María de Jesús de Ágreda (1602–1665), also known as the Lady in Blue or the Blue Nun, was a Franciscan abbess and mystic who is renowned in Spanish folklore for her missionary works in North America—even though she claimed to have never physically left Spain. Without ever leaving her cloistered convent, Sister María is said to have made more than 500 mystical excursions to what is now the American Southwest in order to bring the word of God to the native peoples of the New World.
María was born in the village of Ágreda near the border of Aragón and Navarre on April 2, 1602, to Francisco Coronel and Catalina of Arana. Of their eleven children, María was one of four who survived infancy and was the elder of the couple’s two daughters. Even as a young child, María was spiritually gifted and she was confirmed in the Catholic faith at the tender age of four. When she was eight, María took a vow of chastity and announced her intention of becoming a nun.
Although pious in their own right, María’s parents attempted to persuade their daughter to abandon her pursuit of the convent life. But María persisted and, by the time she was sixteen, she convinced her father to convert his ancestral castle into a religious retreat. Francisco and his two sons left their family home to enter a Franciscan monastery and María, along with her mother and her sister Jerónima, took the habit and entered the newly formed nunnery dedicated to the Order of the Poor Clares of Saint Francis.
This seventeenth-century Spanish painting depicts the Blessed María de Ágreda (1602–1665), popularly known as the “Lady in Blue” or the “Blue Nun,” appearing to the native peoples. Although she is said never to have left her convent in Spain, this Franciscan abbess is purported to have made over 500 out-of-body evangelical forays to North America via mystical trances. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)
Along with her vows, she changed her name to María de Jesús and became a nun of the Franciscan Convent of the Immaculate Conception at Ágreda. However, her strange visions and extreme piety kept her separated from other sisters in the order. She wore the traditional Franciscan brown (pardo) habit with a black veil and an outer cloak of blue cloth in deference to the Virgin Mary, but underneath her somber attire she often paid penance with such garments as a girdle of spiked rings.
By the time María was seventeen, she began to report lapsing into deep trances in which she was transported to strange lands and gifted with visions of half-naked savages. These miraculous bilocations (appearing at two different places simultaneously) took María thousands of miles from Spain to what are now known as the U.S. states of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. During her visitations, she encountered many different Native American cultures in the region, but none were as devoted to the Lady in Blue as the Jumanos, an indigenous tribe living along the Rio Grande River in Texas.
Spanish missionaries at the pueblo village of Isleta, south of present-day Albuquerque, came upon evidence they believed provided confirmation of María’s mystical experiences. In July 1629 a delegation of Jumano Indians arrived at the San Agustín de la Isleta Mission requesting induction into the Catholic faith. These native people displayed fundamental knowledge of Christianity, the learning of which they attributed to the apparition of a Lady in Blue who had descended from the sky to teach them the true faith. In response the missionaries sent an expedition to southwestern Texas where they met more than 2,000 natives who had been urged by a spectral Lady in Blue to present themselves to the approaching priests for baptism and religious instruction.
Stunned by the native people’s understanding of the basic spiritual practices of Christianity and their stories of the Lady in Blue, Fray Alonso de Benavides traveled to Spain in hopes of discovering the identity of the mysterious nun. Once back in his mother country, Fray Benavides made the connection between the Lady in Blue of the Jumanos’ tales and María de Ágreda, whose visions and revelations of the tribes of New Spain had been reported to the Father General.
Ultimately María reported making more than 500 visits to the American Southwest while in a trance-like state between 1620 and 1631. During much of this time, she governed the convent as the mother superior, a placement that occurred when she was only twenty-five years old. The dual role as missionary and mother superior created a tremendous burden on her spiritual life, and she requested release from the position on several occasions. However, other than one brief period (1632–1635), she continued her role as the abbess of the convent until her death in 1665.
In addition to her journal recounting her travels to the New World, María also penned several books, the most famous of which is The Mystical City of God, a description of heaven given to her by the Virgin Mary. Although her last visitation to the Jumanos occurred in 1631, the mysterious Lady in Blue was never forgotten and her legend lives on today.
Carina Bissett
See also European Sources; Legends; Our Lady of Guadalupe; Out of Body Experiences; Saints’ Legends; Women in Folklore
Further Reading
Abernethy, Francis Edward. 1994. “María de Agreda: The Lady in Blue.” Legendary Ladies of Texas, edited by Francis Edward Abernethy. Denton: University of North Texas Press, pp. 9–14.
Eppinga, Jane. 2000. “The Blue Nun.” Arizona Twilight Tales: Good Ghosts, Evil Spirits & Blue Ladies. Boulder, CO: Pruett, pp. 133–144.
Fedewa, Marilyn H. 2010. María of Ágreda: Mystical Lady in Blue. New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press.
Llamas, Enrique. 2006. Venerable Mother Agreda and the Mariology of Vatican II. New Bedford: Academy of the Immaculate.
Mary of Agreda, Venerable. 2012. The Mystical City of God: A Popular Abridgement of the Divine History and Life of the Virgin Mother of God. Translated by Fiscar Marison. Charlotte, NC: TAN Books.