Luke as genuine. How, then,
justify the whiteness of the Holy Family in the chapels? If the
portrait is not known as genuine, why set such a stumbling-block in
our paths as to show us a black Madonna and a white one, both as
historically accurate, within a few yards of one another?
I ask this not in mockery, but as knowing that the Church must have
an explanation to give, if she would only give it, and as myself
unable to find any, even the most far-fetched, that can bring what
we see at Oropa, Loreto and elsewhere into harmony with modern
conscience, either intellectual or ethical.
I see, indeed, from an interesting article in the Atlantic Monthly
for September, 1889, entitled "The Black Madonna of Loreto," that
black Madonnas were so frequent in ancient Christian art that "some
of the early writers of the Church felt obliged to account for it by
explaining that the Virgin was of a very dark complexion, as might
be proved by the verse of Canticles which says, 'I am black, but
comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem.
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