Mary of Egypt

Mary of Egypt was an Egyptian ascetic said to have lived in Byzantine-era Palestine in the fifth century. According to hagiographic tradition she lived a dissolute life in Alexandria before undergoing a spiritual transformation and withdrawing into the desert, where she spent decades as a solitary ascetic. Her story centers on her encounter late in life with a monk named Zosimas, who documented her account of her own conversion; the narrative reports that Zosimas witnessed her praying while apparently walking above the water of the Jordan. Her hagiography was read into the record at the Second Council of Nicaea in the eighth century, during the Byzantine Church's debates over the veneration of icons. Mary is honored as a saint in the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Coptic traditions, though scholars have questioned her historicity, and medieval artists sometimes confused her identity with that of Mary Magdalene.