☞The Legend of the Mysterious Lady in Blue…
☞Today in History -- On today’s day 406 years ago on Candlemas Day, Sunday, February 2, 1620, an 18-year-old Spanish woman, María Fernández Coronel, took religious vows & became a Conceptionist nun, Sister María de Jesús de Ágreda, & although she never left Europe, she became known in West Texas & New Mexico as the mysterious “Lady in Blue.”
☞The Venerable María de Jesús de Ágreda (1602-1665), a.k.a. Mary of Jesus of Ágreda, The Abbess of Ágreda, Mother Ágreda, The Lady in Blue, & The Blue Nun, was a Franciscan abbess & spiritual writer who was known particularly for her extensive correspondence with King Philip IV of Spain (1605-1665) & for the reports of her bilocation between Spain & its colonies in New Spain. She was a noted mystic of her era.
☞Less than ten years after her death, Mary of Jesus was declared Venerable by Pope Clement X (1590-1676), in honor of her “heroic life of virtue.” Although the process of beatification was opened in 1673, it has not as yet been completed.
☞From the Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas Online:
On this day in 1620, María Coronel took religious vows in a Franciscan order of nuns who wore an outer cloak of coarse blue cloth over the traditional brown habit. As a nun, now known as María de Jesús de Agreda, she had numerous mystic experiences (more than 500) in which she thought she visited a distant, unknown land. Franciscan authorities determined that the land was eastern New Mexico & far-western Texas.
Sister María supposedly contacted several Indian cultures, including the Jumanos, & told the natives to seek instruction from the Spanish. Shortly thereafter, some fifty Jumano Indians appeared at the Franciscan convent of Old Isleta, south of present Albuquerque, in July 1629 & said that they had been sent to find religious teachers. They already demonstrated rudimentary knowledge of Christianity, & when asked who had instructed them replied, “The Woman in Blue.”
A subsequent expedition to the Jumanos, led by Fray Juan de Salas, encountered a large band of Indians in Southwest Texas. The Indians claimed that they had been advised by The Woman in Blue of approaching Christian missionaries. Subsequently, some 2,000 natives presented themselves for baptism & further religious instruction.
Two years later, Fray Alonso de Benavides traveled to Spain, where he interviewed María de Jesús at Agreda. Sister María told of her bilocations & acknowledged that she was indeed The Lady in Blue.
After she died in 1665, her story was published in Spain. Although she said her last visitation to the New World was in 1631, the legend of her appearances was current until the 1690s.
In the 1840s, a mysterious woman in blue reportedly traveled the Sabine River Valley aiding malaria victims, & her apparition was reported as recently as World War II.
☞The photograph depicts María de Jesús de Ágreda, the mysterious Lady in Blue, at around the age of 20 in an undated oil-on-canvas painting by an unknown artist. Created in the New Spanish Baroque style during the Viceregal Period, the painting of María de Jesús de Ágreda emphasizes her mystical bilocation to the Americas, where she appeared in this blue garb to the Jumano & other Indigenous peoples in what’s now Texas & New Mexico (1620s - 1630s). The portrait aligns with devotional iconography, depicting her as a pious visionary holding a book or rosary, symbolizing her influential writings. This painting is now in the collection of the Museo Nacional del Virreinato (Museum of the Viceroyalty of New Spain) at Tepotzotlán, México.
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