The apparition is also referred to as Our Lady of the Rosary (a term first used in 1208 for the reputed apparition in the church of Prouille), because the children said the apparition called herself the “Lady of the Rosary”. A combination of these titles is also seen, i.e. Our Lady of the Rosary of Fátima (Nossa Senhora do Rosário de Fátima).

The events at Fátima gained fame due to elements of secrets, prophecy and eschatology, particularly with regard to World War II and possibly more World Wars in the future. Chief among these is also the alleged urgent need for the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The reported apparitions at Fátima were officially declared worthy of belief by the Catholic Church.

Initial apparitions

Three Portuguese children, Lucia dos Santos, Jacinta Marto, and Francisco Marto, were young and without much education when they reported the apparition of Our Lady of Fátima in 1917. The local administrator initially jailed the children and threatened that he would boil them one by one in a pot of oil. The children were consoled by the other inmates in the jail, and then led the inmates in praying the Rosary.^[2][3]

With millions of followers and Roman Catholic believers, the reported visions at Fatima gathered respect. After a canonical enquiry, the visions of Fátima were officially declared “worthy of belief” in October 1930 by the Bishop of Leiria-Fátima.^[4] Popes Pius XII, John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI voiced their acceptance of the supernatural origin of the Fátima events. John Paul II credited Our Lady of Fátima with saving his life following an assassination attempt on the Feast of Our Lady of Fátima, 1981. He donated the bullet that wounded him to the Roman Catholic sanctuary at Fátima, Portugal and it was placed in the crown of the Virgin’s statue.

Fátima prayers and reparations

Many Roman Catholics recite prayers based on Our Lady of Fátima. Lúcia later said that, in 1916, she and her cousins had several visions of an angel calling himself the “Angel of Portugal” and the “Angel of Peace” who taught them to bow with their heads to the ground and to say “My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, and I love you. I ask pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not hope and do not love you.” Lúcia later set this prayer to music and a recording exists of her singing it.^[52] It was also said that sometime later the angel returned and taught them a eucharistic devotion now known as the Angel Prayer.^[53][54]

Lúcia said that the Lady emphasized Acts of Reparation and prayers to console Jesus for the sins of the world. Lúcia said that Mary’s words were “When you make some sacrifice, say ‘O Jesus, it is for your love, for the conversion of sinners, and in reparation for sins committed against the Immaculate Heart of Mary.’” At the first apparition, Lúcia wrote, the children were so moved by the radiance they perceived that they involuntarily said “Most Holy Trinity, I adore you! My God, my God, I love you in the Most Blessed Sacrament.”^[55] Lúcia also said that she heard Mary ask for these words to be added to the Rosary after the Gloria Patri prayer: “O my Jesus, pardon us, save us from the fires of hell. Lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need.”^[56]

In the tradition of Marian visitations, the “conversion of sinners” is not necessarily religious conversion to the Roman Catholic Church, for that would be the “conversion of heretics or apostates who are ‘outside the church and alien to the Christian Faith’ according to Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical on the Unity of the Church, Satis Cognitum”. Conversion of sinners refers to general repentance and attempt to amend one’s life according to the teachings of Jesus for those True Catholics who do profess the faith truly, but are fallen into sins. Lúcia wrote that she and her cousins defined “sinners” not as non-Catholics but as those who had fallen away from the church or, more specifically, willfully indulged in sinful activity, particularly “sins of the flesh”^[57] and “acts of injustice and a lack of charity towards the poor, widows and orphans, the ignorant and the helpless” which she said were even worse than sins of impurity.

Pilgrimage

An estimated 70,000 people assembled to witness the last of the promised appearances of the Lady in the Cova da Iria on October 13, 1917. The widely reported miracle of the sun was a factor that led to Fátima quickly becoming a major centre of pilgrimage. Two million pilgrims visited the site in the decade following the events of 1917.^[59] A small chapel – the Capelinha - was built by local people on the site of the apparitions. The construction was neither encouraged nor hindered by the Catholic Church authorities. On May 13, 1920, pilgrims defied government troops to install a statue of the Virgin Mary in the chapel,^[60] and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass was first officially celebrated there in January 1924. A hostel for the sick was begun in that year. In 1927 the first rector of the sanctuary was appointed and a set of Stations of the Crosswere erected on the mountain road. The foundation stone for the present basilica was laid the next year.^[61]

1930 was the year both of official church recognition of the apparition events as “worthy of belief” and the granting of a papal indulgence to pilgrims visiting Fátima. In 1935 the bodies of the visionaries Jacinta and Francisco were reinterred in the basilica. The coronation of the statue of Our Lady of Fátima there in 1946 drew such large crowds that the entrance to the site had to be barred.^[62]

Today pilgrimage to the site goes on all year round and additional chapels, hospitals and other facilities have been constructed. The principal pilgrimage festivals take place on the thirteenth day of each month, from May to October, on the anniversaries of the original appearances. The largest crowds gather on 13 May and 13 October, when up to a million pilgrims have attended to pray and witness processions of the statue of Our Lady of Fátima, both during the day and by the light of tens of thousands of candles at night.

