Tradition recounts that the site of Our Dear Lady's 'chapel of grace' was already holy ground before the area was Christianized…

In 1554 the rulers of Beilstein became Protestants and imposed their faith on their subjects. No wonder perhaps that the locals didn’t mind being occupied by Catholic Spaniards in 1620, during the bloody 30 Years War of Religion…

This "Gnadenbild" (image of grace) originally stood in the Neustädter Marienkirche (Mary Church), which was run by a 'chapter of 12 canons', i.e. a community of priests…

Not long before the year 1675 the mayor of Cologne made a vow to go on pilgrimage to the Holy House and the Black Madonna of Loreto (see Italy)…

The story of the Black Mother of God of Benrath begins with Count Philip Wilhelm (1653 - 1690) and his second wife Elisabeth Amalia Magdalene…

This statue illustrates two points. One, it shows that Northern Europeans saw something African and exotic in their Black Madonnas, for this Lady's crown is not a European crown…

'Heiligenbrunn' means 'sacred well' and so the center of this sanctuary is a sacred well that predates its connection with the Black Madonna…

The miracle working Black Madonna im Kirchwald, Bavaria, is a copy of an icon attributed to St. Luke, brought from Rome by Michael Schöpfl in 1644. He was a Lutheran convert turned Catholic hermit, who, with the help of the Mother of God, turned a harmful spring on this mountain into a healing well.

This copy of the Black Madonna of Loreto was first installed in a copy of the Holy House of Mary, but it drew so many pilgrims that soon a bigger church had to be built for her.

Although this is a very young Black Madonna she stands on old holy ground, along the Jodokusweg (Jodok path)…

The cathedral of Magdeburg is a very important building in Church history. It was founded originally as a Benedictine abbey in 937 by Otto the Great…

Some time around the 17th century there was a nobleman by name of Kuno von Falkenstein, who was in love with the beautiful maiden of the castle Neuerburg…

The story of Neukirchen-at-the-Holy-Blood begins with a sacred host (the consecrated bread become body of Christ) found around the year 1400…

It is rare that a copy of a famous Black Madonna makes it into my index. This one did for two reasons. One, she is from my homeland. Two, her story illustrates in great detail how a famous Black Madonna “begets her daughters”, if you will…

Soon is the name of the forest and the area around Spabrücken, where Our Lady’s church was erected as part of a monastery in 1359…

Going back to prehistoric times, black was the symbol for the earth and the Great Mother, the source of heaven and earth. The darker earth is, the more fertile, hence black was the color of fertility and creative power…

Tradition says that around the year 1775 a local tenant farmer by name of Peter Becker sought relief from a debilitating illness at the feet of the Black Madonna in the Carthusian monastery near Koblenz…