After a fire in 1465 this gothic standing mother and child replaced a 9th-10th century Romanesque Seat of Wisdom Madonna lost in the flames. Baby Jesus holds a bird in his left hand…

This Black Madonna appeared in a tree near Stansstad on Vierwaldstaetter lake and saved fishermen in a storm.

Later, French revolutionaries threw her into the lake. She was found intact and all the more highly venerated until a bishop, apparently influenced by the French spirit of “reason”, decried her as “Pagan handiwork” and banned her. After the bishop passed, the people wanted to bring their precious Mother back into her church, but she had become the private property of a family that only allowed an exact copy to be made for the town that had let her go.

Black Madonna of Sonogno (most beautiful village of Switzerland) a miracle working copy of Our Lady of Loreto. The previous statue was burnt as a remnant of Pagan Goddess worship by a priest in the 1920’s. Apparently a common sentiment among Swiss clergy around that time. The furious villagers got rid of the priest and replace their Dark Mother. Fresco is what remains of her older incarnation.

This “Lourdes of Switzerland” was a gift of the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln. In 1581, she appeared to a handicapped, destitute peasant in a dream and told him where to dig for a sacred well to be healed. The price: his six daughters all went home to their heavenly mother in one week. That put the fear of the Black Madonna into the villagers and they installed White Madonnas instead. Only in the 1950’s with a modern church being built, did they commission a copy of the Black Madonna of Einsiedeln.

This seemingly insignificant Black Madonna, like her other Swiss sisters in Einsiedeln, Sonogno, and Stansstad, withstood the plans of those who would whitewash or ban Black Madonnas.

She was formerly White but found to be a Black Madonna during renovations. Restored to her original blackness and honored with solemn processions.

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…