What is the black Madonna?
Black Madonna, or Black Virgin, is a picture of the Virgin Mary with black or dark skin produced in medieval Europe. These apparently do not show women of African origin, but rather tend to have European features. Black Madonna are usually either sculptures or Byzantine style of an icon of a sitting or permanent figure and Madonna and the child is a frequent object.
There are about 450 to 500 medieval black Madonnas in Europe, with at least 180 in France. There are also many copies of medieval versions in Europe, and several of them are in America. Many black Madonnas have been associated with miracles since the Middle Ages.
The beginnings of the black Madonna are unknown. Around the turn of the 20th century, there was a theory that the color of the black Madonnas was caused by accumulated soot from candles burned near pictures. In the early 1950s, scholars attacked this opinion and thought the dark skin of the black Madonna had some partular meaning for medieval viewers.
Although some black Madonna are the result of color, most were intentionally designed with dark skin. In some paintings and sculptures, black Madonna's clothes remain clear, suggesting that the skin is also the original color. Black Madonna statues were often carved from ebony wood. Although the color created black Madonna, the color of the skin was important to the devotion, and some of the images that were restored to the original skin color of the light were later redrawn to have black skin.
Modern theories about the meaning of the black Madonna often associate an image with pre -Christian thoughts and religions. Since the Madonna and the child resemble an ancient Egyptian depiction of ISIS and Horus, it is possible that the dark skin of the black Madonnas is a reference to the Egyptian origin of the image. Madonnas May's dark skin is also based on other pre -Christian goddess; Some black shrines of Madonna are located in former places of pagan shrines to goddesses like Diana.
wasAlso theorized that black Madonna was supposed to represent a mother, female figure using earthy skin tones. According to this theory, Madonnas with light skin more suggests cleanliness and chastity than eternal female power. Another theory claims that Black Madonnas was intended as a historically accurate picture of Mary, a Semitic woman in the Middle East.
Some historians suggest that Black Madonnas be conceptualized only after the Middle Ages, when the norm became very light images of the Virgin. In any case, Black Madonnas has held fascination for believers and unbelievers for centuries. Due to the secrets surrounding their origin and meaning, Black Madonnas was sometimes associated with other historical "secrets", drought such as knights Templar, Katars and Gnosticism.