Princeton Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Egyptian Miracles of Mary (PEMM) project

Miracles of Mary Number of Stories in Manuscripts

By PEMM Team

October 6, 2023

How many stories do Miracles of Mary manuscripts have?

Wallis Budge speculated long ago that a standard Täˀammərä Maryam manuscript has a miracle story for every day of the year. This is not true. Not one PEMM manuscript has 365 stories. Only 13 PEMM manuscripts have more than 350 stories (with one at 369 stories). No PEMM manuscript has 400 stories; the highest is one with 393 stories.

We hope that the PEMM project will enable scholars to stop repeating this unfounded speculation made over 100 years ago by Wallis Budge.

Many Ge'ez manuscripts have just one or two stories, added in with other texts. 155 PEMM manuscripts out of PEMM's set of about 1,000 manuscripts have five or fewer stories.

The most common number of stories in a full PEMM Täʾammərä Maryam is 34, 61, or 73 stories, with almost half being mid-sized compilations containing between 30 and 79 stories.

pricenton ethiopian eritrean & egyptian miracles of marry project

The Princeton Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Egyptian Miracles of Mary (PEMM) project is a comprehensive resource for the 1,000+ miracle stories written about and the 2,500+ images painted of the Virgin Mary in these African countries, and preserved in Geʿez between 1300 and the present.

Princeton Department of Comparative Literature 133 East Pyne, Princeton, NJ 08540

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