Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

The icon that cried in Nicula

Nicula, Romania (1699)

Near Gherla, in the Cluj region, in the Romanian Transylvania, is the Monastery of Nicula, today of Romanian Orthodox rite but with a deep Greek-Catholic root, for the area was historically of the Romanian Church united to Rome. There the Mother of God of Nicula, a Byzantine icon of the Virgin with the Child, known for an event that moved the entire region.

El 15 February 1699according to the testimonies collected by the clergy and the civil authorities of the time, the icon He shed tears de forma visible durante varios días. La historiografía rumana afirma que el fenómeno fue investigado y consignado por las autoridades, tanto religiosas como laicas, aunque las actas originales no son fácilmente accesibles, y menos en español. Por eso, con prudencia, el carácter de «milagro» se mantiene como tradición piadosa fuertemente arraigada, aunque apoyada en testimonios históricos antiguos.

As a result of that fact, Nicula became one of the largest Marian pilgrimage centers in Romania, especially in the feast of the Asunción (Sleeping of the Mother of God)on August 15. Every year there are tens of thousands of pilgrims who spend the night from 14 to 15, sleeping on the ground, praying and singing Marian hymns. Many come walking long distances, some barefoot, carrying candles, icons and exvotes: one of the country's largest Marian concentrations.

We must be honest with the limits of the sources in Spanish: exact names of witnesses or the precise text of the 1699 minutes. no constan in detail in them, but in specialized Romanian studies. In the Romanian, Orthodox and Greek-Catholic tradition, the main Marian devotion is not the Latin Rosary but the akathistos and the paraclesis; on a link of its own between Nicula and the Rosary, it does not exist. But those night vigil, that crowd that prays at the bottom of the stars waiting for the Mother's feast, are in themselves a living rosary of popular faith.