Our Lady of Ransom (Our Lady of Mercy)

The Feast of Our Lady of Ransom is a Roman Catholic liturgical Marian feast. In the General Roman Calendar of 1960, it was celebrated on 24 September, commemorating the foundation of the Mercedarians. After Vatican II the name for the Marian commemoration on September 24 was changed to "Our Lady of Mercy". The Feast of Our Lady of Ransom is no longer included in the General Roman calendar, but continues to be celebrated hugely in certain places like Vallarpadam and in the order of the Mercedarians.

Between the eighth and the fifteenth centuries, medieval Europe was in a state of intermittent warfare between the Christian kingdoms of southern Europe and the Muslim states of North Africa, Southern France, Sicily and portions of Spain. Raids by militias, bands and armies from both sides were an almost annual occurrence. Capture, whether by pirates or raiders, was a continuous threat to residents of coastal areas on both sides of the conflict.

In 1218 Peter Nolasco was inspired to establish a religious order for the redemption of captives seized by the Moors in Spain and on the seas. Its charism of the redemption of Christian captives was similar to that of the Order of the Most Holy Trinity established some twenty years earlier in France by saints John of Matha and Felix of Valois. Given that the Caliphate of Córdoba occupied a significant portion of the Iberian Peninsula, the Mercedarians differed from the Trinitarians in that originally its membership held more knights than clerics. The former guarded the coasts, and undertook the dangerous task of ransoming Christian captives, while the clerics were charged with the celebration of the Divine Office in the commandaries.

On 10 August 1223, the Mercedarian Order was legally constituted at Barcelona by King James of Aragon and was approved by Pope Gregory IX on 17 January 1235.