After that, Gudrun and I took turns telling her everything we knew from the life of Christ or the lives of the saints that underscored the high status of women in Christianity—not just the Virgin Mary,
... Beth should already know who the Virgin Mary is. She’s known as Maryam bint Imran in Arabic and her virgin birth of Isa (Jesus) is part of Islamic doctrine.
I mean, I can definitely buy medieval Christians not knowing that, since a lot of them seemed to think that the Muslims were pagans, but I doubt that’s what’s going on here.
