Description
History
The devotion for “Our Lady of Remedies” was brought to Portugal by French religious of the Hospital Order of the Holy Trinity, who were in Lisbon in the 13th century. This order, founded with the aim of rescuing captive Christians in the East as slaves, did not have the financial resources to achieve its objective.
Our Lady appeared to her founders, St. John of the Wood and St. Felix, handing them a purse full of money, thus granting them the "remedy" for their problem.
Since then the Virgin has won the title of “Our Lady of Remedies”, becoming the patron of this order. With the spread of this devotion to Europe, 900 thousand prisoners were released until the eighteenth century.
FestivitiesHistory
The devotion for “Our Lady of Remedies” was brought to Portugal by French religious of the Hospital Order of the Holy Trinity, who were in Lisbon in the 13th century. This order, founded with the aim of rescuing captive Christians in the East as slaves, did not have the financial resources to achieve its objective.
Our Lady appeared to her founders, St. John of the Wood and St. Felix, handing them a purse full of money, thus granting them the "remedy" for their problem.
Since then the Virgin has won the title of “Our Lady of Remedies”, becoming the patron of this order. With the spread of this devotion to Europe, 900 thousand prisoners were released until the eighteenth century.
Festivities
In Carcavelos the festivities of Our Lady of Remedies are celebrated on the third Sunday of October.
Figure
The oldest representation of “Our Lady of Remedies” in the world shows the Virgin seated, with the Child on her left arm and a bag of money in her right hand. The bag alludes to the appearance and help given by Our Lady to Saint João da Mata, who was being deceived by Muslims. They were demanding the price doubled by slaves who had already been rescued, under the threat of returning them to prison. Having fervently pleaded to her, as the Mother of the Good Medicine, she was miraculously provided by Her. In this way gave "remedy" to a serious situation.
Meaning of "remedy" ("remédio" in Portuguese)
In medieval language, the verbs "redemere" and "remediare" and the nouns "redémptio" and "remédium", had a similar meaning: to redeem, to rescue, to rescue,remedy (meaning salvation, liberation). This explains why, in the writings of the sixteenth-seventeenth centuries, the patron saint is given three titles: "Remedy", "Rescue", "Liberation".
The oldest iconography shows Our Lady with her right hand extended, as if offering something, while the left holds the Child, source of power against all evils. It is this physical posture that we can observe in the image of the patroness in our parish.