Erected on a hill, in a dominant position on the village, its name is connected to the D. Fuas Roupinho, immortalized in the verses of Luís de Camões and Nazareth legend.

It is believed that the occupation of the site dates back to prehistory, as ceramic fragments rescued by archaeological research. The period of Roman occupation, when it is believed date the first defense of the village, coins and identified Latin inscriptions were collected in two masonry. This primitive defense would have been increased in the following centuries, successively by the Visigoths and Muslims.

The medieval castle

At the time of the Christian Reconquest of the Iberian peninsula, and the forces of Dom Afonso Henriques (1112-85) advanced to the line of the Tagus river, Praia da Luz became a strategic point in the defense of Leiria and Coimbra. Conquered in 1148, the tradition refers to as his Alcaide the illustrious D. Fuas Roupinho. A short time later the Moors reconquered this castle, and D. Fuas succeeded to escape to resume it then with reinforcements, definitely.

With the encouragement of settlement under the reign of Sancho I (1185-1211), the town prospered, and his defense received major improvement works. Jealous of their rights and duties, it was one of the few Portuguese districts that formed Council on its own initiative, regardless of the granting of Foral Charter. New works were promoted during the reign of King Dinis (1279-1325), which granted a charter (1305), when it started to adapt to the manor house function.

In the context of the 1383-1385 crisis, the town and its castle took the Master of Avis party. The Portuguese forces under the command of the sovereign, camped here on their way to the battle of Aljubarrota (1385). The village, the castle and its domains joined the wide donation of land made by the sovereign rights and the Constable D. Nuno Alvares Pereira. By deceased, they were bequeathed in his will to his daughter and son in law, the first Dukes of Bragança. In the mid-fifteenth century, the son of the 1st Duke of Bragança, D. Afonso, 4th Earl of Ourém and 1st Marquis of Valencia, taking an interest in these areas for several villages, was responsible for several improvements in Porto de Mos, including the transformation of its medieval castle in a Renaissance manor, project their descendants preserved and expanded.

The 1755 earthquake to the present day

The defensive structure of the castle was severely damaged by the 1755 earthquake, and again, to a lesser extent, by 1909, affecting in particular the north elevation.

In the twentieth century has been classified as a national monument by decree published on 23 June 1910. The intervention of the public can only be felt, however, from the 1960s, at the initiative of the Directorate General for National Buildings and Monuments. A new restoration and intervention campaign took place from 2001.

On site remains today the route of the Roman road of Carreirancha. This was the path that led Nuno Alvares Pereira to Military Camp on the eve of the Battle of Aljubarrota on 14 August 1385. The road is 100 meters long and four meters at its widest point, and was built between centuries BC and AD.

It is a fortress located on the southern slopes, above the cliffs, between the fishing port in the east, and the Cave of Furninha west.

It is assumed that the origin of the place name derives from Peniche Phoenix, name of an ancient village on the island of Crete, whose geographical setting was similar to the primitive island of Peniche, which became peninsula. At its end lies the Cape Carvoeiro. The village is about eight meters above sea level, occupying nowadays one peninsular area 2,750 meters long from west to east.

At the time of independence from Portugal, the island of Peniche stood about a hundred steps from the mainland, near the mouth of the São Domingos river. The action of ocean currents and winds, over the centuries, led to the silting of that river, from the sands to form progressively a string of dunes, consolidating, joined the island to the mainland of Peniche, making disappear Port of Atouguia.

The ancient site of Ribeira d’Atouguia at the mouth of the river, was one of the most important Portuguese ports of the Middle Ages, privileged access point to the country’s central locations (Lisbon, Obidos, Torres Vedras, Santarém and Leiria), being implicadada important episodes in the history of Portugal. Being a constant target of attacks of English privateers, French and Barbary Pirates, King Manuel I of Portugal (1495-1521) instructed the Atouguia Earl of drawing up a plan for the defense of that stretch of coast, which was presented to her successor, John III of Portugal (1521-1557). Work began the construction in 1557, the so-called castle of the town, bastion structure, under the supervision of D. Luis de Ataide, completed around 1570, to the reign of King Sebastian of time (1557-1578). During the Philippine Dynasty, it was in Peniche that British troops, courtesy of Elizabeth I of England, under the command of Antonio I of Portugal, began their march on Lisbon (July 1589), in attempting to restore Portuguese sovereignty.

