“In this luminous, revelatory, and sensitive book, at once wide-ranging and full of hidden depths, Velázquez lovingly follows the afterlives of Saint Mary of Egypt across words and images as well as spaces, places, and stages from Egypt to Spain. Velázquez’s beautiful prose and gorgeous readings express a deep care for her subject, leading us on a journey that touches the soul as well as the mind.”

Julia R. Lupton, University of California, Irvine

“In this superbly crafted meditation on religion and materiality, Velázquez interweaves the poems, art, and drama dedicated to Mary of Egypt in premodern Spanish Catholicism and its contemporary traces elsewhere. Her work on the creativity inspired by this saint evocatively reimagines the philosophical concept of beauty around the aging, holy female body and the Christian concept of grace around the profane. While grounded in thirteenth- and sixteenth-century Spain, this study fruitfully reimagines the peninsular Mary of Egypt as ‘good to think with’ for historians of European Christianity, art, and theater more broadly.”
 

Jessica A. Boon, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill