Figures
Our Lady of Mercy
Also Known As Mercedes (Spanish) · Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes (Spanish) · Our Lady of Ransom (English)
Saints
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
A title of the Virgin Mary as Our Lady of Mercy, in Spanish Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes, associated with the Mercedarian order founded in thirteenth-century Spain for the ransom of Christian captives from Muslim lands. Under this title Mary is honoured as the merciful mother who frees the captive and shelters the faithful beneath her mantle, and she is patroness of Barcelona and of numerous places across the Spanish-speaking world. Her feast falls on the 24th of September, and the devotion spread widely through the Americas in the colonial period.
Facts
Veneration
Feast DayHer feast falls on 24 September, and in the syncretic religious landscape of Cuba the same date and iconography have long been associated in popular devotion with the orisha Obatala, an overlay scholars of Afro-Caribbean religion trace to the way enslaved Africans mapped their own deities onto the saints presented to them. 2 PatronagePatroness of Barcelona, and by extension of the Mercedarian order's own missions across the Spanish-speaking world, including numerous cities and dioceses in Latin America that adopted her as their patron during the colonial period. 1 Origins
FoundedTradition holds she appeared in a shared vision to Peter Nolasco, Raymond of Penyafort and King James I of Aragon on the same night in 1218, an event the Mercedarian order's own foundation narrative treats as its direct commission. 1 Place of OriginBarcelona, where the Mercedarian order was founded in 1218 to ransom captives 2 Attestation
HistoricityLegendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record 1 Traditions Revering This Figure Traditions Revering This Figure History
Historical NoteThe Mercedarian friars who spread devotion to her under this title professed a distinctive fourth vow, beyond poverty, chastity and obedience, promising to offer themselves as hostages in place of captives when ransom money ran short. 1 Learn More
The Virgin Who Ransomed Captives
Our Lady of Mercy (Nuestra Senora de la Merced), also called Our Lady of Ransom, is a title of the Virgin Mary bound to the work of freeing Christian captives held in the Muslim lands of the western Mediterranean. According to the tradition of the order she inspired, the Virgin appeared in 1218 to Peter Nolasco at Barcelona, and, with the counsel of the Dominican canon Raymond of Penafort and the support of King James I of Aragon, he founded the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mercy, the Mercedarians. Its members took the ordinary religious vows and a distinctive fourth vow: to give themselves up as hostages, if need be, in exchange for captives whose faith was in danger. Over the following centuries the Mercedarians travelled to North Africa and Iberia to negotiate and pay for the release of prisoners, and Mary under this title was honoured as their heavenly patroness and the redeemer of the enslaved.
Feast, Patronage, and Iconography
The feast of Our Lady of Mercy is kept on 24 September, commemorating the founding of the order; a Mass and office of the title were granted to the Mercedarians and, in 1696, extended to the whole Latin Church. She is the patroness of Barcelona, whose great basilica of La Merced honours her, and her devotion spread widely through the Spanish world: she is a national patroness of the Dominican Republic (as Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes) and of Peru, and in Argentina she was honoured with the title of general of the army. Because of the order's work she is invoked as protector of captives and prisoners. In art she is shown in the white habit of the Mercedarians, crowned and often bearing the order's scapular and shield, and frequently holding broken chains or fetters and offering her mantle in protection, the emblems of ransom and liberation.
The title and the religious order that carries it trace to 1218 in Barcelona, where Peter Nolasco, according to tradition acting on a vision of the Virgin, founded a company of men dedicated to ransoming Christian captives held in Moorish Spain, encouraged by his confessor Raymond of Penyafort and protected by King James I of Aragon, who by the same tradition experienced a corresponding vision on the same night. The order Nolasco founded took a distinctive fourth vow, to give themselves as hostages in exchange for captives when ransom money ran short, and received papal approval first from Honorius III and then, more fully, from Gregory IX in 1230.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
This source names Our Lady of Mercy directly: "of Art's own collection record for "Our Lady of Mercy, called The Pilgrim of Quito," oil and gold on canvas by an unknown Cuzco school artist, Peru, circa 1730 to 1740."
Belongs to Tradition
Depicted In
The Metropolitan Museum of Art's own title names Our Lady of Mercy as the subject of this Cuzco school painting.
Saint Identification Of
Afro-Cuban Lucumi correspondence: Obatala, orisha of creation and purity, honored behind Our Lady of Mercy (Las Mercedes).
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005s.v. Mercedarians; Our Lady of RansomView the Source 2. Worldview, the Orichas, and Santeria: Africa to Cuba and Beyond
Mercedes Cros Sandoval, University Press of Florida, 2006ch. 4
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005Mary; Marian titles and religious ordersView the Source Our Lady of Mercy, called the Pilgrim of Quito, Metropolitan Museum of Art (Cuzco School, circa 1730 to 1740)
Metropolitan Museum of ArtDepicted In: Our Lady of Mercy, called the Pilgrim of Quito (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cuzco School, circa 1730 to 1740), Metropolitan Museum of Art 2018.652.4View the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.