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Our Lady of Regla
Also Known As Virgen de Regla (Spanish) · Nuestra Senora de Regla (Spanish)
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A title of the Virgin Mary venerated in a black Madonna image at the town of Regla across the bay from Havana, and originally at Chipiona in Andalusia, where the image is traditionally linked to Saint Augustine of Hippo. As Our Lady of Regla she became patroness of the Bay of Havana and of sailors and fishermen, honoured on the 7th of September. The Andalusian devotion was carried to Cuba in the colonial period, where the shrine at Regla became an important centre of popular piety.
Facts
Veneration
Feast DayHer feast is kept on September 7, marked in Havana and Regla with a well attended maritime procession in which a replica of the image is carried across the bay by boat. 2 PatronagePopular devotion syncretizes her, through the historical process of transculturation in colonial Cuba, with the orisha Yemaya of the Yoruba derived Santeria tradition, an identification openly discussed in scholarship on Afro-Cuban religion though the Catholic Church does not officially endorse it. 2 Origins
FoundedTradition links the devotion's origin at Chipiona to Saint Augustine of Hippo, said to have brought the original image from North Africa, though the shrine's own surviving records date the devotion there to several centuries after his death, making the connection a matter of pious legend rather than documented history. 3 Place of OriginChipiona in Andalusia, and Regla across the bay from Havana 2 Cult
Attributes and IconographyThe statue itself is a black Madonna, Mary and the infant Christ both depicted with dark skin, robed in blue and white, colors that in Cuba came to read as much as an evocation of Yemaya's sea associations as of Mary's own traditional iconography. 2 Attestation
HistoricityLegendary: known from narrative tradition, not the historical record 1 Traditions Revering This Figure Traditions Revering This Figure History
Historical NoteAndalusian tradition credits Saint Augustine of Hippo himself with having owned or venerated the original image at Chipiona before it passed into the keeping of local devotion, a legendary attribution that predates any documentary record of the shrine. 3 Learn More
The Black Madonna of Chipiona
Our Lady of Regla (Nuestra Senora de Regla) is a Marian title attached to a dark-complexioned image of the Virgin and Child, one of the Black Madonnas of the Catholic world. Its origin lies at Chipiona, on the Atlantic coast of Cadiz in Andalusia, where a sanctuary of Our Lady of Regla, long in the care of the Augustinians, has stood since the late Middle Ages; a pious legend, unverifiable historically, ascribed the carving of the image to Saint Augustine himself, and the name Regla (meaning rule) was connected with the Augustinian rule of life. From Andalusia, a region with strong maritime and colonial ties, the devotion crossed the Atlantic with Spanish settlers and sailors to the Caribbean, where it took especially deep root at the harbour of Havana.
The devotion's arrival in Cuba is undocumented as to any single date, arriving instead gradually with the general traffic of Andalusian sailors and settlers through Havana across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a diffuse transmission typical of maritime Marian devotions of the period rather than the product of any one recorded voyage or founding event. The Chipiona sanctuary itself remains active today, still in Augustinian care, and continues to draw pilgrims independently of its much younger and now more widely known Cuban namesake across the Atlantic.
Patroness of the Bay of Havana
Across the harbour from old Havana lies the town of Regla, whose parish church enshrines a venerated image of the Virgin under this title, and there Our Lady of Regla is honoured as patroness of sailors and of the Bay of Havana, protector of those who put to sea. Her feast, kept on 7 September (the eve of the Nativity of the Virgin), is marked by a well-known procession in which her image is carried through the streets and toward the water, a celebration of the port community and its long dependence on the sea. As a Black Madonna venerated in a Cuban port with a large Afro-Cuban population, her image has, in the syncretic religion of the island, been associated with a figure of Afro-Cuban tradition; within Catholic devotion she is honoured as the Virgin Mary, guardian of seafarers and of the harbour that bears her care.
In the syncretic religious practice that developed among Cuba's enslaved and free Afro-Cuban population, this Black Madonna of the harbour came to be associated specifically with Yemaya, the orisha of the sea and of motherhood in the Yoruba-derived tradition later systematised as Santeria, or Regla de Ocha; the identification rests on a shared maritime domain and dark complexion rather than on any doctrinal connection the Catholic Church itself recognises. Both devotions are described here as documented, coexisting religious practices, neither explained away in terms of the other.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Saint Identification Of
Afro-Cuban Lucumi correspondence: Yemaya, orisha of the sea and motherhood, honored behind Our Lady of Regla.
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. Black Virgins; Mary, devotions toView the Source 2. Worldview, the Orichas, and Santeria: Africa to Cuba and Beyond
Mercedes Cros Sandoval, University Press of Florida, 2006ch. 4
3. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005Our Lady of Regla; Cuban Marian devotionView the Source Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
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