The fishing village was elevated to town (1609), having been made some repairs on their walls.

Bordallo Pinheiro Factory of Artistic Earthenware has been, for over a century, responsible for the design of a gallery of utilitarian and decorative ceramic pieces that have become a worldwide artistic reference.

Description of the Company

Bordallo Pinheiro Factory of Artistic Earthenware was created with the purpose of revitalizing the traditional arts of ceramics, crossing them with the modernity of many styles that foretell the future, but, above all, with the originality of its creator, Rafael Bordallo Pinheiro. Thus was born the artistic production of pieces that are, until today, inseparable from our imagination and cultural references of a universal nature.

By still using most of the centuries-old techniques in the reproduction of models, Bordallo Pinheiro Factory of Artistic Earthenware continues to recover an irreplaceable legacy. At the same time, and animated by the same pioneering spirit, it is an innovative company, creating contemporary products and enhancing its prestige in the various markets where the brand is present.

Bordallo Pinheiro operates in a factory located in Caldas da Rainha, where the company’s headquarters are located, and has an office in Lisbon.

He was a disciple of his father, the painter Manuel Maria Bordalo Pinheiro. His mother was D. Maria Augusta do Ó Carvalho Prostes and his brother the painterColumbano. He started publishing illustrations and caricatures in humoristic magazines such as A Berlinda and O Calcanhar de Aquiles, frequently demonstrating a sarcastic humour with a political or social message.

In 1875 he travelled to Brazil to work as an illustrator and cartoonist for the publication Mosquito (and later,another publication called O Besouro), which was also employing the Italian/Brazilian illustrator Angelo Agostini, until then the unrivaled cartooning authority of Brazil. Pinheiro eventually became editor of other humorous, politically critical magazines. His fame as a caricaturist led the Illustrated London News to become one of his collaborators.

In 1875, Bordalo Pinheiro created the cartoon character Zé Povinho (literal translation: Joe Little People), a Portuguese everyman, portrayed as a poor peasant. Zé Povinho became, and still is, as an iconic symbol, the most popular character in Portugal.

In Zé Povinho, as in his other works, Bordalo Pinheiro’s drawing style was innovative and influential, making extensive use of onomatopoeia, graphical signs (such as those to used represent movement), strong images (the manguito), and his unique style of mixing punctuation marks, such as brackets, with drawing.

In 1885, he founded a ceramics factory in Caldas da Rainha, where he created many of the pottery designs for which this city is known. The factory is still in business.

The Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/bordallopinheiro.official

The Museum in Lisbon - http://museubordalopinheiro.cm-lisboa.pt/

Since July 26, 2013, it is installed on the ground floor of the building of the Chess Museum.

The Figueiró dos Vinhos Tourist Office of Wines started to work on “Cocoon of Malhoa” following the works of Recovery and Rehabilitation of that property classified as municipal interest.

Thus, Figueiró Wine now has a place with undeniable able to receive visitors and tourists in the area adjacent to the new Museum and Arts Center, allowing a clear strengthening of Cultural Tourism.

The museum is located in the city of Caldas da Rainha, Leiria, Portugal, in the middle of the D. Carlos I park.

José Vital Branco Malhoa, known simply as José Malhoa (Caldas da Rainha, 28 April 1855 - Figueiró dos Vinhos, 26 October 1933) was a Portuguese painter.

Malhoa was, with Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, the leading name in Portuguese naturalist painting, in the second half of the 19th century. He painted often popular scenes and subjects, like his two most famous paintings, The Drunks (1907) and Fado (1910). He always remained faithful to the naturalist style, but in some of his works, there are impressionist influences, like in his Autumn (1918), that can be considered as an “impressionist exercise”.

He saw at the end of his life, the inauguration of the José Malhoa Museum, in Caldas da Rainha.

Malhoa’s House, also known as the Dr. Anastácio-Gonçalves House-Museum, in Lisbon, was originally built in 1905 as a residence and studio for the artist. It was bought by Dr. Anastácio-Gonçalves, an art collector, a year before the painter’s death, and it became a museum in 1980, showcasing several items from his collection, namely works from Portuguese painters of the 19th and 20th century.

