Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

"The cowboy Gil Cordero and the hidden image by the river"

Guadalupe, Cáceres (Spain) (13th-14th centuries)

In the town of Guadalupe, nestled in the Villuercas mountain range in Cáceres province, stands the Royal Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe, one of Spain's great Marian shrines. There, a Romanesque carving of the Virgin Mary, in cedar wood, dating from the 12th or 13th centuries, is venerated. In 1907, she was proclaimed patron saint of Extremadura, and in 1928, she received the title of Queen of Spain or Queen of the Hispanic World.

Pious tradition recounts the origin of the sanctuary with a heartwarming tale. A cowboy named Gil Cordero was herding his cattle along the Guadalupe River when he lost a cow. Upon finding it dead and preparing to skin it, the animal revived. At that moment, the Virgin Mary appeared to him, indicating where an image of her was buried and asking him to inform the authorities so that a hermitage could be built. When they excavated the designated spot, they unearthed the statue, and thus the first sanctuary was born.

It is important to distinguish between the two. Gil Cordero's account of the resurrected cow and its discovery, as well as the attribution of the image to Saint Luke the Evangelist and its journey from Asia Minor to Seville, belong to pious tradition: they are recorded in later chronicles of the monastery and in popular devotion, but are not found in documents contemporary to the events. What is historically documented is that the venerated image is a Romanesque carving from the 12th-13th centuries, that the sanctuary was established in the 14th century (the church became a monastery in 1389, with its feast day on September 8), and the subsequent titles of 1907 and 1928.

Regarding the Rosary, the monastery is currently run by Franciscans, in whose spirituality Marian prayer is highly valued, so the Rosary is prayed and promoted. However, these sources do not indicate a specific historical connection between Guadalupe de Extremadura and the spread of the Rosary, nor a Rosary confraternity of its own.