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María Coronel becomes "the Woman in Blue"
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 and far western Texas.
Sister María supposedly contacted several Indian cultures, including the
Jumanos, and 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 and
said that they had been sent to find religious teachers. They already
demonstrated rudimentary knowledge of Christianity, and 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 and 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 and 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, and her apparition was
reported as recently as World War II.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- AGREDA, MARIA DE JESUS DE
- FRANCISCANS
- SALAS, JUAN DE
- BENAVIDES, ALONSO DE
- JUMANO INDIANS
- SPANISH TEXAS
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Ursuline Academy founded in Dallas (1874)
- Cotton comes to the Rio Grande valley (1830)
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