Word: courtesans
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...best, but the most glamorous female spy was Mata Hari (Eye of the Morning), who claimed to be a half-caste Javanese temple dancer, but who was in fact the daughter of a solid, middle-class Dutch family. Mata Hari, for ten years France's most famed courtesan, was recruited into German intelligence as Agent H. 21 . She managed to send information out of wartime Paris through smitten neutral diplomats. In 1917, when a French military court confronted her with evidence that she had received large sums of money from German officials, Mata Hari had a ready explanation: "They...
...Celtic queen (or princess, or priestess or high courtesan) must have been a gorgeous sight as she lay in death in her chariot. Around her neck was a collar of tubular bronze. On her breast were brooches and necklaces set with amber and stones. She wore bracelets of amber and anklets of hollow bronze...
Mary Magdalene, the repentant courtesan who followed Christ, is one of the most famed and least-known characters in the Gospels. Because of her early trade, some of the ancient church fathers, and later Christians of excessive scruple, have been embarrassed by her presence in the liturgy. On the other hand, her sinful past has been a never-failing godsend to novelists trying to put a little spice into stories with a New Testament setting...
...Courtesan. Gospel references to Mary Magdalene are fragmentary. Although she is mentioned by name twelve times, there are few details given about her life or her significance as one of Christ's followers. Bruckberger holds to the view of most Roman Catholic scholars that she is mentioned elsewhere in the Gospels by other names.* She is, he believes, the "woman in the city" in Luke 7:37, who washes Christ's feet with her tears, and humbly begs forgiveness of her sins at the house of Simon the Pharisee. She is also, by this interpretation, the New Testament...
...into a great deal of difficulty trying to set up standards of personal morality. In their uninstructed search for the true and the beautiful, writes Bruckberger, they "gave to bodily beauty the character of a religious revelation." Since they felt that beauty should be enjoyed, the figure of the courtesan became not at all a shameful one. To Father Bruckberger, the clever courtesan Mary Magdalene symbolizes in the Gospels the outward beauty of the Greek ideal as well as its moral shortcomings...