MIracles of Mary Stories about Dreams
By Charlotte R. Defriez '26
April 11, 2025
Dreams are important in some Miracle of Mary stories.
Many Täˀammərä Maryam stories have the word "dream" in them, but the following are the subset of stories in which dreams play a significant role:
Healing
- John Bakansi, the blind Egyptian monk, whose eyes the Virgin Mary healed with her breast milk
- The monk Abraham who drank poisonous water while on a journey to visit the patriarch of Alexandria and died but was raised from the dead.
- A Cairo woman's daughter, who lived by the Nile river and became blind due to too much reading and study but was healed by the Virgin Mary
- Bishop Mercurius contracted leprosy and the patriarch banned him from serving communion due to his ailment
- A man with paralysis who was healed on the Feast of Our Lady's Assumption
Poverty & Generosity
- The noblewoman who was persuaded by her priest to give away her fine clothes
- A merchant who distributed as alms the money that had been loaned to him by a friend after the merchant gave away all his wealth to the poor
- The gardener named Absadi, of Saint Shenute's monastery, who gave the monks' vegetables away to the poor but was defended by Abba Shenoute
- A widow who could not find husbands for her three daughters
Hell & Death
- The nun who was dissuaded from eloping with a knight after seeing a vision of hell
- The nun who used to pray for the dead lost her virginity but died before completing her penance and the Virgin Mary delivered her from hell
- A bishop's prayers enable his rich dead father to move from hell, body part by body part, and then go to heaven
- A bishop who was commanded by the Virgin Mary in a dream to bury an executed robber in consecrated ground
- Vision of a certain saint about the fate of a priest who swore falsely.
Faith
- A monk, the church custodian, who prayed to see the Virgin Mary and did
- A young man, who put the ring he had received from his girlfriend on the finger of a Virgin Mary statue, and was rebuked on his wedding night by Mary for deserting her
- The faded icon of the Virgin Mary that the mother-in-law wanted to discard.
- The church of the Virgin Mary that moved by itself to the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
Violence
- A mighty Roman emperor named Julian the Apostate threatens to destroy the monastery of the Virgin Mary
- A wicked man who spoke more and more blasphemously of the Virgin Mary and she cut off his hands and feet after warning him in dreams
- Dabra Timona's monk, Efrem, who is swallowed by a dragon but the dragon is compelled to vomit him up alive ten days later
Wealth
- A magistrate whom the king accused of embezzlement and the Virgin Mary saved from execution
- A couple that were guided by the wife's dream to find buried money with which to build a shrine to the Virgin Mary.
- Mary gives a prodigal son two grains of gold and a trader uses them to buy a cat and sell it for a fortune to a cat-less kingdom overrun by mice
- A young woman keeps twenty dinar of gold and silver in a tanned leather pouch, but a dog eats it and then vomits it back up
- King Dawit I, (1382- 1413) Ethiopian monarch, and the miracle concerning the golden ink during his reign
- King Kaleb, the 6th c. Ethiopian monarch, is helped by the Virgin Mary while on his campaign conquering Himyar (Yemen) and after which he becomes a monk
Muslims & Jews
- The Arabs who tried to plunder an Egyptian monastery during a famine in the time of the Patriarch Matthew and kidnap a monk when thwarted
- The Muslim Egyptian ruler's son who insulted the icon of the Virgin Mary and saw a vision of Christ enthroned
- A Muslim merchant from Cairo who was imprisoned in Greece promised the Virgin Mary that he would convert if she helped him escape and he converted in Jerusalem
- A Jew is led to baptism by a dream about a lion and a monk; afterwards he curses a Jew at the latter's request.
Sex
- A monk, while guarding a church, has a wet dream and finds himself suddenly outside the courtyard of the church.
- A young monk is horrified when he has a sexual dream.
- Gadam Martula Maryam's icon of the Virgin Mary complains to a man named Walda Iyasusis because his brother Kidane Maryam kept her next to the bed where he slept with his wife
