Talk:Black Madonna

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

WikiProject Saints Black Madonna is part of the WikiProject Saints, an effort to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to Saints and other individuals commemorated in Christian liturgical calendars on Wikipedia. This includes but is not limited to saints as well as those not so affiliated, country and region-specific topics, and anything else related to saints. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Saints Portal
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the importance scale.

Huh? Danny

I'll try to NPOV it. I will probably be too gentle in editing it, but maybe someone more harsh can come after me :-) -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo-stick 02:07 27 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Gosh this is silly. Just to start with, using the term "Madonna" for a statue outside Italy (the examples listed are French and Polish) is kind of -- uhh -- obtuse. Thus I don't even think this is worth revising with the universally accepted opinion of art historians and museum professionals (the people who actually look at the surfaces of these things with microscopes) that the color is discoloring due to age. Oh, well. Wikipedia offends me badly enough again that I wonder why I bothered to come back. And the Michelangelo stuff! Look at a good picture, people. The bandeau across her chest has the text from Luke (I think) -- definitely not the Magdalen. Oh, well -- what are you going to do with people who (a)prefer esoteric interpretation and (b) can his "edit this page'? --Michael Tinkler, former contributor.

I agree with the others. If the discolouration is in fact the "theory which is widely accepted among musuem curators", then Wikipedia should present this as a likely theory and the most prominent one, not blithely ascribe it to "historical racism". In fact, the whole article could do with a rewrite by somebody with knowledge in this area. (Hint to the above poster: you too can hit the "edit this page" link!)
Aaaanyway. I have marked it POV. --Spudtater 22:35, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Changed my mind. I'll start on it myself. --Spudtater 22:49, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Gah! If there were any sources I could trust, this would be a lot easier! --Spudtater 23:04, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Removal of content

Please don't remove whole chunks of the text just because you personally disagree with the hypotheses expressed therein. If you have enough knowledge to make an educated decision that a hypothesis is nonsense, then please share your reasoning with us by adding that to the text, not removing the original hypothesis. Thank you. --Spudtater 23:52, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Black Madonnas and contemporary culture

What sort of information could we put in here about contemporary culture(s) and Black Madonnas? In the novel The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, one features prominently as the icon at the center of a small African-American religious community. I'm wondering if there's any "real life" analogues to that, which would fit into this article. The Literate Engineer 22:24, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "African by Nature" link

The "African by Nature" site and many of its links are clearly biased and Afrocentric, and are contradicted by the article and the other links. Specifically, it/they explicitly call(s) the black madonnas "African" (the page from which it plagiarizes actually says "historically, alabaster-white madonnas are far newer than their black counterparts," (emphasis mine) not "African" [1]), claim(s) Jesus was "black", and makes inflammatory suggestions (e.g. the site's definition of "denial") seen elsewhere in the history of this article. Some of the silent contributors of this article undeniably have an ethnocentric agenda and their contributions aren't encyclopedic [2] [3] [4] [5]. This link seems just to be permitted residue of the formerly rampant racist vandalism of this article. I know other contributors have seen this link and left it there (Spudtater [6], et al [7]), so I ask why it has remained untouched. Because it proclaims many inaccuracies, it doesn't belong here, so I'm removing it until someone explains its validity. The favorable links found on this site should be posted separately. --Jugbo 23:52, 6 January 2006 (UTC)


IS IT SO HARD TO BELIEVE THAT THE REASON HER SKIN IS DEPICTED AS DARK OR BLACK IS BECAUSE SHE WAS A BLACK WOMAN? Thousands of years ago they did not have the say race issues that we do now. So painting her black was due to seeing black skin. The original artist probably had very little experience with African features so her features came out European looking. However, there are many Africans with "European" features without being European. Over the years it seems as if Blacks are being written out of religious history. One needs only to pick up the Bible to read about Black history. ---- Nita 4:30 pm July 11, 2006 CST

Personally, I favour the theory that she was a Semite, not black. It's a bit more probable considering the geography involved. Black people have plenty of well-documented stuff to be proud of. No need to push a marginal theory like that; it simply weakens the case for the real stuff by confusing the issue. Rhialto 08:32, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Rewrite 25 Feb 2006

Hi everyone - I saw the call for help with this and had a go at improving it. Though I'm not an expert, I felt I had enough knowledge to make a difference. It has been more difficult than I expected - and I had to put a lot of effort into trying to represent different points of view fairly.

I hope to add to the "further reading" list and and the external links soon.

I didn't keep the text about the Madonna at Częstochowa because she has her own page, and it is controversial to say that particular icon is older than any other Black Madonna. (The tradition of having been painted by Luke the Evangelist applies to several Italian Madonnas too.)

One day I may work at building up a list of Black Madonnas. Anyone who's interested in doing that could find these links useful. http://www.udayton.edu/mary/resources/blackm/blackm.html and http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarze_Madonna

Please excuse any lapses in WikiP style or etiquette. I'm trying but I'm new here. :) HJMG 22:27, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

PS Other thoughts:

It would be good if the page had a picture of a really dark black Black Madonna like these: http://www.sabbatarian.com/SubPage/BlackMadonnas.html

[edit] Fleur-de-lys

This could be misleading if it sounds like a name for the painting. Except on Wikipedia copy sites, I can only find it used as a description of the pattern on the robes in this painting. HJMG 09:52, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Earth Mary?

"(Note certain "earth-Mary" toponyms, thus one Erdmarishusen in S Germany.)" I don't remember reading about this before and can't find any reliable sources for it. Can anyone help? Should this statement be with the best-known theories in the theory section or in a footnote? Even in a footnote it would need a source. --HJMG 22:43, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

(Note certain "earth-Mary" toponyms, thus one Erdmarishusen...ref>Cited thus in medieval documents from AD 816 onward,[citation needed] now Erdmannhausen (near Marbach). It has to be said that no black madonna is known from that town today.</ref... in S Germany.) I've put this here on the talk page for discussion and/or until a source is found. --HJMG 20:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Black-face chinese deities

Black and golden are popular colors for statues of chinese gods and goddesses. The most common interpretation for the black ones is that in the beginning, it just happened by chance that dark hardwoods were the best quality material. Then a mystical interpretation was added : gods are different from humans, the unusual skin color is a symbol of their divine nature. Statues made from a light color material were then painted in black to convey this meaning. 218.166.86.120 04:58, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 19th C Fundamentalist Protestant Anti-Catholicism?

I am surprised by a recent contribution suggesting this has influenced modern writers on the Black Madonnas. Without any source for this opinion, I am unhappy about leaving it in the article. Does anyone know more about a link between Hislop's ideas and modern writers who suggest "pagan" echoes in images of Black Madonnas? --HJMG 11:08, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I've cut this since no-one has offered any verification. --HJMG 14:10, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Comment

My grandmother was Polish and went on a pilgrimage as a child to see the black madonna. She told me the madonna originally was a caucasion female with child image that was located in a church in Poland. Non Christian invaders came to the church and burned it down. The picture remainded unscathed. The leader than tried to destroy the image with his sword. Each cut bled but the picture remained. He then tried to burn the image and the figures blackened but the picture remained. The leader became afraid and left what remained of the village and the picture to history.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Kgudyka (talk • contribs)