Browse Black Madonnas
Spabrücken
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…
Windhausen
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…
Bologna
According to tradition, the Black Madonna of St. Luke in Bologna was painted by St. Luke the evangelist and brought to Italy from Constantinople in the 5th century, then painted over in the 12th century. Her sanctuary was founded by a woman.
Padua
There are two Black Madonnas in the sanctuary of St. Anthony of Padua. One was whitened in spite of more than 800 years of tradition venerating a Black Madonna with a strong connection to St. Anthony and proof existing that both Madonnas were conceived as Black from the start. Our Mother’s black skin was stolen, because too many people found her more beautiful with white skin: a racist mutilation!
Turin
Our Lady of Consolation in Turin, Italy, reputedly painted by St. Luke the Evangelist, likely a formerly Black Madonna like so many others attributed to him and associated with the Augustinian order. She had to be hidden from her enemies in the earth twice but always made sure she was found again. Very miraculous.
Sonogno, Ticino
Black Madonna of Sonogno (most beautiful village of Switzerland) a miracle working copy of Our Lady of Loreto. The previous statue was burnt as a remnant of Pagan Goddess worship by a priest in the 1920’s. Apparently a common sentiment among Swiss clergy around that time. The furious villagers got rid of the priest and replace their Dark Mother. Fresco is what remains of her older incarnation.
Luthern Bad
This “Lourdes of Switzerland” was a gift of the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln. In 1581, she appeared to a handicapped, destitute peasant in a dream and told him where to dig for a sacred well to be healed. The price: his six daughters all went home to their heavenly mother in one week. That put the fear of the Black Madonna into the villagers and they installed White Madonnas instead. Only in the 1950’s with a modern church being built, did they commission a copy of the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln.
Heiligenleithen
The chapel was built from 1697 to 1699 as a pilgrimage church in honor of Our Lady of Einsiedeln. At some point, in order to spread devotion to the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln…
Kaltenleutgeben
In 1766, the parish chronicle relates that the „Black Madonna of Kaltenleutgeben“ was sculpted by a holy hermit in Altötting. He touched his faithful copy to the original in order to absorb…
Klagenfurt
The son of the earl, who built the copy of the Holy House of Loreto just outside of Klagenfurt on the Maria Loretto Peninsula, had this funeral chapel built for his family in the cathedral in 1660/61…
Klagenfurt, Maria Loretto Peninsula
Klagenfurt is the capital of the state Carinthia, (Kärnten). In 1652 Earl Johann Andreas von Rosenberg had a castle built on what was then an island in Lake Wörther…
Langenzersdorf
In the church St Katharina, Langenzersdorf. This copy of the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln, Switzerland, was installed in 1708.
Loretto, Burgenland
Austria has not just many copies of the Black Madonna of Loreto, but a whole village named after her! It was built in the 17th century to support a monastery, which in turn was built to honor…
Pfarrkirchen im Mühlkreis
The House of Habsburg, which held the throne of the Holy Roman Empire from 1438 – 1740 and ruled Austria till 1918, spread the Loreto cult all over its empire…
Sankt Andrä im Lavanttal
Before this basilica was built in the year 1683, during the second Turkish occupation of Vienna, there was a little Loreto chapel in Sankt Andrä.
Sankt Veit an der Glan
Commonly Black Madonnas are associated with sacred springs, but this one outdoes them all: her chapel was erected over 3 sacred springs! It was donated by a local from St. Veit…
Vienna, Augustiner Church
The House of Habsburg, which held the throne of the Holy Roman Empire from 1438 – 1740 and ruled Austria till 1918, spread the Loreto cult all over its empire…
Vienna, Paulaner Church
A 17th century “copy” of Our Lady of Loreto in the Paulaner Church, in the Paulanergasse 6, 1040 Vienna, brought from Loreto, Italy.
Vienna, Ruprechts Church
It’s a beautiful copy of the Black Madonna of Loreto in a beautiful church, but nobody has anything to say about her.
Vienna Altlerchenfeld
A copy of Our Lady of Czestochowa, the “Queen of Poland”
Marija Bistrica
How happy is a devotee’s heart when a Black Madonna has a whole town named after her and her own flag…
Boulogne-sur-Mer
The Black Madonna of Boulogne-sur-mer miraculously appeared alone in a boat in 633 A.D. in France’s most important fishing harbor since Roman times. She has been stolen, mutilated, dragged through the mud, and burnt at the stake by the enemies of France and Catholicism, but she was always brought back to life by the devotion of her children.
Dijon
The brown Lady of Good Hope was painted black in the 1500’s likely in order to gain power and prestige and draw more visitors to the city. It worked! She promptly responded with the sort of miracles Black Madonnas are famous for: chasing off foreign armies and such. Sadly in 1963 she was stripped of her dark paint and Black Madonna title. No more miracles have been recorded since then. Serves them right!
Évrecy
Black Madonna near Evrecy, Normandy on the pilgrimage route from Caen to Mont Saint Michel, erected in 1871 by Madame de Bonnefons, lady of the nearby castle Champs Goubert, in thanksgiving that the village and castle were spared in the Prussian (German) invasion the year before.
Guingamp
With its Black Madonna, labyrinth, and its legend of an ancient Black Madonna under the earth Guingamp, Brittany competed for centuries with Chartres, 400 km to the East. To this day it honors its Lady of Good Help with festivities known as ‘the Pardon of Our Lady’. Unlike in Chartres, there is no whitening the Black Madonna or covering the labyrinth with chairs or slacking off of devotion here!