Promiscuous Grace: Imagining Beauty and Holiness with Saint Mary of Egypt

By Sonia Velázquez

A meditation on holiness and beauty through the study of Saint Mary of Egypt.

Saint Mary of Egypt has fascinated theologians, poets, and artists since the seventh century. Her story is richly evocative, encompassing sin and sanctity, concupiscence and asceticism, youth and old age. In Promiscuous Grace, Sonia Vel?zquez thinks with Saint Mary of Egypt about the relationship between beauty and holiness. Drawing on an archive spanning Spanish medieval poetry, Baroque paintings, seventeenth-century hagiography, and Balzac's Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu, Vel?zquez argues for the importance of the senses on the surface of religious texts on her way to revealing why the legend of Saint Mary of Egypt still matters today.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226826104
• ISBN13: 9780226826103
• Release Date: May 2023
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"