Dowry of Our Lady

[Sr. Janet]

‘Our Lady’s dowry’. This used to be the description that England
applied to itself and that other countries also used of the country
that had dedicated itself to Our Blessed Mother. That is why the
Feast of Our Lady of Walsingham, celebrated in England on 24th
September, is so important: it recalls a time when, throughout the
land, there were shrines dedicated to Our Lady. Every county had its
own place of pilgrimage in her honour. Even today, the shrine of Our
Lady of Walsingham is also known as ‘England’s Nazareth’.

The feast of Our Lady of Walsingham dates back to 1061, before the
Norman Conquest, when Mary appeared in a vision to Richeldis de
Faverches, a devout Saxon noblewoman, in 1061 in the Norfolk village
of Walsingham. Richeldis was asked to build a wooden replica of the
house in Nazareth in which the Annunciation took place. Today, after
more than 1000 years, archaeologists have discovered the approximate
location of that little shrine which became, not only a place of
national pilgrimage, especially during the times of the Crusades when
travelling to Rome, the Holy Land and Compostella were highly
dangerous, but also the world’s third most important Catholic shrine.
Records still exist of the visits of seven English kings, including
(perhaps surprisingly) Henry VIII, who also ordered its destruction in
1538.

The original statue of Our Lady of Walsingham was burnt in a bonfire
in London, but enough miniatures remained for us to know that Mary was
seated on a throne, wearing a simple Saxon crown, carrying a lily in
her right hand and bearing Jesus, also wearing a crown, on her knee.
This was sufficient to reconstruct the familiar image seen today,
commissioned in honour of the declaration of the Dogma of the
Assumption in 1950, ‘solemnly crowned near the site of the original
Shrine on behalf of Pope Pius XII by his Apostolic Delegate’ and
installed in the Slipper Chapel in 1954.

‘Our Lady, as she is venerated at Walsingham, is depicted as a simple
woman, a mother. She is seated on the throne of Wisdom, in the midst
of the Church which is represented by the two pillars symbolic of the
Gate of Heaven, with seven rings to signify the seven sacraments and
the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. The arched back of the throne
reminds us of the rainbow which was set as a sign of God’s fidelity to
his creation. Our Lady is clothed in the blue of divinity, the white
of motherhood and the red of virginity. In her hand she holds a lily-
sceptre with three blooms because she was virginal before, during and
after the Saviour’s birth. As the Woman of the New Creation, the New
Eve, she crushes beneath her feet a toadstone, symbolic of the power
of evil. As the Queen of Heaven and of England, her Dowry, she is
crowned with a Saxon crown. On his mother’s knee is the child Jesus
who, as the Word of God made Flesh, holds the book of the Gospels. He
extends his right arm in a double gesture of blessing and protection
of his mother.’

Exquisitely, the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham is, yet again, a
symbol of unity, where Anglicans, as well as Catholics venerate our
mother, all of us praying for the day when Mary will, once again, be
our Queen, bringing us together in her Son. The tradition has never
died out that it is through praying to Our Lady of Walsingham, that
unity will be restored. As the hymn says: ‘Be England thy dowry as in
days of yore.’

God bless,
Sr Janet