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by Katharine
Hittard
From Atlantic Monthly, Vol 64, 1889
Upon a hill near the shore of the Adriatic
stands the little village of Loreto, the resort of half a million of pilgrims
every year, who go there to visit the Casa Santa, the house of the Virgin at
Nazareth. It is said to have been miraculously transported to Loreto by angels,
where a church was built over it, adorned by various Popes, and the "holy
house " itself was surrounded by a lofty marble screen, designed by Bra-
mante, and executed by some of the greatest masters of his day.
In a niche of the interior is a
small representation of the Virgin and Child in cedar, painted black, and
attributed to St. Luke. It is richly ornamented with jewels, which sparkle in
the light of ever-burning silver lamps. On the 10th of February, 1797, it was
carried off to Paris by the French, but was restored to its shrine on the 9th of
December in 1802.
In the gorgeous
Borghese Chapel of Sta. Maria Maggiore at Rome, there is a picture of a black
Madonna, also said to have been painted by St. Luke, which was carried in many
solemn processions through the city as early as the year 590.
These are but two of many such pictures to be found all over Europe, and in the
Netherlands there is even said to be a church dedicated to la Vibrge noire. This
peculiar representation of the Madonna occurred so often in ancient art that
some of the early writers of the Church felt obliged to account for it by
explaining that the Virgin was of a very dark complexion, as might be proved by
the verse of Canticles which says, " I am black, but comely, O ye daughters
of Jerusalem." Others maintained that she became black during her sojourn
in Egypt. Nevertheless, this blackness, though considered to enhance the
sanctity of the ancient pictures, was never imitated by more modern painters,
and the priests of to-day will tell you that extreme age and exposure to the
smoke of countless altar-candles have caused that change in complexion which the
more naive fathers of the Church attributed to the power of the Egyptian sun.
This explanation is not a satisfactory one, however, because in nearly all these
pictures it is the flesh alone that is entirely black, the crimson of the lips,
the white of the eyes, and the draperies having preserved their original
brilliancy of tint.
It is to the pagan mythologies that we must look for the true explanation, and
even the conservative Mrs. Jameson confesses that "the earliest effigies of
the Virgin and Child may be traced to Alexandria, and to Egyptian influences,
and it is as easily conceivable that the time-consecrated Egyptian myth of Isis
and Horus may have suggested the original type, the outward form, and the
arrangement of the maternal group as that the classical Greek types of the
Orpheus and Apollo should have furnished the early symbols of the Redeemer as
the Good Shepherd, — a fact which does, not rest upon supposition, but of
which the proofs remain to us in the antique Christian sculptures and the
paintings in the Catacombs." Mrs. Jameson accepts the theory that a pagan
symbol was adopted for the expression of Christian thought, but many Romanists
would go further than this, and maintain with the Marquis de Mirville in his
Arche'ologie de la Vierge that " as the dogma, the liturgy, and the rites
professed by the Roman Apostolical Church in 1862 are found engraved on
monuments, inscribed on papyri and cylinders, hardly posterior to the Deluge, it
seems impossible to deny the existence of a first, ante-historical (Roman)
Catholicism, of which our own is the faithful continuation."
This is a matter
of opinion. Aa a matter of fact, we must remember that the worship of Mary as
the mother of God by the Church generally did not begin till the fourth century.
In 431, Nestorius and his sect were condemned as heretics by the first Council
of Ephe- sus, for maintaining that in Christ the two natures of God and man
remained separate, and that Mary, his human mother, was parent of the man, but
not of the God ; consequently, that the title which during the previous century
had been popularly applied to her (Theotohos, mother of God) was improper and
profane. Cyril and his party held that the two natures were made one, and that
therefore Mary was truly the mother of God. The decision of the Council,
condemning Nestorius, gave the first great impulse to the worship of Mary, and
the subsequent multiplication of the pictures of the Madonna and Child.
