Between La Salette and Lourdes

Teresa Dus of Porzûs and Our Lady

By (author) Andrea Tilatti

Book cover: Between La Salette and Lourdes

Extent: 184 pages

Publisher: V&R unipress

Subjects: Nineteenth-Century Studies, Religious Studies

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(April 2022)

ISBN: 9783847114185

6.3 x 9.33 inches

Price: $62.00

On back order

In September 1855, Teresa Dus, a Slovenian-speaking ten-year-old girl, saw the Virgin Mary in Porzus. The apparitions began a devotion among the Slovenian population on the border between the Italian and Slovenian ethnicities and cultures. The ecclesiastical authorities of Udine took the child, locked her in a religious house and extinguished the devotion. The context was marked by a cholera epidemic and by the “national” and pan-Slavist problem, exacerbated by the Crimean war (1853-1856). Devotion to the Virgin had had an international flowering “from below” (La Salette, 1846), followed by the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854). The dogma was then “sanctioned” by the apparitions of Lourdes (1858). The Porzus affair is investigated in this international context.


In September 1855, Teresa Dus, a Slovenian-speaking ten-year-old girl, saw the Virgin Mary in Porzus. The apparitions began a devotion among the Slovenian population on the border between the Italian and Slovenian ethnicities and cultures. The ecclesiastical authorities of Udine took the child, locked her in a religious house and extinguished the devotion. The context was marked by a cholera epidemic and by the “national” and pan-Slavist problem, exacerbated by the Crimean war (1853-1856). Devotion to the Virgin had had an international flowering “from below” (La Salette, 1846), followed by the proclamation of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception (1854). The dogma was then “sanctioned” by the apparitions of Lourdes (1858). The Porzus affair is investigated in this international context.

  • By (author) Andrea Tilatti