'Our Lady of Czestochowa' - The Black Madonna

 'Ballade to Our Lady of Czestochowa’        by  Hilaire Belloc

                              1.

Lady and Queen and Mystery manifold

And very Regent of the untroubled sky.
Whom in a dream St.Hilda did behold
And heard a Woodland music passing by:
You shall receive me when the clouds are high
With evening and the sheep attain the fold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.

                                2.

Steep are the seas and savaging and cold

In broken waters terrible to try;
And vast against the winter night the wold,
And harbourless for any sail to lie.
But you shall lead me to the lights, and I
Shall hymn  you in a harbour story told.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.

                                3.

Help of the half-defeated, House of gold,

Shrine of the Sword, and Tower of Ivory;
Splendour apart, supreme and aureoled.
The Battler’s vision and the World’s reply,
You shall restore me, O my last Ally,
To vengeance and the glories of the  bold.
This is the faith that I have held and hold,
And this is that in which I mean to die.

                                             Envoi

Prince of the degradations, bought and sold,

These verses written in your crumbling sty,
Proclaim the faith that I have held and hold,
And publish that in which I mean to live and die.

                                          

                                                                         *****************

The Black Madonna of Czestochowa also known as Our Lady of Czestochowa, is a revered icon of the Virgin Mary, housed at the Jasna Gora Monastery, In  Czestochowa, Poland

The Icon

The four-foot-high painting displays a traditional composition well known in the icons of Eastern Christians. The Virgin Mary is shown as the Hodegetria ("One Who Shows the Way").  The Virgin directs attention away from herself, gesturing with her right hand toward Jesus as the source of salvation. In turn, the child extends his right hand toward the viewer in blessing while holding a book of gospels in his left hand. The icon shows the Madonna in fleur-de-lis robes.

The legend concerning the two scars on the Black Madonna’s right cheek, is that the Hussites stormed the Pauline monastery in 1430, plundering the sanctuary. Among the items stolen was the icon. After putting it in their wagon, the Hussites tried to get away but their horses refused to move. They threw the portrait down to the ground and one of the plunderers drew his sword upon the image and inflicted two deep strikes. When the robber tried to inflict a third strike, he fell to the ground and writhed in agony until his death. Despite past attempts to repair these scars, they had difficulty in covering up those slashes as the painting was done with tempera infused with diluted wax.

History         

The origins of the icon and the date of its composition are still contested among scholars. One difficulty in dating the icon is due in part to its original image being painted over after being badly damaged by Hussite raiders in 1430. The wooden boards that backed the painting were broken and the canvas slashed.  Medieval restorers unfamiliar with the encaustic method found that the paints they applied to the damaged areas "simply sloughed off the image" according to the medieval chronicler Risinius, and their solution was to erase the original image and to repaint it on the original panel. The original features of an Orthodox icon were softened; the nose was made more aquiline.

Coronation as Queen and Protectress of Poland[

In August 1382 the hilltop parish church was transferred to the Paulites, a hermitic order from Hungary.  The golden fleur-de-lis painted on the Virgin's blue veil parallel the heraldic azure, semée de lis, or of the French royal coat of arms, and the most likely explanation for their presence is that the icon had been present in Hungary during the reign of either Charles 1 of Hungary and/or Louis the Great, the Hungarian kings of the Anjou dynasty, who probably had the fleur-de-lis of their family's coat of arms painted on the icon. This would suggest that the icon was probably originally brought to Jasna Gora by the Pauline monks from their founding monastery in Hungary.

The Black Madonna is said to have miraculously saved the monastery of Jasna Góra (English: Bright Mount) from a Swedish invasion.  The Siege of Jasna Góra took place in the winter of 1655 during the Second Northern War, as the Swedish invasion of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth is known. The Swedes were attempting to capture the Jasna Góra monastery in Częstochowa. Seventy monks and 180 local volunteers, mostly from the szlachta (Polish nobility), held off 4,000 Swedes for 40 days, saved their sacred icon and, according to some accounts, turned the course of the war.  This event led King John ll Casimir Vasa to "crown" Our Lady of Częstochowa ("the Black Madonna) as Queen and Protector of Poland, in the cathedral of Lwow on 1 April 1656. Prior to this event, several royal nobilities had offered crowns to the image throughout the years, replacing its iron sheet crown by gold and several jewels. In later years, various jewels were interchanged and repositioned around the image to preserve the aesthetic of the icon with the replacement of stolen crowns.

Tradition

The icon of Our Lady of  Częstochowa has been intimately associated with Poland for the past 600 years. Its history prior to its arrival in Poland is shrouded in numerous legends which trace the icon's origin to Saint Luke who painted it on a cedar table top from the house of the Holy Family. The same legend holds that the painting was discovered in Jerusalem in 326 by St. Helena, who brought it back to Constantinople and presented it to her son, Constantine the Great.

Arrival in Częstochowa

The oldest documents from Jasna Gora state that the picture travelled from 
Constantinople via Belz.  Eventually it came into the possession of Wladyslaw Opollzyk, Duke of Opole, and adviser to Louis of Anjou, King of Poland and Hungary. Ukrainian sources state that earlier in its history it was brought to Belz with much ceremony and honors by King Levi 1 of Anjou, and later taken by Władysław from the Castle of Belz, when the town was incorporated into the Polish kingdom. A popular story tells that in late August 1384, Wladyslaw was passing Częstochowa with the picture when his horses refused to go on. He was advised in a dream to leave the icon at Jasna Gora.

Art historians say that the original painting was a Byzantine icon created around the sixth or ninth century. They agree that Prince Władysław brought it to the monastery in the 14th century.  

Veneration

Częstochowa is regarded as the most popular shrine in Poland, with many Polish Catholics making a pilgrimage there every year. A pilgrimage has left Warsaw every August 6 since 1711 for the nine-day, 140-mile trek. Elderly pilgrims recall stealing through the dark countryside at great personal risk during the German Nazi occupation. Pope John Paul II secretly visited as a student pilgrim during World War II.  
The feast day of Our Lady of Częstochowa is celebrated on August 26.
Several Pontiffs have recognized the image, namely:-

 Pope Clement XI issued a Canonical Coronation for the image through the Vatican Chapter on 8 September 1717

Pope Pius X, after the crowns were stolen on 23 October 1909, the Pontiff replaced the crowns on 22 May 1910.

 Pope John Paul II gifted another set of crowns as a native of Poland, which was placed on 26 August 2005.

                                  (Ack. Wikipedia)

                                       *********************************

Hilaire Belloc, born France 1870,  died Guildford, England, 1953, was an Anglo-French writer and historian, and one of the most prolific writers in England during the early twentieth century. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist.

Hilaire Belloc portrait by Emil Otto Hoppé, 1915  (Wikipedia)

His Catholic faith had a strong impact on his works. He was President of the Oxford Union and later MP for Salford from 1906 to 1910. He was a noted disputant, with a number of long-running feuds, but also widely regarded as a humane and sympathetic man. Belloc became a naturalised British subject in 1902 while retaining his French citizenship.

His poetry encompassed comic verses for children and religious poetry. His widely sold Cautionary Tales for Children included "Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and was eaten by a lion" and "Matilda, who told lies and was burnt to death". He also collaborated with G.K.Chesterton on a number of works.

                                                                                                                  (Ack. Wikipedia)

(I Recommend Wikipedia’s entry on Belloc, which contains much additional information of great interest.)