The first
historical mention of a direct worship of the Virgin occurs in a passage in the
works of Eusebius, in the fourth century. Having occasion to enumerate the
eighty-four heresies which had already spmng up in the Church,
The instances a
sect of women who had come from Thrace into Arabia, and who offered cakes of
meal and honey to the Virgin, transferring to her the worship that had been paid
to Geres. They were called Collyridians, from collyris, the name of the twisted
cake used in their offerings. Here we have the first link between the new faith
and the old ; for every one knows that the policy of the Church from the
beginning has always been to give to the old symbols a new meaning, to the old
festivals a new significance, to the old places a new sanctity, and where dates
were wanting to supply them from the chronology of the older religions. So that
primitive Christianity, while founding its churches upon the ruins of Mithraic
temples, filled up the missing dates in the Scriptural narratives from the pagan
chronology which was based upon the history of the sun.
If we take the
chronology of the life of the Virgin, for instance, we find the 8th of September
set down in the calendar as her birthday. Now the 8th of September in the Roman
calendar was the birthday of the virgin Astraea, and signified the disengagement
of the celestial Virgo from the solar rays. It is a well-known fact that the
25th of December was appointed by the Western Church to be celebrated as the
birthday of Christ no earlier than the fourth century, while a century previous
that day had been engrafted into the Roman calendar as the Natalis Solis
Invicti, being the feast of the Sun at Tyre, and the feast of Mithra in Persia.
Alber- tus Magnus says that the sign of the celestial Virgo rises above the
horizon at the time fixed as the birth of Christ. More than a hundred years
before the Christian era, in the territory of Char- tres, among the Gauls,
honors were paid to the Virgini Pariturae, who was about to give birth to the
God of Light.
The 2d of
February, the feast of the Purification of the Virgin, is called in the English
Church Candlemas, and was originally celebrated at Sais in Egypt as the feast of
Lights, in honor of Ceres (or Isis), the mother of the Sun. The celestial sign
of the Virgin and Child was in existence many thousand years before Christ. Upon
the front of the temple of Sais, under the well-known inscription to Isis, was
another, which read, " The fruit which I have brought forth is the
Sun." The mysteries of Ceres represented Proserpine, her daughter, as
carried away by Pluto to the realms of the dead, where Ceres finds her installed
as Queen of Darkness. Proserpine, Madonna, and the celestial Virgo are all often
depicted as carrying ears of corn or wheat. Albumazar, the Arabian philosopher,
says: "In the first decan of the Virgin rises a maid, called in Arabic
Aderenosa, that is, the Immaculate Virgin, holding two ears of wheat, sitting on
a throne, and nursing a boy called Jessus by certain nations, Christ in
Greek." Now the Milky Way (so called by the Greeks, who, as usual, invented
a story to account for the name) was originally called the Strawy Way; the
celestial Virgin, pursued by Typhon, having let fall some of the wheat she
carried.
Lady-Day, or the
feast of the Annunciation, is celebrated on the 25th of March. In the Roman
calendar that day was consecrated to Cybele, the mother of the gods, and was
called Hilaria, to testify the joy of the people at the arrival of the vernal
equinox. On the same day the Phrygians worshiped Atys (the feminine
personification of Bacchus), whom they called the mother of God. The Pamylia (a
Coptic word for annunciation) were on the 25th of the month Phameoth, and on the
new moon of that month the ancient Egyptians celebrated the union of Isis and
Osiris. Nine months afterwards (December 25th) they celebrated the birth of Har-
pocrates, and one meaning of Harpoc- iate- was " the sun in winter."
The Assumption of
the Virgin is set for the 15th of August. This day is marked in the Roman
calendar of Co- lumella as that of the death or disappearance of Virgo. "
About the eighth month, when the sun is in his greatest strength, the celestial
Virgin seems to be absorbed in his fires, and she disappears in the rays and
glory of her son." The calendar above quoted says that the sun passes into
Virgo the 13th before the kalends of September. The Christian festival of the
Assumption, or the reunion of the Virgin with her Son, used to be called "
the feast of the passage of the Virgin."
The mother of the
Virgin Mary, we are told, was St. Anna. The Romans had a festival at the
beginning of the year for Anna Perenna, and the Hindu goddess Anaitia, the wife
of Siva, is also called Annapurna and Kanya the Virgin, while the Roman Catholic
Church to-day teaches the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary herself. The
name Anna is said to come from the Chaldean ana, heaven.
