Note 26 — Chapter II

St. Mary of Egypt was a saint of great repute in Spain and Portugal, and had her adventures written by Pedro de Ribadeneyra in 1609, and Diogo Vas Carrillo in 1673; they were also fully given in the “Flos Sanctorum” of the former, and, in a more attractive form, by Bartolomé Cayrasco de Figueroa, at the end of his “Templo Militante,” (Valladolid, 1602, 12mo,) where they fill about 130 flowing octave stanzas, and by Montalvan, in the drama of “La Gitana de Menfis.” She has, too, a church dedicated to her at Rome on the bank of the Tiber, made out of the graceful ruins of the temple of Fortuna Virilis. But her coarse history has often been rejected as apocryphal, or at least as unfit to be repeated. Bayle, Dictionaire Historique et Critique, Amsterdam, 1740, fol., Tom. III. pp. 334-336.