also known as Our Lady of Good Deliverance
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The face, hands and feet of the Virgin and Child are the color of ebony.
A "black Virgin" is unusual in a Paris church, and there must have been some serious reason for the artist to depart from the usual practices of iconography.
The problem of the origin of the Black Virgins, of which there are more than 272 in the Christian world - a scholar has recently counted them - takes us back to the techniques of pagan antiquity.
We can see that in pre-Christian times, the color black, intentionally applied to certain statues or paintings, most certainly represented a privilege for gods and goddesses, emperors or great personages.
On the other hand, in a large number of cases, there is a definite link between the black complexion given to statues of goddesses and the idea of parturition and fertility.
In Arcadia, the black statue of Demeter was worshipped in a grotto where a Christian oratory was later erected: the "Mother of the Gods", represented by a black aerolith, given to the Romans by Attalus in 204, was carried to Lyon to attract fertility to the land.
In Gaul, there was a particular cult of the "Black Mothers", and their images were often confused with those of the Mother of God.
To counter the tenacious pagan cult, nascent Christianity had to borrow festivals, practices and even iconographic themes on more than one occasion, while sublimating them. In many places, to supplant the cult of black goddesses, Christians erected statues of the Mother of God, which they also made black.
The privilege of "black" was thus transferred to Christian iconography at a very early date. It is found in Eastern icons, where the face of the Theotokos was often blackened.
Of this type is the famous "Virgin of Saint Luke" and its many copies.
In 449, the original of this image, attributed to Saint Luke, was sent to Jerusalem by Eudoxia to the Empress Pulcheria. Later, this image, or a copy of it, was found in Rome in the Basilica of Liberius (Santa Maria Maggiore), which was served by Greek monks.
From then on, the pilgrims who flocked to Rome were able to venerate the image of the Virgin, and for centuries Christian artists believed they could do no better than to depict or draw inspiration from it.
In the 11th and 12th centuries, Western Christian artists showed a marked preference for statuary; but from the ancient icons of the Virgin Mary, they retained the hieratic pose and physiognomy found in the many seated Virgins of southern France; sometimes they also retained the colors, so that several of these "Majesté Sainte Marie", such as the one in Chartres, are also black Virgins.
The oldest of these black Virgins that we still possess, despite the legends that tend to age them, date back no further than the twelfth century.
It has sometimes been thought that the text of the Song of Songs: nigra sum, sed formosa, a text that the oldest liturgies have taken up and applied to Notre-Dame, may have inspired certain "imagiers" of black Virgins. This is not to be ruled out, but it should be recognized that, in the obvie sense of this text, the Virgin's beauty is not linked - quite the contrary - to the ebony complexion of her face.
Many black Virgins may have had different origins. We know, for example, that for centuries, before applying colors to the Virgin's image, artists coated the icon with a black slip.
Over time, the colors would fade and the black slip would reappear.
Finally, other "Black Virgins" may have become such, naturally, over time.
The oldest Black Virgins were almost always made of incorruptible wood, cedar or oak depending on the country. Naturally dark wood turns brown with age, and if left in a damp place, turns black in a short space of time.
Such was the case, among many others, of the famous "Black Madonna" of Rocamadour, now extinct.
If, as we believe, the Black Madonna of Paris, whose history we are retracing, was painted in the 16th century, it's likely that our artist deliberately wanted to make the stone statue of the 14th century a "Black Madonna", in order to give it the added prestige enjoyed by the ancient black Madonnas venerated in France's most famous Marian pilgrimages.
Black or white, it doesn't matter, it's the image of the Virgin Mary: before all these Madonnas, the Christian's heart can express feelings of admiration, praise, gratitude and affection; he can also express to them all his needs.
However, we note that pilgrims and devotees in ancient times attributed to the Black Virgins a very special power in matters of fertility. Married women turned to them to obtain the gift of a child, and mothers nearing their term, the benefit of a happy deliverance.
Subsequently, this "specialty" was extended to other "deliverances": that of prisoners, for example, and eventually to all kinds of needs and distresses. This seems to us to be the origin of the name "Notre-Dame de Bonne Délivrance" (Our Lady of Good Deliverance), attached from time immemorial to the Black Madonna of Saint-Étienne-des-Grès.
The name "Notre-Dame de Bonne Délivrance" is not unique to the Madonna of Saint-Étienne-des-Grès. In this sanctuary, it was as old as the statue itself, dating back to the 14th century. But in later times, especially from the 16th century onwards, it became very popular and spread.
It can be found in two churches in Paris: first in Saint-Gervais, then in Saint-Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou. We may well wonder whether the extraordinary cult that Our Lady of Good Deliverance had been receiving for centuries in the church of Saint Étienne-des-Grès did not contribute to making this name dear to the Marian devotion of Parisians, who would have spontaneously attached it to other Madonnas in the capital.
Be that as it may, in the Paris of the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries, the title Notre-Dame de Bonne Délivrance "was par excellence and without possible confusion, that which was attached to the celebrated Madonna of Saint-Étienne-des-Grés, at whose foot Saint François de Sales, and after him a theory of devout saints, came to pray; This was the only church in Paris at the time to have a confraternity, and a confraternity that was still thriving at the end of the 19th century, while the registers of the archbishop's office referred to this church as Saint-Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou.
(Extract from the historical note on the parish of Saint-Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou, by Abbé Barthélémy, Paris 1899.).
Dom Jacques de BASCHER
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Notre-Dame de Bonne Délivrance | STV
Notre-Dame de Bonne Délivrance Histoire de la statue de Notre-Dame de Bonne Délivrance La Chapelle Notre-Dame de Bonne Délivrance Le ruban de Notre-Dame de Bonne Délivrance Les pèlerins au cou...
https://www.congregation-stv.org/mieux-nous-connaitre/notre-dame-de-bonne-delivrance/