Boulogne-sur-Mer
The Virgin or Our Lady of Boulogne, the Nautical Virgin,
Our Lady of the Great Return, Our Lady of the Sacred Blood
In the Basilica of the Immaculate conception, better known as the cathedral Notre-Dame-de-Boulogne, 2 Parvis Notre Dame, 62200 Boulogne-sur-Mer, department Pas-de-Calais, original from 633, second incarnation created in 1360, a third in 1803, a fourth in 1840, and a fifth in 1874-5, plus various copies over the centuries to be carried in processions.
Photos:
1. The most accurate copy of the original 633 A.D. Madonna seated in her boat, sculpted in painted wood. Notice that the angels were cut of at the hips. Nowadays, she is in the crypt, but for centuries she was in the Chapel of the Holy Blood (Chapelle-saint-sang), located at 51 Av. John Kennedy, 62200 Boulogne-sur-Mer (open only on the first Saturday of each month). Hence her title Our Lady of the Holy Blood. She is an oak bas-relief from the beginning of the 17th century.
2. A copy from the high Middle Ages is in ancient city gate called Dunes Gate (Porte des Dunes) on the Pas-de-Calais.
3. The 1803 decidedly Black Virgin by Audomarois Gras, created after her previous incarnation was burnt at the stake during the revolution. Not an exact copy but “inspired by the memories of her devotees”, about 120 cm high. She used to hold a scepter in her right hand and have 2 angels in the boat with her, but they were stolen.
4. The Black Madonna in Cathedral, oak, begun by Louis Duthoit (died 1874) and completed in 1875 by Eugène Delaplanche. photo
5. Portrait of the 1820 C.E. statue carried nowadays in processions in Boulogne-sur-mer.
6. White copy of the Black Madonna, known as Our Lady of the Grand Return (Notre-Dame-du-grand-retour) carried all over France during World War II.
Her titles:
She is called the Nautical Virgin because she arrived from the sea, like all that is of foremost importance to the city. Boulogne-sur-Mer has been France’s largest fishing port since the Romans occupied it around 39 C.E.! So yes, the city and its heavenly protectress are all about the sea.
She is also knows as Our Lady of the Great Return, because three times the enemies of Catholicism and France tried to stamp out any memory of this Black Madonna, but she was always brought back by her faithful children, as you will see below.
The truest copy of the original, the version of Our Lady that was for centuries venerated in the chapel of the Holy Blood/Chapelle-saint-sang, is called Our Lady of the Sacred Blood. The relic of some drops of blood of the Savior that gave this church its name is now on display in the crypt of the cathedral Notre-Dame de Boulogne.
Tradition has it that during the revolution, Our Lady of the Sacred Blood was kidnapped and paraded in outrageous fashion through the streets of Boulogne, then thrown into the sea. She went up the course of the Liane river and ran aground on the shore near its chapel. There she was found by a pious worker from Ostrohove named Claude Fauquembergue - known as "Marant" - who took her to safety. She was returned to the parish of Saint-François de Sales in 1858.
Her Miracles:
Medieval chroniclers wrote about the many miracles of Our Lady of Boulogne. A chronicle of the life of the holy King of France, Saint Louis IX, (1214-1270) includes several references to the miraculous cures obtained through the intercession of Our Lady of Boulogne. She had the reputation of especially helping sailors and expectant mothers.
Her feasts
There is mention of a February 20th and an October 22nd feast day, but the biggest festival in honor of the Nautical Virgin takes place in August.
According to Wikipedia, her processions happen on the 2nd Sunday after the great feast of the Assumption of Mary into heaven, which is celebrated on August 15th. At that time, one expected the return of the “Newfoundlanders”, that is French fishermen who, from the 16th to the 20th centuries would sail almost all the way to Canada to fish for cod. At the end of their great fishing season, they would return and bow before their Black Madonna to thank her for watching over them. It is a 5 days long celebration of Our Lady’s care for her children.
Is she a Black Madonna?
Yes and no. She was obviously seen as a Black Madonna by her devotees from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century. She is listed in Ean Begg’s index of Black Madonnas[1] and the city’s website says: “In the Medieval tradition she is known to be a Black Virgin.”[2] However, she is not called a Black Virgin on the websites of the parish or Wikipedia.
