MARIA EGYPTIACA, Saint. — Commemorated in the Roman Martyrology on April 2; however, there is no evidence that she was venerated with liturgical cult in antiquity. The earliest source that speaks of her is Cyril of Scythopolis in the biography of St Ciriacus. Cyril recounts that, when he went to visit Ciriacus together with the monk John, the latter showed him Mary’s tomb and told him her story as he had learned it from the saint herself.
She had been a singer in the church of the Anastasis in Jerusalem, and, realizing that many were led into temptation because of her, she decided to leave and withdrew into a cave in the desert, living there for 18 years in absolute solitude and penance. The monk John added that, on returning from a visit to Abbot Ciriacus, he found her dead, and with the help of the monks of the Laura of Souka he buried her in the same cave where she had lived, blocking up the entrance.
At the beginning of the 7th century St Sophronius of Jerusalem, using Cyril’s account, wrote a legendary biography according to which Mary, born in Egypt, was led to penance and the eremitical life after a life of lust spent in Alexandria. Also legendary is the life of St Moschus in his Pratum spirituale.