Newsletter correction & Black Madonnas

[Robert Ward]

An amendment to my Rastrocamino ad (page 12 of the newsletter). My book, Virgin Trails, is now available on amazon.com, but has mysteriously disappeared (temporarily, one hopes) from amazon.ca. Amazon.com price (with built-in 50% "Canadian dollar discount") is $19.99 for hardcover.

Maura Santangelo, Helen Burns and others who have written in this month with questions and stories about Black Madonnas may be interested in taking a look, as the book includes chapters on the Black Virgins of Chartres and Loreto, as well as the Virgins of the Camino. I know of only one Virgin on the Camino who is reputed to be "a black Madonna", and that is the Madonna of Los Arcos (though, shameful to say, on two walks along the Camino I have not yet managed to get in to see her.) There are, however, celebrated "White Marias" (Maria la Blanca) in the cathedral of Leon and in Villalcazar de Sirga, as well as a multitude of other wonderworkers (Our Lady of Roncesvalles, la Peregrina of Sahagun, Santa Maria la Real of Najera, the Virgins of le Puy in Estella, del Manzano in Castrojeriz and of O Cebreiro, to name only a few).
If you really have your heart set on a black Madonna, Nuestra Senora de la Pena de Francia in Salamanca is spectacularly black, and beautiful.      Robert Ward

> Do you wish to place an ad ?
> [I don't know how the other 2 people who advertised materials in 14.3
> have fared with the items they have offered for sale.