Updates
14. March 2025.
“I’m black, but I’m beautiful” (Song of Songs)
One of the rare copies of the statue of the Black Virgin Mary is located in the Roman Catholic Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Apatin, which, as a cultural asset, is under the jurisdiction of the Provincial Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments Petrovaradin. This exquisitely valuable piece, made in the Baroque style, from ebony, depicts the Virgin Mary in a standing, contrapposto position with the infant Christ in her left hand and a gilded scepter in her right hand. Some interpreters believe that this type of statue was created in memory of a verse from the biblical "Song of Songs", which reads "I am black, but I am beautiful", and others that it was precisely because of her color that the black Virgin Mary was the protector of ordinary people, dirty and blackened from hard work in the fields. Although the Virgin Mary is black, she does not have Negroid elements, but rather the facial features of a white woman. The cult of the Black Virgin Mary has been present since the Middle Ages in Central Europe, and a large part of believers from the Czech Republic, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland go on a pilgrimage at least once in their lives. Legend has it that the unusual statue was brought by a German woman, Magdalena Gerber, who moved to Bačka. Since the Germans came on pilgrimages by ship, every time the ship docked, the statue was carried ashore, but it could not stand on its own until it reached Apatin, where it remained standing. For this reason, the pilgrims decided to settle in Apatin. The statue is certainly an attractive witness to German colonization in the mid-18th century, but it is not known for sure where it was brought from. The Black Virgin Mary was originally located on the altar stone in the old Apatin Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary (built in 1748, and demolished just before the catastrophic flood that followed in 1795), and after the construction of a new sacral building (1798), it was moved to its interior. Photography: Maria Erdelji