The 19th century altar of the Nautical Black Madonna of Boulogne-sur-mer
The statue sculpted in 1803 is very black, but not the one now venerated in the basilica. The really Black incarnation of 1803 was banned to the basement, so to say. Now granted, this ‘basement’ is the most fantastic and largest crypt in France where all the sacred treasures are kept, but it is a museum, not a place of worship. She had her angels stolen und was replaced in 1840 by a new Madonna, which in turn disappeared somehow.
The versions carried in procession all over France during World War II, an intensely racist time, were very White. I guess it’s fair to say that she is regarded as a Black Madonna by some.
Time Line of a Tumultuous History:
In 633 A.D., during the reign of the Merovingian King Dagobert I, according to tradition, a wooden statue of the Madonna and child floated into the estuary of the river Liane, on the outskirts of Boulogne-sur-Mer in a small boat without sails, oars, or sailors, “pushed along by angels” as the French Wikipedia Notre-Dame de Boulogne article states. She was accompanied only by a copy of the Gospel in Syriac[3], the main literary language of 1st century Aramaic-speaking Christians. At the same time, the Virgin herself appeared in a chapel in the upper town and alerted the faithful to the arrival of the boat containing her image. She asked that the statue be brought to the chapel to be venerated there in perpetuity.[4] She is also quoted as saying: "I am the advocate of sinners, the source of grace, the fountain of piety who wishes that a divine light descend upon you and upon your city. My friends, build a church in my name."[5]
The people found said ship and statue and obeyed Our Lady’s command. A chapel was built for her, as Ean Begg says, on the site of a Roman temple to Mars.[6]
This apparition reported in manuscripts from the end of the Middle Ages, inspired the biggest pilgrimages in France during the Middle Ages.
In 1090, the first sanctuary, which had been made of wood, was replaced by a grandiose stone abbey with its most amazing crypt. This was done on the orders of Saint Ide , the Countess of Boulogne, the mother of Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lotharingia, one of the main leaders of the first crusade and eventually ruler of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Only the crypt of St. Ide’s church survives. With its 1,400 m2 floor plan and 4,000 m2 of painted murals, it is the biggest crypt in France.
Boulogne became a pilgrimage center of great influence, welcoming kings of France and England, who came to venerate Our Lady of Boulogne. The influx of pilgrims resulted in an abundance of donations that made the church of Saint Ide a prestigious building.
In 1304, Philip IV the Fair, in great difficulty after being unhorsed during a battle, invoked Our Lady of Boulogne "in his great need". When he was saved and the battle won by the French, the church of Our Lady gained much importance. Soon what used to be a village grew into a great city, which rivaled Chartres in importance for pilgrims. Geoffrey Chaucer, the 14th century “father of English literature and poetry” mentions Boulogne-sur-mer in the same verse as Jerusalem, Rome, and Santiago de Compostella.[7] Over the centuries, many kings, queens, and even a pope came to Boulogne-sur-Mer as pilgrims.
In 1308, the marriage between Edward II of England and Isabella of France,
daughter of King Philip IV the Fair, was celebrated there. This marriage was a bad move indeed, because it gave their son Edward III, King of England, claims to French territories, which resulted in the 100 year war. Karma I guess, because three centuries earlier, the Duke of Boulogne had helped William the Conqueror occupy England, which resulted in the suppression of Celtic Christianity and the spread of a more patriarchal, Roman style Church.
That Roman style Church then burnt Jeanne d’Arc at the stake when she fought to liberate France from English rule. One of the Black Madonnas she went to before battle was Our Lady of Boulogne, in 1429.
In 1356, King John II the Good, returned from captivity in England. In thanksgiving for his release, he offered Notre-Dame de Boulogne la Petite a gilded silver ship carrying the Virgin framed by two angels.
In 1429, Joan of Arc went to pray to Notre-Dame de Boulogne on her way to Paris, which was occupied by the English and their Burgundy allies. She stormed the city gate Saint Honoré with great valor but couldn’t break through. Instead, she was shot in the thigh. Fortunately, none of this diminished the faithful’s devotion to their Madonna. After all the Black Madonna of Orleans had helped Jean d’Arc free her city earlier that year and she won 9 of the 13 battles she led troops into.
In April 1478, Louis XI gave Notre-Dame de Boulogne the suzerainty of the county of Boulogne, which was kind of like making her the minister of foreign affairs. The English didn’t care for very long. They besieged the city from 1544-1550 and then ransacked the church to such a degree that the Virgin’s chapel collapsed. The faithful rebuilt.