Isis Multimammia
(identical with the Diana of Ephesus), Cybele, Ceres, and many others, being all
forms of the same idea, were each in turn addressed aa " Queen of Heaven
" and " Mother of God." From Rome to Greece, from Greece to
Egypt, from Egypt to India, we may trace the figure of the Virgin and Child, and
under every phase we find it, in its exoteric aspect, corresponding to the
astronomical symbol of the celestial Virgo, the mother of the God of Light, the
Sun.
So much for the
form of the representation ; now for the color. Were the black Madonna of Loreto
and numerous others of the same hue so colored as the mere fantasy of some early
painter, or can we trace that symbolism also to its source ? We find in all the
histories of. mythology many instances where both gods and goddesses are
represented as black. Pausanias, who mentions two statues of the black Venus,
says that the oldest statue of Ceres among the Phigalenses was black. Now Ceres,
like Juno and Minerva, like the Hindu Maia and the Egyptian Isis, stood for the
maternal principle in the universe, and all these goddesses have been thus
represented. Ceres is the same as Here (Juno), and Here became in German Hertha,
or the mother Earth. In the different Greek dialects, Here took various forms,
and changed into Ere, Re, Ree, Rhea, and Res, all names of the earth. In Latin
Res was retained, to signify matter (or mater), the mother of all things, and,
figuratively, every quality and modification thereof. Minerva Aglanrus, the
daughter of Cecrops, another similar personification, was represented at Athens
as black. Corinth had a black Venus, so had the Thespians. The oracles of Dodona
and Delphi were founded by black doves, the emissaries of Venus. The Isis
Multimammia in the Capitol at Rome is black.
Nor is it the
goddesses alone who are shown to be of this sable hue. In all the myths
connected with light, or with the sun and moon, the sex is ever changing, and
the moon becomes masculine or the sun feminine, or the two sexes are blended
into one, as the allegory varies. Bacchus, Hercules, and Apollo have all been
worshiped under a feminine form, and their statues have all been carved from
black marble. Several black figures of Cybele have their pedestals inscribed
with " Mother of the Gods " or " Mother of the Sun." Isis
and Horns, the Egyptian form of the Mother and Child, are continually
represented as black. Christna was worshiped as a black god in Egypt, under the
name of Kneph or Knuphis. Eu- sebius speaks of the Demiurgos Kneph, who was
represented as dark blue or black. It was formerly supposed that many of these
old statues were made of a dark-blue stone because black could not be procured;
but it is now said that in the mystic language of colors dark blue and black had
the same significance, and were therefore used indifferently. Now dark blue
melting into black is the color of the sky at midnight, especially in southern
countries, where the velvety blneness of the heavens is very striking; and here,
it seems to me, we may find the clue to the indiscriminate use of these colors.
The worshipers of the Sun, in the tropical climates where that worship began,
observed that his destructive power was exerted most by day, when his fierce
rays tortured men and animals, dried up rivers, ana generated putrefaction and
disease ; while by night fell the vivifying dews, tempered by the warm air. They
worshiped the nocturnal sun, therefore, as the productive power or maternal
element, and the deity that symbolized it, whether Apollo Didy- maeus, Bacchus,
or Hercules, took on, for the time being, a feminine shape and attributes. Night
itself was personified as the Universal Mother in the person of Hathor, or the
Isis of the lower world, often represented as suckling Horus. On a monolith from
Karnac, now in the British Museum, Hathor has inscribed on her throne " The
Divine Mother and Lady, or Queen of Heaven ; " also " The Morning Star
" and " The Light of the Sea."
