he really was. Then the friar suggested they flee together, taking with them an old and holy image of Mary with the Infant venerated at the monastery. So the statue of Our Lady of Nazaré, which received its name from the village in the Holy Land where it was first venerated, was brought by friar Romano and by king Roderic to the Atlantic coast. When they reached their destination they settled in an empty hermitage on the top of a rocky hill, the Monte de S. Bartolomeu, and there they stayed for a few days. They then decided to separate and live by themselves as hermits. The friar took the image and settled in a little grotto on the edge of a cliff above the sea, next to the hill where the king went on living. A year went by and Roderic decided to leave the region. Friar Romano stayed in his hermitage above the sea until he died. The holy statue, a black Madonna, stayed on the altar where he left it until 1182, when Dom Fuas, after the miracle, moved it to the chapel built over the grotto as a memorial to the event that saved his life. Thus the still existing chapel was named Capela da Memória (Chapel of the Memory). In 1377, because of the increased number of pilgrims, king Fernando had a church built near the chapel and transferred the statue there. At the end of the sixteenth century, this church experienced the first of a series of reconstructions and enlargements. The existing building is now the result of several interventions from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries that give it a very unusual character. This church or sanctuary is named Santuário de Nossa Senhora da Nazaré (Sanctuary of Our Lady of Nazaré). The holy image is now on display in the main chapel in a small niche above the altar that can be accessed by a staircase leading from the sacristy. Since 711, the statue has remained in the village named after it: Sítio da Nazaré (Place of the Nazaré). In this village, nowadays, a quarter of the town of Nazaré, one can still visit the three sanctuaries mentioned above: the underground hermitage, the small chapel above it, and the church where one can visit Our Lady of Nazaré. According to oral tradition, the holy icon was sculpted by Joseph the carpenter, in Nazareth,