The Crown of Excellence : Chapter 12 : § 5.74-77

Chapter 12 : The Eleventh Star or Splendour of the Crown of Excellence of the Mother of God

Continuing our translation of the 1845 reprint of Fr François Poiré's Triple Crown of the Mother of God (1643 French edition).

Notre Dame des Grâces, Cotignac.(Poggi, 2020)

She has been and is still recognized and called blessed by all generations in the world

§ 5. She was recognized  and honoured by all Nations everywhere in the world

Germany

OUR LADY OF CRUPNE, OUR LADY OF CAJAU, OUR LADY OF WÜRZBURG, OUR LADY OF HÖCHBERG & OUR LADY OF DETTELBACH

 74   Let us now proceed on to Germany where from the beginning the glorious Virgin has had faithful servants and places dedicated to her, with some cities and entire provinces that are in the fief of Our Lady. The learned and devout Costère writes this was the case with the Duchy of Bavaria, with Alsace, with Magdeburg (which means City of the Virgin in our language), with Marienburg (based on her name too), with Strasbourg, with Münster, with Basel and several other places. Proof of this is also found on the coinage of these cities and provinces for the majority of coins have the image of the Virgin on one side. I do not intend to give details here of the beautiful and ancient Churches of Our Lady in Mainz, Cologne, Würzburg, Augsburg, Cleves, Worms, Munich, Regensburg and in countless others that are found in all the towns and villages. I shall stick to my original plan of noting the places which have been honoured by the favours of the Holy Virgin and the devotion of the people.

 75   Let us start in Bohemia where we shall not fail to find in Prague and elsewhere beautiful and famous signs of the devotion of this nation to the glorious Virgin. There are two places in particular that have come to my notice, the first of which is called Our Lady of Crupne which is near Commautau, and the second which is called Our Lady of Cajau, not far from the town of Cromlam. These are two well-known places of pilgrimage and every two years you cannot fail to see two or three times the Members of the Congregations of the Our Lady which are located nearby, without mentioning other people who come from all over.

 76   In Franconia, there is no shortage of places of devotion where the Holy Virgin has made her sweet presence felt from time to time. In Würzburg we can go and greet her in the beautiful Church which Duke Hetam built for her at the suggestion of the Blessed Martyr St Kilian who converted him to the faith. One league from the same city they will speak proudly of Our Lady of Höchberg and the miracles that occur there every day through the intercession of the Holy Virgin. It is said that this was the first See of St Burchard, Bishop of Würzburg. There is nowhere more celebrated in all Franconia than the Church called Our Lady of Dettelbach. Apart from what Cesarius included in his compilation of miracles, the learned Trithemius who was firstly Abbot of Spanhen and afterwards of St James near Würzburg, wrote three entire books on the principal miracles that God worked through the intercession of the most glorious Virgin, between 1505 when this place began to be famous, and 1511 when he wrote the history[1]. Here is what he wrote about the origin of this devotion.

     There was once a villager from Melchendorf named Nicholas Lemmeler who after a drunken brawl was left so seriously injured in various parts of his body, especially his head, that he was confined to his bed for more than a year. He could not move, being unable even to lift his hand to his mouth. What was worse, he had suffered from an epileptic seizure which had such an effect on his brain that he scarcely knew what he was doing. 

     At the end of the year he had begun to recover his wits and in a moment of clarity he began to have recourse to God, asking pardon for his sins and imploring His assistance. As he was saying his prayer, a gentle sleep came over him during which a venerable man appeared to him and told him that if he made a vow to go on pilgrimage to the image of Our Lady which was nearby, carrying a candle by way of devotion, he would recover his health. A short while after that he awoke and, running over in his mind what had happened in the dream, he remembered that several times he had prayed in front of the image of the Virgin of Dettelbach, which shows her as Our Lady of Pity, carved in wood near a highway. 

     No sooner had he made his vow than he found himself restored to health and happiness, to the greatest astonishment of everyone who saw him. As for him, the most pressing thought he now had was to carry out his vow promptly. He therefore immediately set off and, once he had arrived at the place where the image stood, he made his prayer to the holy Virgin through whose intercession he had recovered his health. He was on the point of leaving but without finding anywhere that he could put his candle, for the image of the holy Virgin was fixed on a wooden post, with no other covering than the branches of a tree under which this was placed. Sitting down wearily, with that thought he fell asleep. Straight away the person who had appeared in the first dream came back and told him he was to go to Dettelbach where he would find the magistrates meeting in the town hall. He was to give them an account of what happened to him and leave with them the candle that he was carrying. He was not to be distressed by anything negative that anyone might say to him. He carried out to the letter what he had been told and found some of them listened to what he said, but others only laughed at him. When the news began to spread, however, God so touched the hearts of so many people that before long crowds were flocking to the spot. Miracles began to occur one after another, and these gave a seal of approval to the word of this villager, so that little by little even the most resistant gave way to reason. A small wooden lodge was built first of all to receive the alms that were being given and soon they found a way to build a fine church.

Footnotes

[1] Lib. I, c. 4.

