Douvres-la-Délivrande is a small town of little more than 5000 inhabitants named for its Black Madonna. It is she who made it a pilgrimage site for peasants and royalty, saints and sinners since the 7th century. King Louis XI visited in 1470 and 1473, St. Theresa of Lisieux in 1887.
The site was first settled about 200 years B.C.E. Its Celtic name was “delle Yvrande”, i.e. the valley or territory of the Yvrande clan, which later became "Délivrande" in the local dialect and then Délivrance in French. From the beginning it was a holy site dedicated to a Celtic mother goddess, whom the Romans later identified with their goddess Demeter.(*1) A beautiful first century C.E. statue of her was found in 1942. It can be admired in the Musée de Normandie in nearby Saint-Aubin (2-3 km from Douvres-la-Delivrande).

On the facade of the basilica there is a depiction of the early bishops of the region breaking a statue of the Pagan goddess who was originally worshipped on this site, and replacing it with a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. But now that the said goddess statue has been found fairly well intact (considering how long she was buried) one wonders. Did they really destroy the Pagan statue, or did they follow the example of the Romans, who simply renamed and usurped other peoples’ gods? Many other Christians simply baptized Pagan idols and called them Mary and Jesus. This happened in Chartres, which is not too far from Normandy. In Enna, Sicily a Demeter and Persephone statue stood on the altar in the Catholic church until the late 19th century, to name just a couple of examples. The mother goddess in Saint-Aubin, who apparently lost the child in her lap, looks just like so many ancient Madonnas of the ‘seat of wisdom’ type. One wonders how many of those were baptized Pagan statues.

The Tradition:
It says that the first chapel of Our Lady of Deliverance was built by St. Regnobert in the 3rd century. The saint was the closest disciple and successor of St. Exupère, the first evangelizer and bishop of the area. It is said that while Regnobert and his parents were still Pagans, his mother and father would often go worship “idols” on Mt. "Phaunus", while their son preferred a little Christian chapel in the village. Latter place had been dedicated by St. Exupère by turning a Pagan holy site into one consecrated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Later, when St. Regnobert himself was bishop, he followed in the footsteps of his spiritual father and turned another important Pagan holy site into a sanctuary of the Mother of God, installing in it the original Madonna of Délivrande. – Again, they don’t sound like idol smashers, but like idol baptizers.