Our Lady of Rule

The Black Virgin of the Sea · Chipiona (Cadiz)

On the same beach of Chipiona, in what was the castle of the Ponce de León, the sanctuary of Our Lady of Rule is raised, a venerated Black Virgin who is patron of the villa and one of the great Marian pilgrimage centers of the south.

Origin and history

The first written testimony of a temple dedicated to the Virgin of Rule in Chipiona is a will of 1365, when the Ponce de León family had its strength there. The image, a transition size from Romanesque to Gothic, has been cult since at least the 14th century. The present sanctuary is a 19th-century construction, driven by the Franciscans with support from the dukes of Montpensier.

The Augustinian tradition - well-rooted but undocumented - attributes the image to Saint Augustine and narrates that, fleeing the vandals, his disciples brought it by sea to Chipiona in 443, then hiding it in a well during the Muslim invasion until it was found in 1330. She is a Virgin of dark complexion, "the Virgin of the chippiers," to which devotion protected with a silver shell already in the 16th century so that she will not be ripped out as a relics.

The origin of the name "Rule" and the arrival of the image are of uncertain origin; the Augustinian account (Saint Augustine, year 443, the well) belongs to tradition.