Hermida da memoria on the Sitio of Nazare

It is known that the statue of Our Lady of Nazareth came from the Holy Land where it was one of the oldest images ever venerated by Christians. It was saved from destruction at the hands of the iconoclasts sometime early in the 5th century by a monk named Ciriaco, who gave the statue to Saint Jerome. Saint Jerome later gave it to Saint Augustine in Africa, to protect the statue by removing it from the Holy Land. Saint Augustine then gave it into the safekeeping of the monastery of Cauliniana, near Merida, a monastery on the Iberian Peninsula.
When the Arabs invaded the Iberian Peninsula in the year 711, King Roderic met them with his Visigothic army at the battle of Guadalete, where he was soundly defeated.
It is a fact of history that the body of Roderic was never found upon the field of battle, although his horse was found, and it is often assumed by historians that Roderic died that day when he lost his kingdom. According to this legend, however, Roderic was not killed, but survived the battle and disguised himself as a beggar as he travelled north. Alone and unknown, he made his way to the monastery of Cauliniana where he sought shelter for the night. Going to confession, he of necessity revealed his true identity to the friar, Frei Romano. As it turned out, the monks were preparing to leave the monastery in advance of the Arabs, and so Frei Romano asked the king if he could accompany him in his travels. Roderic agreed, and the friar took with him the statue of Our Lady of Nazareth and the relics of Saint Bras and Saint Bartholomew.
They traveled together until they arrived at a place later named Monte de Saint Bartolomeu in November of the year 714.
They made for themselves a hermitage with the friar living in a small cave at the edge of a cliff that overlooked the sea. He placed the image in a niche among the stones upon a pedestal of simple rocks. Roderic went a little ways off by himself to a hill where he also began to live the life of a hermit. After a year, though, King Roderic left the hermitage, and nothing else is said of him in this legend. One wonders if he ever learned of his kinsman Pelayo, who had retreated into the mountains and continued to heroically defy the invaders.
Before his death, Frei Romano hid the image in his small cave, where it remained undisturbed for some centuries until it was discovered by shepherds, who came there to venerate the statue. Inside that little, ancient sanctuary they had found the renowned and sacred image of Our Lady of Nazareth. Carved of wood, it was unlike any other statue of the Madonna they had ever seen, for it depicts the Blessed Virgin breastfeeding her Divine Child while seated upon a simple bench. When miracles began to frequently occur, it became a major pilgrimage centre.

Then, in the early morning of September 14th in the year 1182, the mayor of Porto de Mos, Dom Fuas Roupinho, was hunting on his land when he observed a deer. Chasing it up a steep slope on horseback that misty morning, the fog became heavier all of a sudden. The deer, later suspected to be the devil in the guise of a deer, jumped off the edge of the hilltop into the empty void.
Despite his efforts to stop his horse, the spirited mount was determined to follow after the deer. Helpless to save himself, the rider suddenly recognized that he was near the sacred grotto where he would often come to pray. Fuas Roupinho cried out to the Blessed Virgin, praying aloud: “Our Lady, Help Me!”
The horse stopped immediately, as if he were digging his hooves into the rocky cliff above the void. Suspended in an unnatural manner at the edge of the cliff, Fuas Rouphinho knew the drop to be over 100 meters, and surely would mean his death if he had fallen. He was then able to back slowly away from the edge, looking down to see the evidence of the impossible and unimaginable - for there in the hard stone was the imprint of one of his horse’s hooves. One of those marks can still be seen in the native rock.