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. However, an 18th century manuscript written by a certain Officer Poncet claims that a Commander of the Pézenas chapter of the Knights of St. John brought two Black Madonnas back from a Crusade. Presumably he “found” them together on the island of Rhodes. The Knights of St John are also known as the Hospitallers or the Knights of Malta. When the Knights Templar were eradicated in 1312, much of their property went to the Hospitallers who had many parallel characteristics. Since their first military action on Rhodes ended in 1310, one can conjecture that the statue is at least from the 12th century. Since the knight who brought her to Frnace was originally from Toulouse, he gave one of the statues to the church of La Daurade in Toulouse and the other to his order’s church in Pézenas (Saint Jean de Jérusalem’s) Ean Begg states that Napoleon III “dedicated a (perpetual) lamp in her shrine to gain her support for his army (…) against the Turks in 1860.”(*1) However long before him, the people of Pézenas already set up a perpetual lamp for their black Mother and had this important act of recognizing her divinity notarized on May 18th 1340. So we know her cult to be at least that old. (For more on perpetual lamps dedicated to Mary read in the introduction under the sub-heading “Christian and non-Christian Feminist views”.)

the original in the museum

the one in Sainte Ursule, photo: Lena Robinson

During the Revolution the statue escaped destruction, but not without a scratch. Mary lost her right hand and both feet; Jesus was scalped and also lost his right hand. The church of the Maltese order, which she had inhabited, was destroyed and Our Lady left among the ruins. Taking her life into her hands, Madame Vidal, a pious woman, asked a revolutionary if she could take “that worm eaten piece of wood as a toy for my grandkids”. When he agreed, she hid the statue under her smock and brought her to the priest who was at the head of the women’s confraternity headquartered at the Ursuline convent. After the Revolution, when the convent church doubled as a parish church, it was decided to keep it as the permanent home of Our Black Lady.

Notice her smile. Not many Black Madonnas smile. Supposedly she wears an Egyptian hairdo under her veil.
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1. Ean Begg, The Cult of the Black Virgin, Penguin Books, London: 1985 p. 211
2. When I visited the Black Madonna of Pézenas in 2009 a little, old church lady took me to her front door and let me wait outside while she went up to her apartment and copied two chapters of a book on her home town for me. I didn’t dare send her back upstairs to get me the name of the author and the book. All I can tell you is that the chapters are called “La Vierge Noire” and “Une Ville d’États”. Unless otherwise marked, all information in this entry comes from the chapter “La Vierge Noire”. This quote is on p.85