Photos

Our Lady’s Fount in front of the Abbey Church of Einsiedeln.

Inside the church the statue of Black Madonna adorns the Lady Chapel which according to the legend Jesus Christ himself, accompanied by angels and saints, consecrated in the night of September 14, 948.

Several hundred thousand persons now visit Einsiedeln each year and it is likely that many of them are pilgrims and who come in large numbers each year especially on September 14 to celebrate The Feast of the Miraculous Consecration.

The original object of pilgrimage at the beginning was the divinely consecrated chapel itself. Later on however, roughly from the middle of the 15th century, it became the statue of Black Madona, which was brought there to replace the one destroyed by the fire in 1465.

So, the pilgrimage to the Madona of Einsiedeln can be traced back to the first decade of the 14th century, but its origins in fact could be closely related to the legend of the Miraculous Consecration from much earlier.