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Sacred places
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11 juin 2007

The black virgin of Mende

This virgin with the Byzantine lines, the cross ones would have brought it back the East by Guillaume de Peyre between between 1212 and 1222, where the monks of the Carmel mount, heirs to Isaïe, would have carved it in a very hard wood, (perhaps of the olive-tree), “in the worship of the virgin-mother. She is dated however from the XI ème century.

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Sat on a seat of recent time, draped in a dress with the harmonious folds, it tightens the arms ahead. all the body was painted in red, only the head and the neck is covered with a black varnish.

It appears in the history since 1249: Randon de Chateauneuf pays homage to the bishop Odilon de Mercoeur in front of “the altar of Madona Santa Maria, in the gleiza of Mende”.

lozere_025Twice it was saved destruction. In 1579, when Huguenots had taken Mende, an old woman would have had the easy way to request “this old wood stock” for her fire from the soldiers of Blackbird who were going to burn it. On December 8, 1793, the revolutionists threw it to bottom of its throne to make ride on the furnace bridge the goddess reason. After the festival, a woman came to collect the forgotten statue and carried it, furtively, under its coat.

On August 15, 1894, one made him leave his vault (vault of the marriages which was later that of Roch Saint) to again install it on the maitre-furnace bridge.

Returned with its vault in 1960, since the maitre-furnace bridge is nothing any more but one simple table.

A impressionant number of relics are hidden between its two shoulders, in a mask-reliquary, which is almost single in the black virgins. The canonical inventory of 1857 gives the detail of it:

Hair of the virgin, pieces of her clothing, its tomb, fragments of the true-cross, without forgetting remainders of the Saints Pierre, Andre, Paul, Martial, Denis, Jacques…

lozere_012For the fiftieth anniversary of his crowning, in 1946, the former priest of Mende wrote these lines:

“The 15 most outstanding Lozériennes Madonna were the guests of Notre-Dame de Mende: ones come in person, like that of Carce (Marvejols), of any capacity (Langogne), Pity (Saint chély); others, too heavy to move, had been made represent: thus virgins of the rock (Meyrueis and Serverette) or of the sentinel (Nasbinals). The Madonna of Quézac, Nogaret, Malène were there; that of the good-help (Salelles), Beaulieu (Paulhac), Salette (Saint-Privat of Vallongue), of all graces (Cheylard the bishop) and finally that of Bouldoire, the least old last but not. All attended this parade, which had astonished our aïeux by the means-äge, accustomed however to the processions of relics and the gatherings of prelates.”

One will never know what became his/her son .....

for the black virgins, to see here

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