Songs of Holy Mary

            In many of the short stories told by these songs, we see the Holy Mary triumphing over everything and showing the truth and being this beautiful, gentle woman who saves everyone if they’re worth saving, if they believe in her. In one of the first stories, a young Jewish boy is thrown into the oven by his father because he had received communion at church. Mary saves the boy because he thought she looked beautiful and kind, just from the statue he saw in the church—and his mother is converted and baptized too, because of his salvation. In this story and others, other religions (like Judaism) are shown to be inferior and somewhat less important or less pure than Christianity, since the Holy Mary is kind of the ultimate symbol of purity and goodness.

            With the story of the Moors trying to take over Constantinople, we see again an apparent pagan believer being converted to Christianity after just seeing the Holy Mary come down and save the city, and he all of a sudden knows he can’t attack the city anymore, and he asks the priest not to tell any of his people that he converted. It’s like he knows, now that he’s a Christian, that his old religion was wrong or not as valid. Just like in the other stories about Jews converting to Christianity, they come to see how their own way of life isn’t as good and pure, and the Holy Mary is able to show them that mostly by just showing herself to them, or telling the truth so they see the error of their ways. Sometimes it’s subtle and sometimes it’s not, but the feeling is still there, that Christianity was so far above everyone and would bring you up to that higher level by believing what they believed.