In 1544, disaster struck again. Henry VIII, King of England, declared war on France and sent a fleet with 47,000 troops across the Channel. One of the first cities he attacked was Boulogne-sur-Mer, laying siege to it on July 18. Although a walled city with very strong defenses, it was manned by only 2,000 soldiers. They surrendered on September 14, 1544.
The invading Protestant army sacked the city. Statues, altars, relics of saints and other sacred objects were hacked to pieces and burned in the streets in an orgy of hatred for the Catholic Faith. Worst of all, the Black Madonna was dragged out of the church, mocked, and taken back to England as a trophy. Then the occupiers transformed Our Lady’s sanctuary into an armory.
On April 25, 1550, the English finally surrendered Boulogne and shortly afterwards returned the statue of Our Lady. This was her first return.
The church was restored over the following decades and became the cathedral, i.e. the seat of the local bishop. With that, Our Lady’s shrine reacquired much of its original splendor, but sadly, it wasn’t going to last very long.
During the night of October 11, 1567, hundreds of French Protestant Huguenot soldiers secretly broke into the church of Our Lady of Boulogne. They wrecked the church and tore out the miraculous statue. Tying a rope around her neck, they dragged her through the muddy streets until they reached the main gate of the old town. There they mocked and blasphemed her.
But when they tried to chop Our Lady into pieces, a miraculous force protected her. They hit her over and over again with swords and hammers, but the statue, as if made of steel, suffered no damage. The miracle infuriated the Protestants even more, and they threw the statue into a great bonfire. Again, Our Lady was miraculously preserved intact amidst the flames, so the Huguenots took the statue out of the city and they threw her down a well.
By the following spring, order was restored to the port city. A local Catholic woman, knowing the whereabouts of the miraculous statue, secretly retrieved it, took it to her house, and later surrendered it to the Church. After examination and confirmation by the Sorbonne that it was really the original miraculous Black Madonna, it was decided to renovate it to remove the marks of desecration.
On September 26, 1607, to the acclamations of large crowds of faithful, Our Lady solemnly reentered Boulogne. Her second return.
In 1630, the cathedral was restored, and the statue put back in her rightful place.
Around this time, a true copy of the Nautical Virgin was made, which now can be seen in the crypt of the cathedral. She is called Our Lady of the Holy Blood, because she was housed in the Chapelle-du-saint-sang, the Chapel of the Holy Blood. This church derived its name from a precious relic, presumed to be some drops of Christ’s blood, which was sent by Godfrey of Bouillon to his mother -Saint Ide- around 1101. It was safeguarded by various pious Catholics during the attacks of the Huguenots and later the Revolutionaries and eventually ended up in the crypt of the cathedral.
In 1792, French revolutionaries desecrated the sanctuary, destroyed many of its statues on the inside and outside, as well as the stain glass windows and the organ. For the moment, they spared the Black Madonna, but stole the treasure, melted the bells of the cathedral and forged them into cannons. The Catholic people rose up on August 24th in what came to be known as "the bell riot", but they were defeated.
All that could be saved of the ancient statue was a sliver of her hand. It was later inserted into this reliquary.
On November 10, 1793, after the Revolutionaries finished celebrating in a former church the so-called “Feast of the goddess of Reason,” they began another orgy of destruction. Full of hate for the Catholic Faith, they piled numerous statues, paintings, vestments, and relics in the city square and destroyed everything in a giant bonfire.
A mob armed with picks and screaming the Marseillaise dragged Our Lady of Boulogne to the main square. They put a red Phrygian cap, symbol of the French Revolution, on Our Lady’s head and began to mock and blaspheme her. When they tired of this, they burned her in a great bonfire, dancing wildly in celebration of the victory of “reason” over “superstition.”
From 1792 to 1801, the church served as a hayloft and a place of pleasure. That’s why at least the walls were preserved.
In 1827, shortly after the end of the French Revolution, the Catholics of Boulogne decided to make a modern version of the original statue of Our Lady of Boulogne, and the devotion to the Nautical Madonna began once again.
It took thirty nine years to rebuild a worthy shrine for her, but with its completion in 1866, hundreds of thousands of pilgrims began pouring into Boulogne each year. Devotion to this Black Madonna surpassed what it had been even before the French Revolution. Her third return.
