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This article explores how the thirteenth-century verse Vida de Marý´a Egipciaca portrays the sins, conversion, and spectacular penance of Mary of Egypt in terms of her rejection of and eventual entrance into orthodox economies. As I argue, hagiographic legends about prostitutes have economic subtexts and the Vida offers paradoxical visions of prostitution both as a foil and as an analogue for the financial metaphors that undergird the very economy of salvation. In the Vida, prostitution, as practiced by the repentant Marý´a, not only represents sexual depravity, but also a move from economic indifference and the unregulated distribution of sexual activities to a consciousness of just prices and exchange values. The poem thus offers a striking medieval articulation of Christian salvation economy, relating the salvation economy to notions of women�s value as objects of exchange. In so doing, the Vida also interlaces the context of thirteenth-century Mediterranean economic culture with its poetics.
