In the first episode of their miniseries looking at the lives and voices of medieval women, Irina Dumitrescu and Mary Wellesley encounter Saint Mary of Egypt, who (if she existed) lived sometime between the 3rd and 6th centuries. In the stories of Mary’s life she leads a wild and licentious youth before exiling herself to serve penitence in the desert. There she meets Zosimas, an ascetic monk, and teaches him the value of an imperfect life. Several accounts of her life were written in the Middle Ages, including one in Old English that appears in a manuscript with Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints.Sign up to our Close Readings subscription:Directly in Apple Podcasts here: https://apple.co/3pJoFPqIn other podcast apps here: https://lrb.me/closereadingsThis episode was first published on the LRB Podcast in September 2021. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.