Europe’s mysterious Black Virgins

SAINT-ROMAIN D’AY, France — A wrong turn took me down a mountain road so steep and narrow I had to back up with my head out the car window to help me stay on track. I finally got my rental car safely parked, then walked under a stone archway and into a complex of buildings with roots in the Roman Empire.

Back home, in America, it was Thanksgiving Day — though few people here in France knew that. In any event, I was alone.

The chapel was behind all the other buildings, perched high above the River Ay. The door was unlocked, so I opened it.

And there she was — la Vierge Noire. The Black Virgin.

It was not my first encounter with one of Europe’s mysterious Black Virgins, also known as Black Madonnas.

Many years ago I wandered into a Benedictine monastery in Switzerland and found a small crowd of people with their heads bowed before a dark skinned Virgin Mary. It was the famous Black Virgin of Einsiedeln, a 4-foot wooden statue visited by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims a year.

Before this latest trip was over, I would encounter yet another Black Virgin, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame (Our Lady) du Puy, in Le Puy en Velay, 50 miles from Saint-Romain d’Ay.

I had not come to France to look for statues of the Virgin Mary, of any hue. I’m not a Catholic, after all, or even religious in any formal sense.

And yet, I love the religious art and architecture of the Middle Ages — and I’ve always liked Mary. In 25 years of wandering through old churches and museums, I must have seen her depicted a thousand times in painting, sculpture and little objets d’art, almost always looking charming. Usually, too, she is young, beautiful — and white.

Which makes it all the more interesting when she’s black.

May predate Crusades

Black Virgins or Madonnas have been a small but significant part of the religious landscape in Europe since the Middle Ages. Often no bigger than a large doll, extravagantly dressed and crowned, they can be objects of fervent devotion, as at Einsiedeln. Some today are replicas — the original Black Virgin of Le Puy, for example, was beheaded and burned in the French Revolution. As many as 400 to 500 of them exist, by some estimates — yet they are shrouded in mystery.

How to explain them? Some Black Virgins probably started out lighter and turned black from centuries of grime and candle smoke. And some, especially of more recent vintage, reflect the skin color of the people and populations that produced them.

As for the rest, one theory is that they were brought back to Europe from the Holy Land, during the Crusades of the 11th through the 13th centuries.

There are others. Some modern-day writers note that Black Virgins are often located on sites where pagan goddesses such as Isis, or Cybele, were worshipped in the past.

Ean Begg, in his book “The Cult of the Black Virgin,” throws the Queen of Sheba and the goddess Lillith, a nocturnal temptress, into the mix. The goddesses of ancient times were sometimes portrayed as black, according to Begg.

Wendy Larson-Harris, an English professor at Roanoke College who studies popular medieval religion, doesn’t buy it. Medieval Europe had been Christian already for hundreds of years, she notes, and the pagan gods had long ago been replaced by Christianity in the popular mind.

She points instead to a biblical text from the Song of Songs, in the Old Testament, given as “I am black and beautiful” in the New Revised Standard Version; “I am black, but comely,” in the King James Bible.

The text was well known in the Middle Ages, she said, and though the speaker is not clearly identified, she was often linked to Mary. Medieval Christian theology often saw harbingers of the New Testament in the Old.

A notable following

Whatever their origin, in the eyes of the faithful, Black Virgins are sometimes associated with miracles. Many have fallen under their spell: Bernard of Clairvaux, better known as St. Bernard, supposedly drank miraculous milk from the breast of the Black Virgin of Chatillon-sur Sein when he was a boy. Joan of Arc was a devotee of Black Virgins, according to Ean Begg. So, more recently, was the French writer Anatole France, Begg says. French composer Francis Poulenc was an admirer of the famous Black Virgin of Rocamadour, where he stayed following a religious conversion. He composed “Litanies a la Vierge Noire,” or “Litanies to the Black Virgin,” a work for chorus and organ, in 1936.

Other famous Black Madonnas include Our Lady of Altotting in Bavaria, Our Lady of Tindari in Sicily, Our Lady of Czestochowa in Poland and Our Lady of Montserrat in Spain, according to a website on Black Madonnas maintained by the University of Dayton in Ohio.

And then there is Notre Dame d’Ay.

Part religious sanctuary, part ancient fortress, Notre Dame d’Ay had not been on my itinerary until that Thanksgiving morning in 2012. I had never even heard of it, in fact. It was Jean Astic, the amiable manager of my Best Western hotel, La Gentilhommiere, in nearby Satillieu, who suggested I go for a quick visit. As it happened I stayed for hours. I could have stayed all day.

I met only one person there — a woman working on Christmas decorations in one of the ancient buildings. I don’t speak French very well, so our conversation was rudimentary — but she invited me to look around. A 1996 booklet by a local historian named Michel Faure seems to sum up what little is known about the site, including the legend surrounding its unusual name. Long ago, it seems, a shepherdess was chasing one of her sheep when she slipped over a precipice above the river. “Aie!” She screamed as she fell. “Notre Dame! Aie!” (Loose translation: “Yikes! Mary! Yikes!”) — at which point an invisible hand reached out to stop her fall. Hence, Notre Dame d’Ay, or Our Lady of Ay. A stained glass window in the chapel depicts the tale.

More likely, the name “Ay” actually comes from an ancient regional patois, and means “water,” Faure writes.

The site may have been devoted to the worship of Isis in pre-Christian times, according to Faure. It became a Roman guard post after the conquest of Southern Gaul. The sanctuary itself, long held in private hands, is now owned by the church diocese at Viviers.

According to Faure, the original Back Virgin of Ay, which has not survived, was probably brought from Syria during the Crusades. The current statue, made of oak, is believed to date from the late 16th or the 17th century. Pilgrims have been coming here since medieval times, and they come still, especially in August and September. On this misty November day, however, the Virgin and I were alone, save for the Christ child on her lap.

About 30 inches high, with black face and hands but golden hair, la Vierge Noire sits on a stone pedestal, gazing down at her baby. Jesus holds a golden orb in one hand, and blesses visitors with the other. I gazed at them awhile, but we had very little to say to each other, so after some minutes I left the chapel to wander around the grounds.

The grounds of Notre Dame d’Ay are — well, divine. The mountain views mingle with the sound of water running far below. As I walked the lovingly tended pathways, I came across a sign, fastened to a tree:

Heureux celui qui sait ecouter le silence

Or, in English: Happy is the one who knows how to listen to silence.

And indeed, the full story of the Black Virgin of Ay, and of all the Black Virgins of Europe, is cloaked in the silence of time gone by. But life is full of mysteries — and silence is good for the soul.

Kevin Kittredge, a former features writer and columnist for The Roanoke Times, is a freelance writer and musician. He is working on a book of travel essays, titled “Dreamlands.”

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