About Her
- MainPage Maria
- Lady in Blue
- In the NEWS
- Life & Works
(You are Here) - Maria's Biography
- American Activities for Agreda
- Reading List
Key Links
A Catholic nun of Jewish descent, Sor María de Jesus of Agreda (also known as the Lady in Blue, Mary of Agreda, Maria de Agreda, and Maria of Agreda) authored Mystical City of God, an 8-book narrative of her direct revelations from Mary, mother of Jesus. Commanded to burn her writings because “surely God would not chose a woman for such an important work,” María, a controversial 48-year old cloistered abbess, was seized in 1650 from her sick bed and carried to the feet of a Spanish Inquisitor. Although ultimately acquitted, the interrogation covered her mystical experiences and missionary work in the American Southwest, events corroborated by witnesses in Spain and as far as Texas and New Mexico, where she is honored yet today as the legendary missionary known as the Lady in Blue.
Thanks for visiting, and come back soon! In the meantime, for availability on my upcoming book / biography on Sor Maria, please email Marilyn Fedewa at:
M dot Agreda @ Comcast dot Net
, and be sure to put "Agreda Update Request" in the subject line, so your message doesn't get accidentally blocked by our Spam Control program!
From an early age, Sor María enjoyed highly refined spiritual perceptions and mystical ecstasies. At age four she was confirmed by the biographer and last confessor of Teresa of Avila, Bishop Don Diego de Yepes, who advised her family to take great care in her religious education. She longed to go the New World as a missionary, a role not then easily accessible to women. Eventually María’s mother transformed their ancestral home into a cloistered convent where mother, daughter, sister, aunt and female cousins all donned the veil, along with other devout women from the region. Her father, brothers, uncle and male cousins joined other Franciscan orders. Yet her indomitable missionary zeal was often unleashed in ecstasy after Communion, resulting in her experience of personally preaching to the North American Jumano Indians who dubbed her for all time as their beloved Lady in Blue. The phenomenon of her appearances to the Jumanos was verified by Padre Alonso de Benavides, a New Mexico official who traveled to Agreda and identified her. His historical treatise, the Memorial of 1630, documents Sor María's missionary work with the Jumanos, as well his own personal interview with her in Agreda, in 1631.
Through correspondence, and from behind the formidably thick iron grille of the cloister—a barred opening in a wall through which the nuns conversed with visitors—Sor María developed an unlikely cadre of friends and confidantes, including then Hapsburg monarch and Defender of the Faith, King Felipe IV. She advised the king on spiritual and temporal matters for twenty-two years until her death in 1665. Their collected correspondence is comprised of over 600 confidential letters.
The facts of Sor María’s life are often too extraordinary to fabricate. They encompass the quiet depths of cloistered mysticism as well as the political and personal excesses of church and state in post-Reformation Inquisition era Spain. The revelations in her books, that Mary is co-redemptoress of humanity and unheralded co-founder of the Church, are as relevant now as they were then. Hailed by Radiotelevisión Españole (RTVE) as one of the nine most influential women in Spanish history, Sor María has yet to be canonized a saint, though there has been increasing ground swell to do so since 1995.
Marilyn H. Fedewa