France’s Mysterious Black Madonnas

Jennifer Ladonne examines the long, complex and sometimes controversial history of France’s Vierges Noires

From Mont Saint-Michel to Chartres and from Montpellier to Paris, the figure of the Black Madonna can be found in every region of France, in great cathedrals and tiny village churches alike. In some places she holds a prominent place of honour, in others she is -hiding in plain sight.

No matter her placement, this striking figure of Virgin and Child, coloured earthy brown to deepest ebony, has inspired devotion and pilgrimage and performed miracles since the dawn of Christianity. There are at least 1,000 Black Madonnas throughout the world, in Africa, Russia, Brazil, India… Of the 400-500 Black Madonnas documented in Europe, 180 reside in France, which is by far the largest – concentration of Vierges Noires in the world. What is the meaning of this Madonna, so strikingly distinct from her more commonplace pale counterpart?

Dedicated scholarly works and references on the origins and meaning of the Black Madonna are scarce, and those that do exist-most dating from the Middle Ages – have not been widely translated. Despite the paucity of scholarship, and the loss of an oral transmission upon which much of the more esoteric lore depends, the feminine power of the Black Madonna endures, her mystery inspiring believers and non-believers alike.

NOTRE-DAME DE ROCAMADOUR: MOTHER OF MIRACLES

Visitors who climb the 216 steps up the steep cliffside to perched Rocamadour’s eight lofty chapels are travelling a well-worn path, trodden by pilgrims (many crawling on their knees), kings and queens since the 10th century to revere the Black Madonna of Rocamadour. Among France’s most famous Black Virgins, she sits atop a Gothic altar in the Chapelle Notre-Dame de Rocamadour with the Christ child on her knee. Depending on the season, the Madonna is crowned and dressed in a variety of majestic silken robes, in contrast to her dark, rough-hewn figure carved from walnut.

How did she get here? One legend (and there are many) says she was carved in the Holy Land by Luke the Evangelist and transported by Saint Amadour, who had accompanied the Holy Family on their flight to Egypt and was sent to evangelise in France. Living as a hermit, Amadour founded a chapel in an ancient cave dedicated to pre-Christian goddesses, a well-documented practice that served to accommodate the local deities in a more organic evolution to Christianity. As you will read on a plaque in Rocamadour, in 1166, Amadour’s perfectly preserved body was discovered in an ancient tomb at the entrance to what is now Our Lady’s chapel. Though his remains were scattered during the Wars of Religion, the Black Madonna has survived all manner of wars and unrest, perhaps protected by the many miracles she is said to have performed. According to The Book of Miracles, written in 1172 and now in the collection of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Black Madonna of Rocamadour cured diseases, delivered prisoners from persecution and protected sailors at sea and soldiers during war – a power attributed to many of the Black Madonnas around France.

CHARTRES: A PROPHESY, ‘THE VIRGIN WHO WILL GIVE BIRTH’

For centuries, Chartres was the central pilgrimage point in France for Our Lady from Under the Earth (Notre-Dame-de-Sous-Terre) and her later version, Our Lady of the Pillar (Vierge du Pilier). That is until a recent restoration, when the Madonna and Christ child emerged from the lab pale and apple-cheeked. According to France’s Historical Monuments Department of Cultural Affairs, “she was not conceived as a Black Virgin”: the statue’s polychromy was dated to the 16th century, the paint a 19th-century addition. The Black Madonna, they concluded, was probably conflated with the Virgin of the Crypt, a carved wooden statue of the Virgin venerated in the cathedral’s lower crypt since before the Middle Ages and burned during the Revolution. The Virgin of the Crypt itself was likely a Gallo-Roman copy of a Celtic statue venerated in Druidic times in a grotto spring. Inscribed Virgini pariturae (the virgin who will give birth), its significance for the Druid priests, who knew about Isaiah’s prophesies of the Messiah’s coming, and the early Christians lay in its seemingly miraculous presaging of the Annunciation.

The modern erasure of her blackness reflects a common argument that these virgins are black only because of their material (wood), age and soot. It does not stretch the imagination to view it as a repeat of 16th-century attempts to modernise the image of the Black Madonna by moving her to the middle-ground of the sanctuary (well away from the central altar to keep pesky pilgrims out of the priests’ way) in order to uproot her association with the Pagan worship of springs, standing stones and other earth-bound elements.

It also disregards the legions of pilgrims who have come to venerate her, perpetuating a tradition that dates at least from early Christianity until 2013, when she reappeared as white. But she is not the only Black Madonna in France to have been whitened. Ella Rozett’s comprehensive index of Black Madonnas (interfaithmary.net) lists several.

SAINTES-MARIES-DE-LA-MER: MARY MAGDALENE IN FRANCE

A unique Black Madonna which resides in an 11th-century Romanesque church in the Camargue seaside village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer opens yet another branch of the mystery, this one associated with the presence of Mary Magdalene in France.
According to a medieval legend, after being set adrift on a boat from the holy land, Mary Magdalene and her companions – her brother Lazarus and three other women, all named Mary, and an Egyptian servant named Sarah – landed on the shore of what is now the Camargue.
Mary Magdalene went on to Christianise Marseille, spending the last 30 years of her life in a grotto in the cliffs of nearby Sainte-Baume, which has been a popular pilgrimage site since the Middle Ages.

Mary’s companion Sarah, known as an almsgiver and caretaker of the poor and also black was adopted by the Romany people of France as their patron saint. Every year on May 24, Roma from all corners of France and Europe (some on horseback or in caravans) adorn the life-size statue in colourful silks, offerings and candles and carry her in a procession to the sea while making wishes for her protection and healing.

Also called Sara e Kali by the Romany, she is unusual in that she is not a typical Black Madonna with a child on her knee but, as Rozett says, a Dark Mother, associated with the more ancient goddesses, some of whom were black, but also the fierce Hindu deity Kali (the Romany people trace their origins to India). Goddess of time, destruction and death, Kali is also one the 10 wisdom goddesses, an association often made with the dark goddesses and Black Madonnas. Bathing a goddess in the sea is an ancient custom, and it seems that in their conversion to the Christian faith, the Roma of Europe, like the Celtic peoples and other converts, conflated the ancient goddesses and rites into a figure palatable to Christians while retaining her more esoteric meanings.

There is no consensus on the Black Madonna: she has touched many people in many ways. She carries a connotation of mystery, of the dark, of deep spiritual longing, of caretaking and miraculous healing. She is also seen, as by Romany people, apart from the religious mainstream and male-dominated hierarchical establishment, and represents, according to Ella Rozett, “the mother of the oppressed, exploited, silenced, marginalised, and the reconciler of all races”.

To find out more about the Black Madonna, go to Ella Rozett’s excellent website. For a scholarly account of her origins and history, Ean Begg’s The Cult of the Black Virgin cites in detail the medieval literature and other sources which have contributed to her story.

TOURISM CONTACTS

Rocamadour: www.visit-dordogne-valley.co.uk
Chartres: www.chartres-tourisme.com/en
Saintes-Maries de la Mer: www.saintesmaries.com/en

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Lead photo credit : Statue of Black Madonna with Child in Chartres cathedral - Shutterstock