OUR LADY OF HEILBRONN or OUR LADY OF THE NETTLES, OUR LADY OF RETZBACH & OUR LADY OF WEYER

 77   The same Trithemius wrote three other books about the miracles of Our Lady of Heilbronn, known also as Our Lady of the Nettles, (in Franconia or Eastern France and in the Diocese of Würzburg). He included the most memorable and best attested things that had happened between 1442 when they began and 1524 when he was writing his account.

   

     He says that on the 25th of April in 1442, the feast of St Mark, the clergy and the people of Heilbronn walked in procession, following an ancient custom, to the neighbouring parish of Bockenheim. When they were returning, they noticed more than five hundred people gathered at a certain place, but they did not know what they wanted or whether they were friends or enemies. They sent some of their people to find out who they were and these discovered that the crowd was gathered near an old wall where there was a statue of Our Lady of Pity, surrounded by nettles that had grown so high that they obscured the view of Our Lady. They asked why there was such a crowd there and they were told that it was because of a miracle that Our Lady of the Nettles had performed a few days previously. For a certain villager, they said, called Henri Singer had a child who was so badly injured by the wheels of a cart which ran over him that it seemed impossible he would survive for even an hour. The villager prayed for for his child to Our Lady, whose statue he had seen in the middle of the nettles. He promised he would be her servant for the rest of his life if only he could be saved. The child was instantly restored to how he was before the accident and restored to full health. 

     When this was reported back to the people from Heilbronn, there was not one of them who did not want to see this image and to talk to these villagers. After this incident the place became so famous, the miracles so frequent and the generous gifts of the throngs of pilgrims so extraordinary that soon there were sufficient funds to build a very beautiful Church as well as a monastery. In 1447 this was given over to the Carmelite Fathers by the authority of Pope Nicholas V and Geoffrey, Bishop of Würzburg.

I would not be doing justice to this story if I failed to mention something remarkable that happened before the image was even discovered.

A ploughman called Albert and his wife Cunegonde were walking past the wall where the Holy Virgin's statue was located. The woman noticed the statue in the nettles and called on her husband to join her in greeting Our Lady. They both knelt down and after a while the husband said they needed to be on their way. The wife told him to go ahead and she would catch him up in a while. 

The man turned round from time to time and could see that she was not coming so he retraced his steps and found her where he had left her, but she was stretched out on the ground in front of the statue. He thought she must be asleep, so he shook her several times and then he managed to raise her up.  He learned from her all that had happened in such a little while. She admitted to him that, having been overcome by the beauty of the statue, she had made up her mind to carry it back home and to build a little Oratory for it. She then started to carry out her plan but as soon as she stretched her hand forward, she heard a loud voice speaking clearly and intelligibly to her which admonished her for her presumption and forbade her from touching the statue, adding that the time would come when this statue would be very well-known and that the place would be one of the most famous in all the country. The ploughman’s wife added that the fear that seized her had been so great that she fell to the ground as though dead. Her husband really did not pay much attention to what she had said but, on the contrary, he expressly forbade her from speaking about it to anyone, for fear people would make fun of her. The wife held her tongue for awhile, but when Lent came, she could not hold back from telling her confessor about it. The confessor sent her to speak with a learned religious who gave her the same advice and forbade her to speak about it. She diligently followed this instruction until the great wonders that God worked through this image eventually constrained her to make public what actually happened to her.

This incident was one of the reasons included by the Carmelite Fathers in their submission to His Holiness for authority to enter into possession of the site. 

There are in fact just as many reasons that could also apply to Our Lady of Retzbach, which is one league distant. We can also speak about Our Lady of Weyer which is in the same region of Franconia. Otto, Bishop of Bamberg, imbibed his devotion to the Virgin with his mother’s milk. It is a mark of his devotion that he built this Church for the Virgin so as to merit her assistance with the conversion of peoples. He himself carried out the dedication and the Holy Virgin was not long in showing how pleased she was with his plan, performing various miracles here and continuing to do so until the present day. Not far from Nuremberg in the same province there is an apple tree which for several years running has never failed to bear baby apples on Christmas Eve. This is believed to honour the Virgin for giving birth to the Baby who was the true fruit of life. It is truly wondrous to see this tree bear fruit when all the country is covered in snow. Jean Nider, a Swede of the Dominican Order and an eye witness of this miracle[1], has stated that he consulted with several learned men who were present when he was at the Council of Basel. Not a single one of them thought such an extraordinary thing could come to pass naturally, and there was no human knowledge or skill that could make it happen.

Footnotes

[1] In Formica, lib. IV.

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The Vladimirskaya Icon. >12th century.

SUB tuum præsidium confugimus, Sancta Dei Genitrix. Nostras deprecationes ne despicias in necessitatibus, sed a periculis cunctis libera nos semper, Virgo gloriosa et benedicta. Amen.

 

 

Totus tuus ego sum

Et omnia mea tua sunt;

Tecum semper tutus sum:

Ad Jesum per Mariam. 

© Peter Bloor 2024