History
The official account of the Aparecida apparition took place in October 1717, when Dom Pedro de Almeida, Count of Assumar and Governor of the Province of São Paulo and Minas Gerais, was passing through the area of Guaratinguetá, a small city in the Paraíba river valley, during a trip to Vila Rica, an important gold mining site.
The people of Guaratinguetá decided to hold a feast in his honour, the fishermen went down to the Paraíba waters to fish for the feast. Three of the fishermen, Domingos Garcia, João Alves, and Filipe Pedroso, prayed to Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception, and asked God's help. They were unable to catch any fish, and after several hours in the river, they were ready to give up when João cast his net once more near the Port of Itaguaçu. Instead of fish, he hauled in the body of a statue with a missing head. They cast their net again, and brought up the statue's head. After cleaning the statue, they found that it was a black version of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Legend has it that when the fishermen recovered the body, then the head, the slender figure of the Aparecida Virgin became so heavy that they couldn't budge it.
The fishermen named the statue Nossa Senhora da Aparecida Conceição (English: Our Lady of the Appeared Conception), wrapped it in cloth and continued to fish; now their catch was so great that they returned to port because the weight of the fish threatened to sink their craft.
|
|
|---|
|
General articles |
|
Expressions of devotion |
|
Specific articles |
Read more about this topic: Our Lady Of Aparecida
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of literature—take the net result of Tiraboshi, Warton, or Schlegel,—is a sum of a very few ideas, and of very few original tales,—all the rest being variation of these.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“I saw the Arab map.
It resembled a mare shuffling on,
dragging its history like saddlebags,
nearing its tomb and the pitch of hell.”
—Adonis [Ali Ahmed Said] (b. 1930)