Just a gloss on Mary of Egypt. She was naked because she had spent so
many years as a solitary penitent in the desert that her clothes had
decayed away. Her hair covered her so that she did not lose her modesty
when she confronted a passing monk and asked him to bring her the
Eucharist to help her in dying. I don't think that the nakedness was
part of her spirituality.
The question of covering nakedness is more common: Agnes was shielded by
her hair when condemned to a brothel, for example. My guess would be
that any women who tried to make some spiritual statement by stripping
would be swiftly hustled out of sight and certainly not commemorated in
hagiography. Though--maybe among heretics??
Jo Ann McNamara
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