Our Lady of Boulogne is greeted by the populace of Paris, October 27, 1945
Her fourth return became known as her Great Return (le Grand Retour). It is described in great detail on a bit bizarrely conservative website of the ‘American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family, and Property’, which sometimes gets the facts a little wrong. I quote them here at length, with only few edits and additions.
It began in the summer of 1938, when Boulogne-sur-Mer hosted a Marian Congress. To prepare the faithful for this national event, two priests decided to make four white copies of the original statue of Our Lady of Boulogne and take them on a great tour of the towns and parishes of the diocese. Christened the “Fiery Path,” it was a success far exceeding expectations. In ten weeks the four statues covered more than 1,500 miles and made 466 stops at parishes.
After the close of the Marian Congress, some clergy, led by Father Gabriel Ranson, a Jesuit, decided to continue this “Fiery Path” of Our Lady around France until the next Congress, to be held in the summer of 1942 in Le Puy, in southern France, home of one of the most famous French Black Madonnas. In the fall of 1939 and the spring of 1940, the Jesuit and a handful of young laymen took Our Lady of Boulogne to northeastern France where they visited many parishes, as well as battlefields from World War I.
When Nazi Germany invaded France on May 10, 1940, Our Lady’s statue was in Reims. The war immediately stopped her travels, and she was hidden in a Trappist monastery for safekeeping, where she stayed for two years. However, Catholics clamored for Our Lady of Boulogne to join the Congress as originally planned, so in the summer of 1942 she continued her journey across France in the direction of Le Puy.
After a very successful Congress, Our Lady of Boulogne continued her tour of France to Lourdes. She arrived there on September 7, 1942, eve of the Nativity of Our Lady, greeted by a massive crowd of pilgrims. With her triumphal entry into Lourdes, it seemed that Our Lady’s great tour of France would come to a close.
However, the local bishop had the idea of sending the statue of Our Lady of Boulogne to each of the parishes of his diocese in pilgrimage. During each stop, the faithful would reconsecrate themselves to the Immaculate Heart of Mary in accordance with some of the requests the Queen of Heaven had made in Fatima in 1917.
The response was so great that the organizers decided to send all four copies of Our Lady of Boulogne around France on four different itineraries. They ended up going without stopping for five years!
Each statue traveled with a group of about a dozen or so young men, all volunteers, led by two or three priests. They placed the statue on a very simple wheeled carriage, pulled by men the whole way from village to village. These men and the whole crowd often processed barefoot in a spirit of penance. When Our Lady arrived at the local parish, an honor guard would carry her into the church. The priest would preach a sermon on Our Lady of Boulogne and the meaning of the Grand Return, and they would hear confessions.
Then the all-night vigil would begin, with villagers taking one or often many hours during the night. At midnight, Mass would begin. Each person received a copy of the consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary written by Pope Pius XII. The whole congregation would pray the consecration aloud and each one would sign it and place it at the feet of Our Lady, along with other written intentions.
In the morning, the priest celebrated a Mass of farewell. A large crowd of villagers gathered once again to escort the Blessed Virgin all the way to the next town, where a crowd of faithful had already gathered, and the sequence began again.
Conversions, Penance, Graces
The catastrophe of World War II gave the whole thing an enormous urgency and power. There was an unprecedented avalanche of graces, especially of conversions and penance. Thousands upon thousands of atheists, communists, freemasons, and fallen-away Catholics converted on the spot when they saw Our Lady enter their village.
