16076: Lally: Fw: Black Madonas (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Reynald Lally <r.bourbon@sympatico.ca>


Project Canterbury
Ceremonial Curiosities and Queer Sights in Foreign Churches.
by Edward J. G. Forse
London: The Faith Press, 1938.


CHAPTER XXI
BLACK MADONNAS
What they are and where they may be seen
I DO not know of a single Black Madonna in the Church of England; but
elsewhere they are by no means uncommon either in East or West, either in
this world or the New. In October 1905 a correspondence in the Morning Post
noted many examples in unexpected places. They are common in Orthodox
churches in the Levant, where they go by the name of "Agia Mavra," or "Black
Saint." In 1835 there was one in the "Emperor's Chapel" at Rio de Janeiro,
where it was locally supposed to be retained for the benefit of black slaves
(it was before the Empire of Brazil abolished slavery).
In 1894 a large oil-painting in the Cathedral of Port-au-Prince in Haiti
represented our Lady as a negress and the Christ-child as a mulatto. They
are quite common in Europe. The famous statue of "Our Lady of Einsiedeln" is
a Black Madonna, as I found in July 1905. Before the War there was one in
the south chapel of Ypres Cathedral; there is one at Notre Dame in Dijon;
there is one at Moulins, and another at Loreto. On March 28th, 1908, I saw
three in one day at Mende, in the Lozere, south of the Montagne de la
Margeride; one over the Cathedral altar, one in a chapel in the city, and
the third, with many lighted candles, in a great glazed shrine in the open
street. The Black Madonna of La Daurade at Toulouse is a striking sight in
its pale blue robes.
A very ancient Black Madonna of peculiar type stands over the High Altar in
the unique and amazing Cathedral of Le Puy en Velay. You will find one at
the old church of S. Victor at Marseilles, where Lazarus is said to have
been buried, and another at the curious Church of S. Marie Madeleine in
Aix-en-Provence; and I suppose tourists have noted the example in S. Paul's
Church at Orleans. The "Black Madonna of Cracow" (in a little chapel at
Czestowa) has two curious slashes across its right cheek. Legend tells how
"Krolowo Polski," as this picture of "Panna Marya" is commonly called, was
impiously slashed at by Tartars in an early inroad, and wept copiously till
they were converted! No single explanation can be found for all these
statues and pictures--and I suppose I must have scrutinized some hundreds in
the last half-century. The local tales are usually so thin as to be
transparent: some may be copies of the alleged picture of our Lady, painted
by S. Luke, and grown dark with age. Some are certainly quite ordinary
statues blackened with age and unlimited candle-smoke. Others are quite as
certainly statues of heathen deities, often of Isis and Horus, which have
been adopted and adapted to the purposes of Christian worship. Most of those
which are always exposed in robes of fabric are well worth a little study
when the robes have been removed, which can often be done with the
expenditure of a little tact and a little money--when the actual form of the
unrobed statue is at times unexpectedly startling and significant.