It is necessary to approach the church of the Virgin with due humility and in a penitent state of mind. Wilful sinners can not force an entry until they have duly and earnestly repented (Nos. 98, 217, etc.), neither are Moors allowed to enter for unholy purposes, but are struck blind and paralyzed, etc. (No. 229). Acts of violence committed in the church are always fittingly punished with disease, paralysis, or death. Sometimes such punishment is accompanied by significant acts by the image of María, sometimes not. In No. 164, because of the affront offered by the Infante D. Fernando in arresting a prior before the altar on the charge of counterfeiting money, the image of the Virgin separated itself from that of the Son and lost its color. After the repentance of the Infante the form of the mother went back to that of the Son but never regained its color.

No. 38 has the added element, by no means uncommon, of the Devil or of demons acting as the agents of God in killing the offenders. This time it was the Conde de Poitiers who with his men entered and desecrated the sanctuary, one going so far as to maltreat the image of the Virgin with the Child in her arms by striking it, thereby breaking one of the arms. To his surprise and horror, blood flowed freely from the wound. Demons killed the guilty person, and hearing of it the Count vindicated himself by punishing all those implicated. So particular is the Virgin about the sacredness of her shrines that some pilgrims at Santa María de Terena after becoming engaged in a terrible fight among themselves during the night, were awe-struck, on going out to collect the dead and wounded, to find them all well and reconciled, altho their armor was battered and broken. The Blessed Mother would not tolerate Christian blood shed by Christians in front of her church (No. 198).

Those legends which have to do with the earthly life of the Mother of Jesus are very rare, and when we do find them it almost startles us to think she was ever considered as a person, human in all respects as they were and living on this earth. We learn, however (No. 27), that in the time of the apostles, the Christians had bought a synagogue intending to convert it into a church. When the Jews hear of their intention they reclaim it and carry the matter before Caesar. The Christians go to Mary, who is then living at Mount Sion and ask her advice. She tells them not to fear, for she will help them at the trial. When the day arrives the case is called in the church building. As Peter takes his place beside the altar an image of Mary appears on the altar cloth. This is too much for the Jews, who refuse to carry the trial further. Tradition has it that this was the first church dedicated to Santa María. Some time later Emperor Julian ordered the Jews to take away the image of the Virgin, but it frowned on them in such a manner that they feared to touch it.[57]

CHAPTER IV
Miracles Performed by Images

Since the image of the Virgin was intended to be a representation of the Divine Mother, it often, especially in the mind of the peasant, attracted to itself all her attributes. The result was that in a number of cases it was the image and not the Virgin that performed the deed. Often, also when the miracle was attributed to Santa María it was not simply to the saint, Mary the mother of Jesus, who lived in the distant past, far away in the Holy Land, nor to Mary, the most powerful of all the saints in heaven, but it was to the very present, and very local saint, Santa María de Salas, or Santa María del Puerto, as the case might be. There is little doubt that in the mind of the common folk there were as many different Saints Mary as there were shrines, and yet, at the same time, these all had a definite connection with the Mother of Christ in some mysterious way which the plain people did not trouble themselves to explain. Just as the mystery of the Trinity did not perturb them nearly as much as it did the Anglo-Saxons of the North, so this particular problem caused them little concern.

As might be expected, most of the miracles attributed to the image of the Virgin are of the same nature as those performed by the saint herself. The image cures the diseased (No. 349), it bows over a man and thanks him for a hymn of praise he has composed (No. 202), saves a naughty child from punishment (No. 303), protects a man’s property from threatened storm (No. 161), restores to health queen Beatriz, mother of Alfonso el Sabio, when the doctors had pronounced her illness incurable (No. 256), restrains a rich libertine knight of Catalonia from committing an immoral act in its presence (No. 312), protects a city from capture by the Moors even after the latter had learned from a prisoner that there were but fifteen men remaining to defend it (No. 185), protects its altar from fire by removing a veil from its head and spreading it over the fire, thereby instantly extinguishing the flames (No. 332), and lastly even pours milk from its sacred breasts as a final argument to convince and convert a Moor (No. 44). The story of No. 321 differs somewhat from this, reminding us of a similar cure attributed to the Child Jesus while on the flight into Egypt.[58] A child was suffering from a swelling in the neck and was pronounced incurable. A friend advised that the patient be taken to the king, adding that all Christian kings had the power of healing. This was done, but the king told them to take it before the image of the Virgin, wash the image in pure water, and then give the child this water to drink for as many days as there are letters in the name M-a-r-í-a. On the fourth day the child was healed. In two instances the power is extended a little farther and in No. 123 a young friar on dying turned black and ugly. His brethren took a candle from the altar and put it in his hand, which caused his natural color to be restored. Later he returned and appearing to the two friars told them that the reason he became black at death was that he saw Devils, but that the light of the Virgin drove them promptly away. In No. 209 Alfonso was very ill and when the doctors could not give him relief he called for the unfinished manuscript[59] of Las Cantigas and by applying it to the affected part of his body he was healed.

Because of the very high esteem in which the Virgin was held it is common to find instances in which a person swears by her or by her name or image, while she on her part is rightly conscientious in seeing that such oaths are not taken lightly. One young shepherd developed the habit of stealing and was finally caught, but cleared himself by swearing by God and the Virgin that he was innocent. A little later he was caught again, and convicted. This time the Virgin allowed him to be hanged, because he had sworn by her falsely (No. 392). Another man (No. 239) perjured himself before her image by adjuring that he had never received a certain article in trust. Even before leaving the church he was overtaken by a severe illness which caused his death within three days. So high and so sacred was this oath before the image of the Virgin held to be, that in one instance a wife, being accused of unfaithfulness by her jealous husband, offered to submit to the ordeal by fire to prove her innocence, but her husband demanded instead that she swear before the altar of Nuestra Señora. Then he added that she could further clear herself by jumping from a high rock. She passed both tests safely and her husband, penitent, begged forgiveness on his knees (No. 341). In other cases the image of the Virgin speaks, as, for example, when called upon to bear witness in a difference between a Jew and a Christian over the payment of a debt (No. 25).

The very name of María was one to conjure with.[60] Two miracles (Nos. 194 and 254) are attributed to the power of the mere sound of the name; and once (No. 195) a girl is saved because her name is María. In No. 194 a villainous host sends in pursuit of his departing guests some thugs to rob them, but the bandits, on hearing their intended victims call on the name of Santa María for help, become powerless and speechless. In No. 254, the image of the Virgin saves some monks who, while recuperating on the banks of a river from the rigors of convent life, transgress the bounds of what is proper for men of their order. Seeing some devils in the form of men, coming down the river in a boat, the monks, terrified, call on the Virgin for aid. “She alone has saved you,” shout the devils as they continue on their way. A girl (No. 195) who had been sold by her father to a knight on his way to a tournament was saved from harm when she told him her name was Mary and that that particular day was one especially consecrated to the Saint’s worship. On learning that, the knight sent her for safekeeping to an abbey, while he continued on his journey. At the tournament he was killed and buried in the open prairie.[61] The Virgin appeared to the girl and told her of his fate demanding that she and the abbess go and give the man a worthy burial, telling them they would be able easily to identify the body, for it would have a rose in its mouth.

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There now remains a group of fifteen poems that do not seem to have any particular purpose other than to produce an atmosphere of mystery; but this very sentiment of the mystical played an important part in the religious worship of the time. The very architecture of the churches tended to produce it, the processions, the ritual, all inspired the same feeling. Herewith are summarized only four poems of this group, which will give a sufficient idea of the emotions aroused by them.