ABSTRACT
A child sings a hymn to the Virgin Mary, despite the fact that his throat has been cut, and he has been thrown into the hole of a privy. Another child, a Jewish boy, suffers not the slightest scorch when his father, enraged at the discovery that his son has participated in the Eucharist, throws him into a hot oven. Queen Mary has kept him safe. These two narratives, “The Child Slain by Jews” and “The Jewish Boy,” exemplify the boundless power attributed to the Virgin Mary in the Middle Ages. Mary as Redeemer fascinated monk and miller, nun and mother, cleric and bureaucrat. In the Marian miracle tales written, collected, and disseminated for four centuries, Mary often saved an ignorant monk or promiscuous nun, but just as often she rescued secular characters: a mother, a noblewoman, a robber, a merchant, a Jew, a child.
