Mary, mother of Jesus

About Mary, mother of Jesus

Mary, mother of Jesus, is a figure of monumental historical importance, ranked #9 globally by MIT's Pantheon project due to her profound and enduring influence across religion, culture, and art for millennia. Her central role in Christianity, as the mother of Jesus, places her at the very foundation of one of the world's largest faith systems, making her a constant in global cultural memory, despite her recorded lifespan spanning a mere 100 years on either side of the common era (c. -100 to 100).

Despite this commanding historical rank, her modern internet attention is surprisingly modest when compared to her importance. Mary garnered approximately 1.5 million annualized Wikipedia views in 2025. This places her attention in a similar range to contemporaries like Saint Peter (#17 importance, 2.7M views) and Alexander the Great (#16 importance, 4.1M views), but starkly lower than the #2 ranked Gautama Buddha (410K views), who receives only a fraction of her pageviews despite being ranked significantly more important historically. In fact, her attention is only about 1x what would be expected relative to her historical weight, suggesting a level of online engagement proportionate to her monumental historical status, unlike some other top-tier figures who are heavily underrepresented online.

Observing short-term trends, there is a slight positive signal in recent engagement, with her 2025 Momentum between Q1 and Q3 showing a notable increase of +14%, even as her Year-over-Year change indicates a slight dip of -15.7% compared to the previous year's figures.