Mary of Oignies
Mother of Salvation
Abstract
Mary of Oignies (1177-1213) was one of the first of the holy women who transformed religious life in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Living as a beguine and a free anchoress, she offered spiritual and temporal guidance to people from a diverse range of social stations and professions, including high clerics and common lay-people. Indeed, contemporary and later accounts reveal that Mary of Oignies greatly influenced the medieval Christian world.
