The Cult of the Black Virgin (Arkana) [Paperback]

This is an excellent overview of the cult of the Black Virgin as found in France, Spain and Italy. Covering such diverse subjects as the cult's origins in pagan goddesses of Europe, its strange association with the Merovingian dynasty of Frankish Gaul and Christian saints who are alleged to hav set them up or venrated them, Begg correlates major Black Virgin festivals with Saints feast days and uncovers some of the deeper senses and beliefs of newly Christianized Western Europe at the end of the Roman Period. This is both a Robert Graves style exploration of early Christian Virgin mythology, as well as a psychological interpretation of the meaning of the Black Virgin statues. There is also a handy gazetteer of many of the statue sites. The whole book presents a difficult and interconnected subject logically and clearly, and for an insight into some of the stranger aspects of Dark Age France there is none better.

It was astonishing to learn how numerous the sites dedicated to the Black Madonna are. The maps of France and Iberia reveal a widespread & dense network of shrines, especially in France. Neither historians nor theologians have investigated the matter in any detail although literary & historical interest has surged over the last century. Most people are at least familiar with the Black Madonna of Czestochova, the "queen" of Poland. Begg approaches the subject from the angle of psychological archetypes.

In the Merovingian period (500 - 750) many Black Virgin shrines were revived. Then in 888 the Dark Madonna of Montserrat was discovered in a mountain cave. But it was in the 12th century that the Black Madonna really came into her own as part of the Gothic renaissance. In the literature, mention of the phenomenon has been traced to 1255 whilst many place names imply considerable antiquity.

The author provides a long list of reasons given to explain the dark hues of the icons. There is little doubt that early images of the Madonna & Child are based on that of Horus & Isis. Begg points out the correspondences with St Mary the Egyptian and Mary Magdalene plus the Merovingians, Holy Grail, Templars, Cathars - all those Da Vinci Code puzzles - and the ominous promise of a second Constantine or Charlemagne.

With the victory of Constantine Christianity, Caesaro-Papism established itself as orthodoxy. In the same century in Edessa, Mary mother of Jesus was declared "Theotokos," mother of God. From there the concept entered the West, merging with ancient goddesses in Europe, thus re-establishing the Mother Goddess religion that must be about 30 000 years old.

The author calls the 12th century an era of riddles & puzzles. In his opinion, the popularity of the Black Goddess was a response to an intense yearning for the feminine principle. One of her devotees was Bernard of Clairvaux, a friend of St Malachy of the famous papal prophecies. Bernard opposed Abelard - one of the very few friends of the Jews in church history - in whose theology reason & fact were given their rightful place.

Bernard was a strange type who in 1096 launched the first crusade & the resultant Kingdom of Jerusalem & he had strong ideas of the role of the Emperor & the Pope in Christendom. Another oddity about him is the, uh, sensual way he expressed his love for Christ, as if he could not distinguish different types of love.

Begg does not mention it, but the first crusade started out with the massacre of Jews. These atrocities were especially widespread in the Rhineland. It was in this time that anti-Jewish passion in the Christian world markedly intensified. To the theological calumnies were added the blood libel, the ridiculous notion of the desecration of the host, poisoning of wells and causing the plague.

In the Christian imagination the Jew became the symbol of evil. Such perverse scapegoating does not derive from the history of ideas. It resulted from pressures on the Christian psyche exerted by the theological shift to the suffering & the blood of Christ, a change that induced guilt, repression & projection. The Passion Plays were born in this period and Christian art underwent a morbid transformation. William Nichols examines this issue at length in his brilliant book Christian Antisemitism.

Begg compares the Black Madonna to a most exhausting list of female archetypes including every obscure goddess in the Gnostic, Celtic, Teutonic, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Hindu and Sumerian pantheons, and with reference to the Shulamite in the Song of Solomon, the Queen of Sheba and the daughter of Pharaoh who adopted Moses. He observes that the dark side of the BV is Lilith, a demon of night and storms, an image that occurs in Isaiah where it is called a screech-owl; it is also found in the Kabbalah and in the scripture of the Gnostic Mandaeans. One of her names is Lamiah, which bears an association with witches.

The 12th century saw the construction of the great gothic cathedrals and the popularity of pilgrimages, like that to Santiago de Compostela. Begg makes a solid case for an intimate connection between all these phenomena and the cult. He discusses a long list of saints of the "hidden order" all the way back to John the Baptist. He refers to the book Mammon and the Black Goddess by Robert Graves.

Discussing the symbolic meaning of the BV, Begg mentions the romantic aspects of the Templars, Troubadours & Cathars, endorses the view that men must relate consciously to the power of the feminine principle and stresses its importance in what he sees as a crumbling patriarchal society. Astrology, the Tarot, Freemasons, Rosicrucians, the hidden stream in Christianity and alchemy as precursor to modern depth psychology are examined, with reference to Jung's The Undiscovered Self. He seems very positively disposed to the resurgence of the cult.

My main problem with the book is that Begg only goes back to the Sumerians. Besides a short sentence or two, he completely ignores the millennia when the BV was worshiped in Eurasia. Not even the statues of Malta get a mention - those famous images of the goddess with the grotesquely enlarged reproductive organs. Nothing on the Neolithic evidence, Altamira, Lascaux or the prehistoric statuettes carved from mammoth ivory. He moreover regards the apparitions at inter alia Lourdes, Fatima & Zeitoun in a favorable light. I find them sinister and I doubt they have anything to do with Mary the wife of Joseph. I agree with him that they will become more frequent but I dread the potential for mass hysteria & fanaticism.

The book contains a massive Gazetteer of sites worldwide where the BV was and still is venerated. The book contains photographs, a bibliography lacking Marija Gimbutas! and index.

For the newcomers and the so-called specialists as well, Ean Begg's 318-page book shows a rather good quality/price ratio. The first 152 pages develop a fine study of the Black Virgin odyssey and the author places his ideas straightforwardly. One could always argue the real difference between BV's and the `carnation' Holy Mothers but finally his arguments are pretty interesting. Then come the gazetteer from the first edition (pp 153-264), followed by an addenda (pp 265-293) for the 1996 edition. Here again a good reading but as a Belgian citizen I think there is an error for the town of Vilvoorde and the author does not mention the Black Virgin at the Church of the Minimes in Brussels, curious because this BV is sited in a 18C copy of the Santa Casa of Loreto. No sweat I know BV's are not that easy to raise their veils. Then there is a bibliography (pp 294-303, some 300 titles but French Abbot Grillot's 19C book `La Sainte Maison de Lorette' is not mentioned) and a very useful index. For such a digest on BV's I dare say: Highly recommendable!
Robert Dehon