence in Part Three, I discuss in the Conclusion potential directions for new research this evidence may inspire.