One evening around the year 507 A.D., Théodechilde, daughter of the Merovingian King Clovis saw a great light in a nearby forest…

While this Black Madonna is robed in the traditional garb that hides most of the statue, her picture on the votive candles sold in the church shows her round belly…

Here is another whitened Black Madonna. She was restored in 1954. (For more on the issue of restoring Black Madonnas to their original colors see Ronziere and Saint Guiraud)…

Many Black Madonnas were associated with the realm of the dead. Since this realm was imagined to lie deep in the earth I like translating “Notre-Dame (de) Sous Terre” as “Our Lady of the Underworld”…

Legend states that the original Black Madonna was brought to France from the Holy Land by a Lord of Bourbon. Somehow she came into the possession of King Louis IX…

Legend claims that this is one of several statues, which King Saint Louis brought back to France from the Crusades. While Ean Begg mentions that the king did indeed have “many connections with Murat”…

Orcival is one of the oldest and most famous Marian shrines in the Auvergne. People have been going there on pilgrimage since before the 10th century…

The original Black Madonna of Orleans came from Syria in the 5th century. She accompanied a group of her countrymen who settled outside the city gates of Orleans in a village called Avenum…

This Queen of Peace is quite an aristocratic lady. It is believed that she was a wedding gift by Jean de Joyeuse to his wife in 1518. The house of Joyeuse intermarried with French royalty…

She used to stand in the church Saint-Etienne-des-Grès in the Latin Quarter, but that church was destroyed during the Revolution and all its content sold…

Prats-de-Mollo is a beautiful, ancient town of 1,000+ inhabitants with very good energy. No wonder, the inhabitants honor their Lady of the Heart of the Oak…

Tradition says that Our Black Lady washed ashore somewhere in France where a sailor from Pézenas found her and brought her to his home town…

There are two important statues of the Mother of God venerated in this church and they often get mixed up: the Black Madonna Our Lady of Marthuret and the White Madonna Our Lady of the Bird (Vierge a l’oiseau)…

As a Christian holy site, Rocamadour dates back to the 10th century, but as a young priest giving a tour pointed out in 2008: "People have been praying here for 20,000 years”…

This is one of those poor Black Virgins who had her color stolen. She was restored to her original pigmentation of 800 years ago…

Here you see what happens when you don't renovate wooden statues once in a while. This Black Madonna is so worm eaten that you can barely make out the face and of baby Jesus only a little stump is left…

No miracles or other "special effects" are reported about this Virgin. During the Middle Ages she was obtained by the Saint-Gervazy family and brought to their little castle by the same name…

Although Sara la Kali is not Mary, the mother of Christ, she is often discussed in the context of Black Madonnas because she is a Dark Mother. The Gypsies venerate her as their queen…

The little old church lady, who led me to the church of Our Lady of Victory knew nothing of a Black Madonna at her church. The little statue is hardly visible…

In the 13th century the seventh Crusade (1248-1254) was preached in the sanctuary of the famous Black Madonna of Le-Puy-en-Velay, in the presence of King Louis IX…