Dear Fr John Flader, Someone recently told me that in Nazareth there is a well called “Mary’s well” where the Blessed Virgin supposedly went to draw water. What do we know about this?
Although the Bible does not say anything about Our Lady going to a well to draw water, it is obvious that she would have done so.
It is tradition that has assigned the name ‘Mary’s well’ to a particular well still in existence. A visitor to Nazareth today will find a structure built on the site.
Renovated twice, once in 1967 and again in 2000, the current structure is a symbolic representation of the structure that was once in use.
While the current structure is a non-functional reconstruction inaugurated as part of the Nazareth 2000 celebrations, the traditional Mary’s Well was a local watering hole, with an overground stone structure.
Through the centuries and up until 1966, villagers would gather there to fill water jars or otherwise congregate to relax and exchange news.
At another area not far off, which tapped into the same water source, shepherds and others with domesticated animals would bring their herds to drink.
The well is just down from the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, and there is a supposed connection between the well and the Annunciation. The earliest written account that suggests that it was at a well that the Annunciation actually took place is the Protoevangelium of James, a second-century apocryphal text.
While the work is not accepted as divinely inspired, it is from it that we have, for example, the names of Mary’s parents Joachim and Anne. As regards the Annunciation, the text reads: “And she took the pitcher and went forth to draw water, and behold, a voice said: ‘Hail Mary, full of grace, you are blessed among women.’”
The Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation was built over a Byzantine era church above the spring in the third century, based on the belief that the Annunciation took place at the site.
The Catholic Church, on the other hand, believes that the Annunciation took place less than half a kilometre away, at the site of the present Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation, a modern building finished in 1969 and built over a fourth-century church commissioned by St Helena, mother of the Emperor Constantine I.
This place is also named Mary’s Well since the water source is located beneath the Basilica. Excavations have shown that it is fed by the same source as the well close to the Orthodox church, and it probably existed at least since the second century.
We know that an underground spring in Nazareth traditionally served as the city’s main source of water. Its designation as ‘Mary’s well’ or ‘Mary’s spring’ goes back a long way.
In his book The Bible as History, Werner Keller writes that Mary’s Well or Ain Maryam, as the locals called it, had been so named since “time immemorial” and that it provided the only water supply in the area. Also, William Rae Wilson, in his book, Travels in Egypt and the Holy Land (1824), describes “a well of the Virgin, which supplied the inhabitants of Nazareth with water”.
In June 1853, the British Consul in Jerusalem, James Finn, visited Nazareth and camped near the fountain, the only fountain there at the time. He wrote about it in his book Stirring Times, or Records from Jerusalem – Consular Chronicles of 1853 to 1856, published in 1878.
He describes women going with their jars to collect water and chattering about Miriam, or Mary, revealing the popular association of the well with Our Lady.
The existence of the well was verified in excavations by Yardenna Alexandre and Butrus Hanna of the Israel Antiquities Authority in 1997-98. They discovered a series of underground water systems and they suggested that the site known today as Mary’s Well served as Nazareth’s main water supply from as early as Byzantine times.
So, since there was a well that supplied water for Nazareth in early times, it is quite likely that Our Lady, like everyone else, went there to draw water.