It stands in a dominant position on the beach of Nazaré, famous and traditional fishing spot, sanctuary and resort on the Portuguese coast.

The Fort of Saint Michael the Archangel is a maritime fortification in Mannerist style, has irregular organic plant (adapted to the rocky promontory on which is based), with a bastion at each vertex. The walls in irregulasr stone set with sing at the corners, buttresses present, housing eight premises that met the Headquarters Troop functions, Command House, Storeroom and Warehouses. On the second floor, located in the Plaza de Armas.

Surmounting the monumental gate, under a lintel, there is an image in bas-relief of St. Michael the Archangel, patron of the fort, and an inscription: “El Rey Dom Joam the Room – 1644″, both currently quite worn.

In the year 1901 or 1902, began a process for the expropriation of the fort, and then proceeded to the partial reconstruction of a damaged stronghold for him install the Lighthouse of Nazareth (1903), active to this day, with a range bright fifteen nautical miles, completed by a warning beep on days of dense fog.

The early defense of the place dates back to the reign of King Sebastian (1557-1578), who ruled there erect a fortification to defend the fishing village on the Mount of Flint (1577), whose port was drained by the wood of Pine d’El Rey (Pinhal de Leiria) and whose shipyards had already economically important figure at the time.

These works, however, only gain momentum during the Philippine Dynasty when King Philip II (1598-1621), around the year 1600, determined to rebuild the first fortress under the late military engineer and architect Giovanni Vicenzo plant Casale. Still under construction, a Dutch privateer entered the port of Flint and apresou a Portuguese vessel with pine wood and a ship load of Biscay carrying iron, wine and weapons (1611).

In need of repair in the early seventeenth century, the time of the War of Restoration of Portugal’s independence the Crown determined its modernization and expansion (1644), when it acquired its current conformation.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, in 1903, a lighthouse was installed in its facilities, with the help of the navigation function that stretch of coastline.

Between 1907 and 1941 were registered restoration work on the monument.

Although currently well preserved, the structure is under threat of collapse due to the advanced erosion that undermines the side of the sea.

The town consists of three neighbourhoods: Praia (along the beach), Sítio (an old village, on top of a cliff) and Pederneira (another old village, on a hilltop). Praia and Sítio are linked by the Nazaré Funicular, a funicular railway.

The earliest settlements were in Pederneira and in Sítio, above the beach. They provided the inhabitants with refuge against raids by Viking, later French, English and Dutch pirates, that lasted until as late as the beginning of the 19th century.

According to the Legend of Nazaré, the town derives its name from a small wooden statue of the Virgin Mary, a Black Madonna, brought by a monk in the 4th century from Nazareth, Holy Land, to a monastery near the city of Mérida, Spain. The statue was brought to its current place in 711 by another monk, Romano, accompanied by Roderic, the last Visigoth king of today’s Portugal. After their arrival at the seaside they decided to become hermits. The monk lived and died in a small natural grotto, on top of a cliff above the sea. After his death and according to the monk’s wishes, the king buried him in the grotto. Roderic left the statue of the Black Madonna in the grotto on an altar.

The first church in Sítio was built over the grotto to commemorate a miraculous intervention in 1182 by the Virgin Mary, which saved the life of the 12th-century Portuguese knight Dom Fuas Roupinho (possibly a templar) while he was hunting deer one morning in a dense fog. This episode is usually referred to as the Legend of Nazaré. In memory of the miracle he had a chapel (Capela da Memória) built over the small grotto, where the miraculous statue had been left by king Roderic after the monk’s death. Beside the chapel, on a rocky outcrop 110 meters above the Atlantic, one can still see the mark made in the rock by one of the hooves of Dom Fuas’ horse. This Church of Nazareth, high on the rocky outcrop over Pederneira bay, was noted as a landmark in sailors’ manuals.

In 1377, King Fernando I of Portugal founded a new more spacious church which was totally transformed between the 16th and 19th centuries. The Church of Nossa Senhora da Nazaré is a rich baroque building, with splendid tiles on its interior. Behind and above the main altar visitors can see and venerate the miraculous statue of our Lady of Nazaré.

Nazaré has become a popular tourist attraction, advertising itself internationally as a picturesque seaside village. Located on the Atlantic coast, it has long sandy beaches (considered by some to be among the best beaches in Portugal), with lots of tourists in the summer. The town used to be known for its traditional costumes worn by the fishermen and their wives who wore a traditional headscarf and embroidered aprons over seven flannel skirts in different colours. These dresses can still occasionally be seen.