Hergiswald

Our Dear Lady (Unsere liebe Frau), Hergiswald, Switzerland

Photo: from the Hergiswald sanctuary’s website

Our Dear Lady (Unsere liebe Frau)

While one may say that this is just another one of hundreds of copies of the Black Madonna of Loreto in Europe, several things make it special:

  1. Apparently, it is one of the most exact copies of the original, because when the original statue in Italy burnt in 1921, a copy was made by copying this one.

  2. It was built in the 16th century after a saintly hermit had a dream of Our lady of Loreto, entreating him to build a chapel for her in Hergiswald.

  3. Her stunning chapel is full of Marian and alchemical symbols forming a ‘picture heaven’.

  4. The location is a remote, yet very welcoming, holy place perfect for a pilgrimage and close to the “camino” the route to Santiago de Compostella (Jakobsweg in German).

Hergiswald_church.jpeg
 

Sources:

For more amazing pictures and information see Monika Barbara Raimann’s article/post “The Black Madonna of Hergiswald

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallfahrtskirche_Hergiswald_(Kriens)

The sanctuary’s website


Here is a map of more than 50 Black Madonnas in Switzerland from Jörg Roth’s amazing website https://schweiz.leylines.net/ Click on the numbers to zoom in on clusters of Black Madonna locations. Many are copies of the Suisse favorites: Our Ladies of Einsiedeln and Loreto, but even copies are sometimes powerful miracle workers in their own right.

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