Oirschot

Our Lady of the Holy Oak (Onze Lieve Vrouw van de Heilige Eik)
Our Lady Consolation of the Dejected (or Oppressed)
Our Lady Wealth of Joys

The original is kept in St. Peter’s Basilica in town, Markt 2, 5688 AJ Oirschot, and a replica 3 km outside of town, in the location She chose: the Chapel of the Holy Oak (Kapel van de Heilige Eik), Proosbroekweg 11, 5688 JH Oirschot, a few kilometers to the West. 40 cm, wood, found in 1406 A.D. The image here is of the replica. If someone could send me a better picture that would be great.

A relief showing Our Lady of the Holy Oak being placed in her tree. The original oak died, but a new sapling is in its place.

According to research carried out in the early 17th century by the Oirschot pastor Peter van Vladeracken, the cult of Our Lady of the Holy Oak dates back to the early 15th century.  The legend recounts that on June 24th 1406, shepherds found a statue of Mary on the banks of the river Beerze or, according to another story, in the Beerze, floating against the current. The figurine was placed in the hollow of an oak tree. During the following night, residents of a village about 1 ½ hour walking distance away (Some say De Beerzen others Middlebeers) removed the statue from the oak. Inexplicably, the statue was back in her tree the next day. From that moment on, Marian devotion arose with an annual procession on the Saturday before the feast of St. John the Baptist (June 24th). Her wish to remain in the location where she was found was recognized and honored for a long time. A wooden chapel was built at that spot, but destroyed at the end of the 16th century. The dark Madonna apparently survived and continued to perform miracles. In gratitude for one of them, Johannes Daems, canon of the St. Peter chapter, had a stone chapel built in 1606. That poor chapel didn’t last long, for it was demolished in 1649 by order of the Protestant States General. 

The replica of the Black Madonna in the Chapel of the Holy Oak (Kapel van de Heilige Eik)

Devotion to Mary on the site where the chapel had stood, however, continued. In 1854, the current chapel was built on the foundations of the old chapel; it was enlarged in the early 20th century. To date, an estimated 25,000 visitors per year come to the chapel. Group pilgrimages are organized especially during ‘Mary’s month’ of May.

Eline Kinsbergen, who brought the Dutch statues with Black Madonna themes to my awareness, wrote the rest of this post and provided the photos.

The shrine of Our Lady of the Holy Oak sits in the middle of some woods just South of a big highway (from there you can’t see it at all). I find the replica rather crude, but it doesn’t seem to matter to the people who come here in droves. It’s a beautiful place with benches around the chapel. It seems the location is more important, as long as it’s a place that everyone agrees is sacred. The pine trees around this place even contribute a kind of Frankincense smell to the place.

I feel this statue, however crude, has the big, slightly frightening eyes of some of the ‘true’ Black Madonnas. So far, all the Mothers I’ve found in the Netherlands that are kind of dark, are all standing figures. There are no Romanesque Seat of Wisdom type Madonnas as far as I can tell.

            The chapel of the Black Madonna in St. Peter’s Basilica in Oirschot

Our Lady of the Good Death

                 the chapel of the Holy Oak

Another special point about the Holy Oak shrine is that there’s a clear link to death, which is significant if we remember that at least one Black Madonna is known under the title “Our Lady of the Good Death”. There’s a set of stained glass windows around the theme of World War II, a plaque commemorating two victims of MH17, who were born in the community. Outside in the vicinity of the chapel, between the trees and some cleverly planted rhododendron bushes, there’s a semi-legal ash field where people lay to rest the cremated remains of their loved ones, often accompanied by a little discrete flowering shrub or a bunch of flowers, a little ornament, something. One area is reserved for this, and there’s a sign saying whom you should contact for permission to put ashes there, but I believe it’s largely ignored as there’s no supervision during the day. We brought my mother in law’s ashes there and had our own little ritual moment together with my husband’s brother and his wife. About once a year if possible, we visit the place. It’s fairly unusual in the Netherlands that one can simply do such things without official authorization or validation. Wherever a place of worship is connected to a graveyard, everything’s normally really official and controlled.

Maybe the lack of control here is simply due to a phase of abandonment in the past, but nowadays, the place looks really well tended.

Ancient Mother worship in the Netherlands

In France my husband and I have had the opportunity to be close to some ‘real’ Black Virgin statues. Not all have the same feeling about them. The Holy Oak shrine has nearly the same vibration for me as a big, dark, nearly formless Old Mother situated in a big old church in Manosque, Provence. Considering that it’s in the middle of a busy French town, it’s striking that this is a place where one’s brain seems to go offline properly for once, and there’s a bottomless well of energy, really quiet, really powerful. There are a lot of Black statues where you don’t get this deep somehow, but the Holy Oak chapel carries that same kind of vibration, at least for me.

While doing research for this piece, I’m becoming aware that history surrounds me like a crazy quilt. Everywhere I find old scraps from different time periods. Apparently the ancient collective memory of the divine Mother is very strong and expresses itself in stories, rituals, objects, pilgrimages, and simple acts like lighting candles and praying.

A Madonna in Sittard, North Limburg

In some places, people of influence determined that a particular holy statue needed to be ‘replaced’ by something more modern, or easier on the eyes? And yet they couldn’t really stuff Old Mother in the attic either. Statues have sort of half-disappeared. I’m grateful to the people at the www.meertens.knaw.nl website for sharing a lot of old information that’s incredibly hard to find. It’s how we found another Original Mother, now nearly hidden in plain view! She stands inside the glass tube you see here, surrounded by the twelve Kings of Juda. The whole artwork, hanging over one’s head, was made in the nineteenth century, it’s a couple of yards across and visually completely drowns out the statue. All actual worship seems to have moved over to a nearby church, much more colourful and heavily decorated, and that is… where the candles and…  the money are going.

      a faint echo in North Brabant of            ancient stories about Mother Mary          and healing trees…

In another place only legends and memories have survived, of healing trees, shrines and hillocks that people used to crawl around on, all gone now, but for a spanking new, little wooden shrine. It’s a “Bildstock” (literally an ‘image stick’), that people apparently agreed was needed there. There’s a comfortable bench where you can sit and breathe. I wonder if this place was given ecclesiastical recognition by the Church. I’m sure that in Limburg, just over 90 km from here, the village shrines we’ve seen were blessed by the local priest at least at some point in their history.

My last image of the statuette in the linden tree, almost certainly was not. Still it’s just a bit more than a personal memorial. The little statuette looks a lot like a Lourdes statue but isn’t.

In general, the larger the building, the more likely it’s all official. I read that there have been several revival periods of Marian worship and pilgrimage during the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Of all the types of worship, the Marian is the strongest and the most likely to survive even now.