Black, then, we
see to be the symbol of the productive power of night, and of that Darkness from
whose bosom springs the Sun ; and this color, as chosen for the old statues and
paintings of the Divine Mother, simply intensified the idea of maternity that
the artist desired to express. But underlying the astronomical symbol was always
a deeper esoteric significance, known only to the priests and initiates ; and
the further back we go in the study of the ancient faiths and their symbols, the
more complete become the resemblances between them, until we are forced to
conclude that the primitive religions had but one fountain- head. No matter how
complicated the systems of polytheism may be, we find that they resolve
themselves, under the microscope of comparative mythology, into a few simple
allegories that in the beginning expressed one and the same idea. In religion
the same law of progression must obtain that holds good in every other
department of human thought and science,—the universal order of development
from the simple to the complex. The conception of an ineffable mysterious Power
behind every manifestation in nature, Unnamable, Absolute, and Unique, must have
preceded, for the priests at least.^he elaborate systems of Egypt and of Greece
that appointed to every phase of physical being its appropriate deity. For as
far back as we can trace any religious organization, there is always the
symbolism for the people, the hidden meaning thereof for the priests; and this
hidden meaning, so far as we are able to catch glimpses of it here and there,
seems to be always the same.
Back of the black
Madonna, then, the copy of the black goddesses of the earlier faiths; back of
the blackness of night, symbol of the darkness from which is born the sun, we
find a deeper symbolism still. In Lenormant's Beginnings of History, be tells us
that upon one of the earliest Chaldean tablets deciphered by the famous scholar,
George Smith, is the following inscription: " When above the heavens were
not yet named, and below the earth was without a name, the limitless Abyss was
their generator, and the chaotic Sea she who produced the whole." Among the
teachings said to have been given to Pythagoras by the Chaldeans, we find the
conception of the Absolute, the Eternal Cause, manifesting itself as Father and
Mother in one, — the father light, the mother darkness; to light belonging
heat and dryness, to darkness cold and moisture. " There are these two
divinities of the universe: the chthonian (water), producing all that is born of
earth, and the celestial (fire), sharing the nature of the air; " and it is
from these two in one that proceeds the creative principle, the Logos, or Word.
So in Genesis we
read : " Darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters." And in the Gospel of St. John: "
The Word was in the beginning with God " (as the second person of the
mystic Trinity). "All things were made by him, and without him was not
anything made."
The basic idea of
the productive power of Nature, giving birth to all things without change in
herself, underlies every conception of the Virgin Mother; and behind the earthly
form of Mary, the mother of Jesus, we can trace the grand, mysterious outlines
of the Universal Mother, that Darkness from whence cometh the Light, that
chaotic Sea that produceth all things. Water, as referred to in such allegories,
is, of course, something quite different from the element we know, and
represents that primordial matter whose protean shape so constantly eludes the
grasp of science.
Representing the
productive power of Nature as darkness, therefore, the old gods and goddesses
were made black, and the Virgin Mother of the early Christian Church was painted
of the same color for the same reason. When water was the symbol, water (or
moisture) in combination with fire (or heat), then the lotus, offspring of heat
and moisture, floating upon the surface of the waves, became identified with the
maternal element; and the celestial messenger who announced to Maia the coming
birth of her divine son, Gautama Buddha, bore in his hand the sacred lotus,
transformed by the Christian Church into the lily of the Annunciation. So the
Hathor of the Egyptians, the goddess of the night, on account of this
association with water, was called " the Light of the Sea," as the
Madonna is worshiped as the " Stella del Mare," and Venus is said to
have risen from the foam of the ocean.
In the mystic
philosophies, darkness was also used as the symbol of the Infinite Unknown.
Light, as we recognize it. being material, could be considered only as the
shadow of the divine, the antithesis of spirit, and the Self- Existent, or Light
Spiritual, was therefore worshiped as darkness. And water, considered as the
source of all things, came to be also the type of wisdom or truth. All symbols
depend upon their correlation, and must be interpreted according to the
character of their surroundings. The black Madonna of Lo- reto means to-day a
portraiture of Mary, the mother of Jesus, to the Protestant; to the Romanist,
" the Daughter, Spouse, and Mother of God ; " while to the ancients
the figure of the black Mother and Child represented the mysterious forces of
the universe. Truly, as the cynic philosopher Antisthenes said, nearly five
hundred years before Christ, " the gods of the people are many, but the God
of nature is one."
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