Saint Thaïs

St. Thaïs, of fourth-century Roman Alexandria and of the Egyptian desert, was a repentant courtesan. St. Thaïs reportedly lived during the fourth century in Roman Egypt. Her story is included in hagiographic literature on the lives of the saints in the Greek church. Two such biographical sketches exist. The first, in Greek, perhaps originated during the fifth century. It was translated into Latin as the Vita Thaisis ["Life of Thaïs"] by Dionysius Exiguus during the sixth or seventh century. The other sketch comes to us in medieval Latin from Marbod of Rennes (d. 1123). Thaïs also appears in Greek martyrologies by Maurolychus and Greven, but not in Latin martyrologies. The lives of the desert saints and hermits of Egypt, including St. Thaïs, were collected in the Vitae Patrum ("Lives of the Fathers"). There has emerged a modern theory that suggests she is a legend deriving from "probably only a moral tale invented for edification." The saint shares her name with another Thaïs of wide notoriety in the Hellenistic world, many hundreds of years before. Of Ancient Athens, she had traveled to Persia with the campaign of Alexander. Notwithstanding, St. Thaïs remains on the Calendar of the Catholic Church, with her feast day October 8. In 1901 the Egyptologist Albert Gayet (1856–1916) announced the discovery near Antinoë in Egypt of the mummified remains of St. Thaïs and of Bishop Sérapion. The two mummies were exhibited at the Musée Guimet in Paris. Shortly thereafter he qualified his identification, leaving open the possibility that the remains were not those of these two saints. Thaïs is first briefly described as wealthy and beautiful, a courtesan living in the cosmopolitan city of Alexandria. Yet in the eyes of the church she was a public sinner. Thaïs, however, makes inquiries about the Christian religion and eventually converts.