PREGNANT VIRGIN 1500 -1600, CISTERCIAN CONVENT, ST.MARIENSTERN PANSCHWITZ-KUCKAU GERMANY
AROUND THE WORLD AND THROUGH THE CENTURIES WITH THE UNBORN
CHRIST CHILD
Cistercian convent, St.Marienstern
Pregnant Virgin
Pregnant Virgin
In 1996, Medievalist, Markus Bauer visited the Cistercian convent, St. Marienstern, in Panschwitz-Kuckau (which had been is in East Germany) - a small village with a population of 2400 and located in the Sachsen part of the Lausitz area in search of material for an historical exhibit. The historian found three sculptures of the Blessed Virgin Mary, each with an opening in the stomach, where the viewer could see a miniature carving of the unborn Christ Child.
Such sculptures were highly valued devotional objects in the 14th and 15th centuries. In the 19th century, this type of devotional image no longer spoke to the souls of the sisters in the same way, so they hung a cloth over the stomach opening, or they nailed the opening closed. Since the covering for one of these Marian figures was missing, it was put away in a remote cell, where it stayed to the present time.
"It would simply weary the reader to repeat almost word for word this description of our dearest Lord's life in the Womb, changing the phrases to apply it to the Blessed Sacrament. The parallel is so complete, that it must already have suggested itself; and I have dwelt upon it at greater length, because, as the devotion to the life in the womb is especially a devotion of interior souls, so the corresponding thoughts with regard to the Blessed Sacrament are those which are most familiar to interior souls in their prayers before the tabernacle; and again as all the mysteries of the Sacred Infancy take their color and character from the life in the womb, to establish the analogy between it and the Blessed Sacrament is in truth to establish the analogy between the Blessed Sacrament and the Sacred Infancy altogether." The Blessed Sacrament, Fr. F. W. Faber
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