Anecdotes about the Virgin Mary

The three pilgrims who carved the Geperudeta

Valencia (Spain) (1414)

Valencia loves its Virgin of the Forsaken by a tender name: La Geperudeta, for the gentle inclination of her head, which seems attentive to her children. And its origin is shrouded in one of the most beautiful legends of Spanish piety. Tradition tells that, around 1414, three young men dressed as pilgrims arrived at the confraternity house of the Hospital of the Innocents and the Forsaken. They offered to carve an image of the Virgin in exchange for a place to work and some food, with only one condition: that they not be disturbed for a few days.

The members of the brotherhood installed them and respected their request. After the allotted time had passed—three days according to some accounts, four according to others—when they heard no noise, they forced the door. Inside, they found the perfectly finished image of the Virgin, but the three pilgrims had vanished without a trace. Faced with this inexplicable event, the members of the brotherhood concluded that it must have been angels. And, the story adds, the crippled and blind wife of one of the members regained her sight and health during those days.

As editor, I must make a distinction with affection. The episode of the three pilgrim-angels and the healing of the wife is a pious legend, frequently repeated in pastoral and popular works, but there is no contemporary documentation from 1414 to confirm it. What is truly documented, and moving, is the origin of the hospital: around 1407-1409, Friar Juan Gilabert Jofré, a Mercedarian, saw some young men mistreating a mentally ill person and preached in the Cathedral asking for protection for "the poor, abandoned sick." From that sermon was born the Hospital of the Innocents and the Forsaken, and with it the confraternity and the dedication to the Virgin.

The history of the devotion is also documented: the transfer of the image during the plague of 1647, the construction of the basilica around 1667, its declaration as Patroness of Valencia by Leo XIII in 1885, and the canonical coronation authorized by Benedict XV in 1921 and celebrated in 1923. Regarding the Rosary, there is no record of a specific institution linked to this devotion, although the Hail Mary accompanies it, as in any Marian shrine. In Valencia, she is felt to be "la mare que no abandona mai als seus fills": the mother who never abandons her children.