Our Lady of Navigators (Nossa Senhora dos Navegantes in Portuguese) is a devotional title given to the Virgin Mary by Roman Catholics. It is a widespread devotion in South America, specially Brazil, where the Feast of Our Lady of Navigators is celebrated on February 2 as an official holiday. Parades carrying a statue of the Virgin Mary take place in most cities that have harbors, specially the large ones. Several churches in Brazil are dedicated to Our Lady of Navigators.
The devotion started in the fifteenth century by Europeans, especially the Portuguese navigators, praying for a safe return to their homes. They saw the Virgin Mary as their protector during storms and other hazards. The first statue in South America was brought from Portugal to Brazil.
The theme of the "Virgin Mary as the protector" was similarly used in the The Virgin of the Navigators, 1531–36, the earliest known painting whose subject is the discovery of the Americas.
Read more about Our Lady Of Navigators: See Also, Gallery of Churches, Notes
Famous quotes containing the words lady and/or navigators:
“The lady protests too much, methinks.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)