PORTUGAL: SANCTUARY OF OUR LADY OF NAZARE AND DOS VENTOS RESTAURANT

June 26, 2022

There is a story that in the 4th century a small wooden statue of the Virgin Mary was brought from the city of Nazareth in the Holy Land to a monastery in Spain, and then in 711 it was brought to the Portuguese seaside by a monk and the current king of Portugal. They promptly became hermits, moving into a small grotto in the cliffs above the sea. When the monk died, the king left the Madonna statue on an altar in the grotto.

Flash forward 400+ years. As mentioned in my previous post, sometime in the 12th century a local official was chasing a deer during a hunt in the fog, and he chased the deer over a cliff near the grotto. Just as the hunter's horse was about to follow the deer, the hunter called out to the Virgin to save him, and, miraculously, his horse stopped abruptly on the very verge of a death drop. 

To honor this miraculous intervention by the Virgin Mary, a chapel was built over the grotto in 1182.  A bigger church that could accommodate more visitors to the Virgin was built in 1377 by King Fernando I, and it was remodeled multiple times between the 16th and 19th centuries. Today, this beautiful baroque Sanctuary of Our Lady of Nazaré still houses the miraculous statue. The name Nazaré (pronounced Na-zuh-RAY) is the Portuguese version of Nazareth, the city in the Holy Land from where the statue came.

Unfortunately, when we were there the statue itself was out for repair and restoration, but there was still a lot to enjoy in the rest of the church.

PORTUGAL: NAZARE, PRAIA DO NORTE

  June 26, 2022

The small town of Nazaré (population 10,000) is known for two unrelated things: surfing and a miracle. I'll start with surfing.

The town was very crowded the afternoon we were there, and we had to park a fair distance from our first stop, the famous Praia do Norte, or North Beach. I'll get to why it's famous in a minute.

We noted a definite hipster/surfer vibe as we approached the beach--street signs covered in beach bum stickers and a giant marble and steel statue that has the head of a deer and the body of a surfer.

The deer has a story that actually ties in to the Nazaré miracle, so I guess my opening statement that the surfing and the miracle aren't related isn't entirely true.

There used to be a lot of deer in the area, and the legend is that on a foggy day in the 12th century, the mayor, Dom Fuas, was hunting and chased a deer over a cliff. Just as Dom Fuas was about to follow suit, he cried out for help to Our Lady of Nazaré (whose story I will tell later). At that moment his horse stopped abruptly, saving itself and its rider from a fall of more than 300 feet onto the rocks below. See the depiction of the event below, painted by Portuguese artist André Luís.

Picture from here

We were walking towards those very cliffs, but first we passed through the gate that welcomed us to the the site of the Biggest Waves in the World.