The Madonnas of Europe. (Book Review).

The Madonnas of Europe, with photographs by Janusz Rosikon and text by Wojciech Nizynski. Polish edition, Warsaw, 1998. English edition, Warsaw 2000. Distributed in the United States by Ignatius Press, San Francisco, pp. 288, $49.95 U.S.

This lavishly illustrated folio volume is described as the fruit of five years spent following the pilgrim routes to Marian sanctuaries scattered all over Europe; it portrays seventy of the most important sanctuaries. In a foreword dated the Feast of the Annunciation, 1998, Poland's Cardinal Glemp hopes that this book, celebrating the shrines where the Virgin is venerated throughout Europe, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Urals, "may bear testimony to our beliefs and devotion to the Mother of God, who "will guide us and support us with Her power and might on the path into the next millennium..."

The head of the International Pontifical Marian Academy, Cardinal Deskur, points out in a note on Marian sanctuaries that, despite some pessimistic predictions, Marian veneration shows no signs of weakening. On the contrary, the sanctuaries have turned into islands emanating spirituality, and continue to attract enormous groups of believers. The text bears out their continuing importance. Before the first flight to the moon, Neil Armstrong prayed at an Italian shrine, Loreto, because the Virgin Mary of Loreto is the patron saint of pilots; after his mission, he placed a stone from the moon's surface at the foot of the Virgin's statue there.

Few of us may have heard of the shrine of Marija Bistrica in Croatia, yet it receives about half a million pilgrims a year. The shrine of the Miraculous Medal in an out-of-the-way Paris street, the Rue du Bac, is visited by a million and a half people every year. Millions come to Fatima and to the shrine of Jasna Gora (Bright Hill) at Czestochowa in Poland; over six million make the pilgrimage to Lourdes every year. European Christianity remains in a perilous situation; but the extent of devotion to Mary gives us cause for hope.

The introductions to the various sections of this book, and the captions accompanying the photographs, contain a great deal of interesting material. For one thing, the number of paintings attributed to Saint Luke make it seem unlikely that the poor man ever had time to write the Gospel attributed to him. The number of black Madonnas is striking--many of them blackened over time with the aging of the wood out of which they were carved. Many of the Madonnas have pious legends associated with them which may or may not have the ring of truth. The sanctuary of Madre delle Grazie at Mentorella south of Rome (John Paul's first place of pilgrimage after his election as Pope) almost certainly dates from the early days of Christianity; but was it founded by the Emperor Constantine? The legend may or may not have an element of truth. Do we have to believe that at the moment of the death of anti-pope Clement III in 1110, a large marble carving which became known as the Greek Madonna appeared miraculously on the beach nea r Ravenna? Crowds of people did believe in the miracle.

Many of the statues disappeared from sight and then reappeared. In 's-Hertogenbosch's cathedral in the Netherlands, a statue of the Virgin with the infant Christ was found in 1380 when the church was being enlarged. A year later, a woman who had been paralysed was miraculously cured, and over the years a book describing other miracles and special blessings was quickly filled. But when the Protestants took over the city in 1566, the statue had to be removed. It stayed in Antwerp for two hundred and forty-four years, until it was safe to bring it back in 1853. In Zhjirovice in Belarus, shepherds found a small jasper carving of the Blessed Virgin in 1470. Miraculous properties were attributed to it, and first a wooden chapel was erected on the site, replaced by a church in 1520. Over the centuries the icon has reflected the turbulent history of Belarus-some times it has been in Orthodox hands, sometimes in Catholic ones, and sometimes it has alternated.

Janusz Rosikon is a distinguished photographer, and it would be hard to overpraise his accomplishment here. Amid all the striking pictures of Rocamadour clinging to its cliff, and Montserrat on its saw-tooth mountain, and lines of hooded figures during Holy Week in Seville, and jewels like tears on the faces of Madonnas, there was one which struck me as having particular significance-that of a white-robed statue, wearing a crown, in an open square. The explanation reads as follows:

"Only a short while ago, could anyone have imagined that the statue of Our Lady of Fatima would journey across Russia, and that one day people would pay homage to it in the Red Square, near the mausoleum of Lenin, father of the Bolshevik revolution who made the fight against religion one of the main tenets of his ideology?"

Our Lady has work to do in Russia--as in the rest of Europe.