Promiscuous Grace - (Class 200: New Studies in Religion) by Sonia Velázquez (Paperback)

About the Book

"Theologians, poets, artists, and laypeople alike have been fascinated by Saint Mary of Egypt's legend since it was first recorded in the seventh century. Mary's prominence is religious and symbolic, encompassing sin and sanctity, the excesses of nymphomania and asceticism, the charms of nubile youth and the wrinkles of old age. In Promiscuous Grace, scholar of religion Sonia Velâazquez thinks with Saint Mary of Egypt about what beauty has to do with holiness. With an archive spanning medieval Spanish poetry, Baroque paintings, a seventeenth-century hagiographic drama, and Balzac's treatment of Saint Mary in Le chef-d'oeuvre inconnu, Velâazquez argues for the relevance of the appeal to the senses and the importance of the surface in religious texts. She draws on insights from philosophy, literary history and theory, and religious, visual and gender studies, and pays close attention to the texture of the words and images that make the legend of Saint Mary of Egypt come alive and remain relevant today"--

Book Synopsis

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 Velázquez 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, Velázquez 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.

Review Quotes

"This remarkable and well-written book . . . is both chronologically expansive and laser-focused. Moreover, throughout Promiscuous Grace, Velázquez creatively weaves insights from historical sources and critical intertexts from the fields of Art History, Religious Studies, patristic and feminist theology, literary and drama theory and aesthetics into her interpretations. Consequently, Promiscuous Grace will doubtless appeal to a wide audience and serve as a model for comparatists."-- "Bulletin of Spanish Studies"

"Velázquez skillfully weaves together her analysis of an anonymous thirteenth-century poem (Vida de Santa María Egipciaca), the artwork depicting Mary of Egypt created by the seventeenth-century
painter Jusepe de Ribera, and Juan Pérez de Montalbán's play, La gitana de Menfis also from the seventeenth-century. What results is an expansive interdisciplinary study of this late-ancient text, its receptions, and inspirations, as well as the articulation of nuanced theories of religion, beauty, and holiness. Notably, Velázquez also articulates an image theory--one that suggests the story of Mary's conversion in her Life intimates the power of images as a site of contemplation--is exhibited through the very images (literary and otherwise) of the desert saint herself."-- "Religious Studies Review"

"Holding the paradox of the sensual saint delicately, Velázquez engages artifacts representing and interpreting Mary's life to unfold the way her promiscuity becomes an image of grace, illustrating how grace itself has a promiscuous character, like a beautiful body freely given. . . . In her detailed research and elegant prose, she shows us the textured reflection that is possible when we resist assimilating Mary of Egypt to well-worn paradigms of womanly beauty and learn instead to appreciate, through artifacts about her life, the interrelatedness of beauty and holiness, the theological and the aesthetic, unmerited favor and promiscuous grace. Promiscuous Grace is a book that handsomely rewards the reader for attention paid--or freely given."-- "Journal of Religion"

"Velázquez's illuminating study of early modern representations of St. Mary of Egypt in Promiscuous Grace convincingly demonstrates the subversive potential of this underexamined figure whose life, the artists who depicted her understood, overturns the traditional Christian hierarchy subordinating the material to the spiritual and, by extension, women to men. . . . an essential intervention in ongoing examinations of the tension between material and spiritual, body and soul, earth and heaven, in religious art and literature."-- "Exemplaria"

"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

About the Author

Sonia Velázquez is assistant professor of religious studies and comparative literature at Indiana University Bloomington. She is coeditor of Pastoral and the Humanities: Arcadia Re-inscribed.