Over the centuries, the citizens of Marchena (a town 60 km south of Seville, Spain) have gathered in brotherhoods or confraternities in order to venerate the Virgin Mary with special devotions and with painted or sculpted images of her. The local cult surrounding the image of Our Lady of Solitude is particularly noteworthy, being the oldest documented Marian image in the Holy Week celebrations in the entire province of Seville and, without a doubt, one of the most ancient in all of Andalusia. The brotherhood charged with the care of this image was founded in 1567 under the protection of the dukes of Arcos who, over the centuries, have held the title of “Hermano Mayor” (first, or oldest brother) in the confraternity. This article offers a brief overview of the cult and confraternity of Our Lady of Solitude in Marchena and then outlines the confraternity’s participation in the processions organized on Good Friday and on the Feast of the Birth of the Virgin (8 Sept.).

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Paque, V. H., (2025), "La Hermandad de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad de Marchena. Cultos y piedad popular en el siglo XVII", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Confraternitas

Original publication: Paque, Vicente Henares. “La Hermandad de Nuestra Señora de la Soledad de Marchena. Cultos y piedad popular en el siglo XVII.” Confraternitas 19 (1): 2010. 3-10. DOI: . This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Confraternitas. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Confraternitas under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.