Poet-Bishop and Harlot Saint: Marbod of Rennes’s Life of Thais in Context

This article analyzes the twelfth-century verse life of the “harlot saint” Thais written by the bishop and auctor Marbod of Rennes, arguing that it should be understood as an intervention into a particular ecclesiastical context of Marbod’s episcopacy: the rise in penitential and eremitic or reclusive movements and the widespread presence of women, including those identified as meretrices or harlots, in these new communities. It examines the evidence for Marbod’s involvement in responding to and shaping religious practice in this context, and the broader interest in his works in female moral and spiritual life, including several of his episcopal letters and two poems in the Liber decem capitulorum. It then argues that Marbod’s life of Thais adjusted and refocused its immediate source (a redaction of the prose version) to highlight three themes: the economic dimension of Thais’s pre-conversion life, Thais’s agency in her penitential practice, and the necessity of wise pastoral conduct in relationships between female penitents and male spiritual directors.