With many thanks to Professor Wendy Belcher (Princeton University, US), we are delighted to share information about the Princeton Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Egyptian Miracles of Mary (PEMM) project website. Via the new data portal, we can learn about more than 1,000 vivid STORIES about the Virgin Mary preserved in Ge’ez between 1300 and the present. These stories are searchable by date, manuscript, place of origin, language, title, and many other categories. Over 600 of the stories appear on the site in English translation, thrice those previously available.
2,500 beautiful Ethiopian PAINTINGS of the Virgin Mary or her stories can also be viewed online. The paintings are searchable by many categories, including date, digital quality, repository, title, and so on. Thousands of Ethiopian paintings of over 100 stories about the Virgin Mary are now visible on the site, the first time ever that they have appeared in one place. Over 1000 of the paintings were digitized in colour, and another 800 were digitized in black & white. They are collected from over 250 Täˀammərä Maryam (Miracles of Mary) manuscripts. There is also information about over 950 Täˀammərä Maryam MANUSCRIPTS, from over 100 repositories around the world.
The PEMM researchers have revealed that the Marian tradition in Africa is older, richer, and more indigenous than previously thought by scholars.
They have uncovered over 1,000 stories in Geʿez manuscripts, almost twice the number of stories previously identified.
Over 800 of those stories were composed in Ethiopia, Eritrea, or Egypt, far more than previously thought.
Less than 6 percent were composed in Europe, far fewer than previously thought.
The Ethiopian and Eritrean Marian tradition was infused with new blood through translations of almost 150 stories from Arabic into Geʿez between 1382 and 1540.
Ethiopian and Eritrean stories about the Virgin Mary have been composed for six centuries, from the late 1300s into the 2010s.
If you want to learn more about the research findings of the project team, please see the Research Posts on the most common stories; the most commonly illustrated stories; and French and Spanish translations of the Cannibal of Qəmər story.
For help navigating the site, please consult Using the Site.
