This article is about the
Spanish statue.
Our Lady of Guadalupe (Extremadura)
The shrine to Our Lady of Guadalupe was the most
important Marian Shrine in the medieval kingdom of Castile . It is
revered in the Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe, in today's
Cáceres Province of the Extremadura autonomous community of
Spain.
The shrine housed a statue reputed to have been carved by Luke
the Evangelist and given to Saint Leander, archbishop of Seville by
Pope Gregory I. When Seville was taken by the Moors , a group of
priests fled northward and buried the statue in the hills near the
Guadalupe River in Extremadura.
At the beginning of the 14th Century, a shepherd claimed that
the Virgin Mary had appeared to him and ordered him to ask priests
to dig at the site of the apparition. Excavating priests
rediscovered the hidden statue and built a small shrine around it
which evolved into the great Guadalupe Monastery .
Pilgrims began arriving in 1326, and in 1340, King Alphonso XI
took a personal interest in the shrine's development, attributing
his victory over the Moors at the Battle of Rio Salado to the
Virgin's intercession. Our Lady of Guadalupe, along with Santiago
de Compostela and Nuestra Señhora del Pilar became rallying points
for the Christian Spaniards in their Reconquista of Iberia.
In 1386, the shrine was commended to the Hieronymites, who
turned the popular devotion to the figure into a genuine cult.
Copies of the statue were venerated in satellite chapels
probably including this one in Vila do Bispo, Algarve.
A theory that the name of the Mexican Lady of Guadalupe derives
from the Extremadura figure is based on similarities between the
apparition stories and the provenance of many Conquistadors,
including Hernàn Cortes, from the Extremadura region.
Our Lady of Guadalupe is one of three Black Madonnas in
Spain.