One bishop described the effect on the faithful: “The passing of Our Lady in my diocese is the most extraordinary contemporary religious event of our times, and the most significant. Crowds of people rose up, motivated and enthusiastic. In fact, the confessionals and communion rails were besieged during the holy vigils, while the recitation of the mysteries of the rosary kept the faithful praying in the churches. In some parishes, there were tremendous conversions like never seen before on the missions.”1
Parish priests also testified to the effect of the Grand Return. “I was a bit uneasy about the welcome that my very indifferent parish would give to Our Lady. People around me said that the welcome would be mediocre…Three kilometers from [our village of] Nantiat, we see the delegation of this parish, my parish. And I was moved to tears when I saw how big it was: men and young men, women; the whole crowd did not hesitate to kneel upon the wet ground, with arms in the form of a cross, to greet our illustrious Visitor…Truly the Holy Virgin has sent a breath of grace on this not very religious community.”2
Another prelate testified: “Last Saturday, at around 2 pm, the Virgin arrived at [our] parish of Basville. For centuries no doubt, ever since the beginning of the world maybe, no king, no queen, no princess so royal or so powerful had ever visited us. Truly, this evening was at the least a return to Christianity, a general conversion, a call of my people to Our Mother and Queen…Yes, I think that if the Bishops send us a Virgin every year, in ten years the people of France will convert to Jesus Christ through Mary.”3
One observer wrote the following: “It is like the atmosphere at Lourdes. We would dare say that it is stronger than Lourdes in a certain sense. The pilgrim of Lourdes is transplanted out of his element into an ambience that is so impregnated with the supernatural that nothing appears difficult to him, neither the rosary in his hand nor prayer with the arms in the form of a cross, nor to kneel in the dirt. These gestures of faith, Our Lady of Boulogne makes us do them where we live, in our street, under the attentive gazes of our neighbors, of people whom we know. We are no longer worried about what they think, and they don’t dare laugh or criticize.”4
When the Grand Return arrived in Marseille, she passed through a neighborhood known for its support for communism. As she passed by a bar in which some communists were gathering for a meeting, several came out to investigate the commotion. The passing of the white Virgin had such an effect on them that they converted on the spot and joined the procession.
The statue of Our Lady of Boulogne is greeted by the populace of Paris, October 27, 1945.
In some cities such as Verdun, Bauvais, and Reims associations of so-called “free-thinkers” tried to organize counterdemonstrations against the scheduled appearances of Our Lady of Boulogne. In each case the plan backfired. So many people came out for Our Lady and so few “free-thinkers” showed up that it made them look ridiculous. In Reims, after a big propaganda campaign, the “freethinkers” were only able to gather 12 people against 35,000 who turned out for Our Lady.5
Return to God, to the Church, to the Medieval Faith
Father Beaurin described the spirit of the Grand Return as a rebirth of the medieval Faith.
Shortly after World War II ended, the Grand Return began to spread across the world, to Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Canada, and even as far away as Ceylon, Madagascar, and China. In Italy, hundreds of cities were visited by pilgrim statues of Our Lady in the same manner as the French Grand Return. On May 11, 1947, more than 100,000 people gathered in Milan to welcome the traveling Madonna with unprecedented devotion and Catholic fervor.
her church today
To this day, “pilgrim statues”, e.g. a copy of Our Lady of Fatima are sent around the world with hopes of enkindling the spirit of that “old time religion”, but without the backdrop of a World War shaking everyone out of their comfort zones, the spark hasn’t started another “fiery path”.
End of the Grand Return
Everything about the Grand Return seemed to indicate that it was the means that Divine Providence chose to re-Christianize France, and through the first-born daughter of the Church, the whole world.
Tragically, this never happened.
On August 29, 1948, the four traveling statues converged at the shrine of Boulogne-sur-Mer for the last time, effectively ending the Grand Return. Why did this movement—the biggest public manifestation of piety in history—end?
Partially, because the Catholic faithful did not correspond to the grace of the Grand Return as they should have. Millions of Frenchmen returned to the Faith, but millions of others did not.
In addition, the majority of French bishops and lower clergy did not receive and promote the Grand Return. They were timid supporters of more modern, progressive, even socialist tendencies found in such groups as Catholic Action, Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne (Young Christian Workers), the Liturgical Movement, and the Worker Priest Movement.
You see, like any nation, so also the Catholic ‘nation’ is made up of conservatives and liberals, divided by an aisle few want to reach or even look across. After WW II in France, the liberals were the vast majority, and they sent Our Nautical Lady back where she’d come from: to Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Footnotes:
[1] Ean Begg, The Cult of The Black Virgin, Penguin Books, London: 1985, p.175
[2] https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=226212398605104 Video “La crypte présente : 2. La Vierge Nautonière” at 25 seconds.
[3] Ean Begg, op. cit. p. 175
[4] Thus goes the story on the French website of the parish Notre-Dame-de-Boulogne https://notredamedeboulogne.fr/notre-histoire/
[5] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notre-Dame_de_Boulogne
[6] Ean Begg, op. cit. p. 175
[7] Ibid. p. 175