Discovery
There are several different versions of how the statue that is the Virgin of Suyapa was discovered. The version that has become standard is recounted below.
Many Hondurans believe the statue was miraculously discovered in late-January or early-February 1747 by a labourer, Alejandro Colindres. Colindres and an 8 year old boy had been sent by Colindres's mother to clear some corn fields on Piligüin mountain, northeast of Tegucigalpa. On the way back, they were overtaken by nightfall and decided to sleep outside. Colindres was awakened by a sharp pain in the side, and discovered that he was sleeping on something. Later versions of the story claim that without looking at it, Colindres threw it as far away as he could, only to find it underneath him as he lay down again. This detail is not present in early versions of the story. The next morning Colindres discovers that he's been sleeping on the tiny statue of a virgin which he took home with him and set up in his mother's house on the family altar. For the next 20 years it remained on the family's altar in their house. It was not until 1768 that the statue was credited with its first recognized miracle and began to attract public attention. By 1777, a chapel was constructed for the statue.
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Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“I have known no experience more distressing than the discovery that Negroes didn’t love me. Unutterable loneliness claimed me. I felt without roots, like a man without a country ...”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 1, ch. 10 (1962)
“There is a great discovery still to be made in literature, that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.”
—Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)
“Next to the striking of fire and the discovery of the wheel, the greatest triumph of what we call civilization was the domestication of the human male.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)