Ulysses vocabulary

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Mary of Egypt

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Definition:
[344 - 421 A.D.]
The patron saint of penitents. She was a sex-crazed prostitute in her youth, eventually repented and became ascetic. Years later she walked on water to meet Saint Zosimas, took communion, died, and was found many months later in the desert by the same Zosimas. Luckily a passing lion helped Zosimas dig her grave.

image relating to Mary of Egypt
painting: by Emil Nolde (1911)

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Uses:
it was said—by way of a joke, of course—that they preferred finding a harlot in their chemises to a good woman. Certain other jokers reproached them with imitating the lives of the saints, in their own fashion, and said that all they admired in Mary of Egypt was her fashion of paying the boatmen.

Honoré de Balzac. Droll Stories.
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Who fed the Egyptian Mary in the cave
Or in desert? no wight but Christ sans faille.

Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales: Man of Law's Tale.
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Society, it is true, will not forgive people their past, but in the sight of God St. Mary of Egypt is no lower than the other saints.

Anton Chekhov. The Schoolmistress and other tales
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