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Lady in Blue – the Nun Who Converted Native Americans from Spain

When
July 1629 date from records made at the time
Where
Isleta, New Mexico, United States
Verdict
Legend

In 1629 Jumano people asked the Franciscans for missionaries because, they said, a “woman in blue” had taught them. A Spanish nun later claimed it was her.

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34.91°, -106.69° · dimmed: other phenomena within 1,500 km

What happened

In July 1629 some fifty Jumano people from the plains of what is now West Texas arrived at the Franciscan convent at Isleta on the Rio Grande and asked for teachers of the faith. Asked who had taught them Christianity, they replied that it was a “woman in blue” who had visited them for a long time. A mission expedition led by Fray Juan de Salas reached their lands in southwest Texas; the people there said the Lady in Blue had told them missionaries would come, and some two thousand asked for baptism. The Franciscan Alonso de Benavides, former head of the New Mexico missions, returned to Spain, where in 1631 he interviewed the abbess María de Jesús at her convent in Ágreda. The nun, who never left Spain, acknowledged that she was the Lady in Blue and that she had been miraculously bilocated to New Spain some 500 times. The legend lived on: in 1690 a missionary among the Tejas heard of a woman in blue, and as late as the 1840s people spoke of a mysterious woman in a blue cloak who helped malaria victims along the Sabine River.

Witnesses

Jumano people at Isleta and on the Texas plains (1629), as reported by Alonso de Benavides and the missionaries; María de Jesús de Ágreda herself, in her conversation with Benavides in 1631.

Explanations and hypotheses

Bilocation cannot be verified, and historians approach the case through its sources: the accounts were written by Franciscans who used the miraculous story to promote the New Mexico missions, and the Jumano had earlier contacts with Spaniards and missionaries from whom they may have picked up elements of Christianity and the look of a nun’s habit. The blue cloak was part of the habit of the Conceptionist order to which María belonged. Texas historians regard the Lady in Blue as one of the most enduring legends of the region, alive for more than three centuries. The Church has declared María de Jesús de Ágreda Venerable, but not a saint.

Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.

Sources

  1. Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas – Agreda, María de Jesús de (Donald E. Chipman)
  2. Texas State Historical Association, Handbook of Texas – Jumano Indians

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