Our Lady of Light
Original title: Nossa Senhora da Luz
Our Lady of Light, patroness of students in Madeira from the late 18th century, honoured with an annual student feast until about 1855 and revived in 1880.
She was adopted as patron of studies in Madeira at the end of the third or the beginning of the last quarter of the 18th century, and for that reason the students held an annual feast in her honour which lasted, we believe, until 1855. On that occasion there was an outeiro (poetic gathering with improvised verse), attended by the island’s poets.
In September 1880 this feast, which had not been held for 25 years, took place in the College church (Igreja do Colégio, the Jesuit college church), but without the participation of the pupils of the lyceum (state secondary school), who in earlier times had been its chief promoters.