The following story is taken from pages 262-264 of Sir E. A. Wallis Budge's One Hundred and Ten Miracles of Our Lady Mary: Translated From Ethiopic Manuscripts (London: Humphrey Milford, Publisher to the Oxford University Press, 1933). According to Sir Budge's Introduction, this comes from the oldest of the British Museum's portion of Britain's National Library of Ethiopic Manuscripts and was written in the fifteenth century A.D. (pg. xxvii).

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THERE was a certain JEW who was quarrelsome and fond of litigation; and one day he was trying to obtain money wrongfully in the court, and he was condemned to lose it. And in his great wrath he went into a church that was near him, and seeing there a picture of our Lady MARY with our Lord JESUS in her lap, he unsheathed his large knife and slashed the figures of our Lady and her Son, and then he took it and threw it down a deep well (or, pit). And as he turned round, his apparel being smeared with blood, he met a certain CHRISTIAN who said unto him, "O accursed man, whom hast thou killed this day? Was it a righteous man?" And the JEW denied it, and the CHRISTIAN said unto him, "Verily thou hast killed a righteous man, and human blood is on thine apparel, and the injury of God is upon thee and upon thy face." And God put fear into the heart of the JEW, and he said, "I have not killed a man but only gashed a picture." And when the CHRISTIAN heard his words, he seized him by the neck and dragged him to the magistrate, who asked him where he had thrown the picture, saying, "Where hast thou thrown it?" And the JEW replied, "In such-and-such a well." And men went with him, and they brought the picture up out of the well dripping with the blood that was running from the wounds of our Lady and her Son. And they took the picture back into the church where it had been with great honour and praising and rejoic-

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ing, and they burned the JEW alive. And they pay great honour to that picture to this day, and they call it the "Worker of Miracles".

The following Latin versions of this story are from VINCENT of BEAUVAIS, Spec. Hist., lib. VII, cap. 119, p. 265, and NEUHAUS, Die lat. Vorlagen, p. 59: --

I. Sanctae Dei genetricis MARIAE Natiuitas, quia ignorabatur, diu in Ecclesia non celebrabatur, sed sic diuinitus reuelata est. Solitarius quidam sanctae vitae fuit, qui singulis annis harmoniam in coelo nocte Natiuitatis eius audiuit. Qui cum miraretur, quod hoc alio tempore non audiret, rogauit Deum, vt sibi ostenderet, quid hoc significaret. Cui Angelus Domini apparens talia retulit: Virgo perpetua, quae Deum genuit hac nocte nata fuit, quod licet ab hominibus ignoretur ab Angelis celebre habetur. Qua reuelatione diuulgata, eius Natiuitas celebrari ab Ecclesia instituta est. SARACENUS quidam habebat imaginem Beatae Virginis in tabula depictam, cui assidue, et humiliter supplicabat, valde secum admirans, et pertractans, quomodo contigisse potuerit, ut virgo pareret, et filium lactaret. Dum autem hoc cogitaret ad excutiendam de corde eius dubietatem incarnationis CHRISTI, et confirmandam partus virginei veritatem, subito coeperunt de pectore illius imaginis carneae mammillae erumpere, et ex ipsis oleum coepit emanare. Quod videns ille SARACENUS, credidit in Deum, et sanctam Matrem eius, et baptizatus est.

II. De illa autem uere incontaminata VIRGINE MARIA oportunum putamus simpliciter caritati nostrae quod de eius sancta imagine conscriptum comperimus explicare, iuxta eorum narrationem qui inibi ubi contigit didicerunt, et redeuntes indubitanter scriptum derelinquerunt. In urbe namque CONSTANTINOPOLITANA JUDAEUS quidam imaginem beatae dei genetricis MARIAE in tabula breui figuratam, et in pariete domus cuiusdam affixam conspiciens, interrogauit cuius haec propria

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