The post-conquest repentant harlot has surprisingly little in common with her Old English counterpart, as the late twelfth-century Anglo-Norman Vie de Marie l’Egyptienne (or T Vie) and the late thirteenth-century Middle English Early South English Legendary Life of Mary Magdalene will make plain. This shift is at least partially caused by the cross-fertilisation of hagiography with romance from the twelfth century onward, as well as the rise in popularity of a more affective piety centring on the human Christ and revalorising performances of femininity. This causes the prostitute-turned-saint to be transformed into a romance lady whose femininity and concomitant sensuality are stable and unchanging throughout her life, so that femininity in these lives represents both the most condemnable of sins and the highest heavenly rewards. In other words, the harlot saint has the potential to be the worst sinner and the most revered saint throughout her life: she just needs to redirect her early lecherous excesses towards a more deserving object, Christ, and express them in the language of bridal imagery. As such, she offers a highly relatable model for Everyman. As Christ's bride, her trajectory mirrors the ascent of the Christian soul from an earthly to a heavenly plane. Further, through their representation as Brides of Christ, holy harlots become linked with the Virgin Mary, and regain a form of honorary virginity. In truth, their affective stance leads them to represent all facets, or extremes, that femininity encompasses: from most lecherous to utterly virginal, from maidservant to queen, the holy harlot is all women, and all woman.

We have seen in the previous chapter that the Old English repentant harlot's conversion already entailed much less of a gender inversion than that of her Latinate predecessor, so that becoming a female saint did not mean for them performing masculinity but, rather, queering one's gender, moving away from gender binaries to rise above the rest of humanity. This departure from masculinity is completely realised in the two harlot saints presented in this chapter, who, instead of becoming queer, perform femininity in sin as well as in sainthood.