Our Lady of Walsingham

Today the virtual Marian pilgrimage concludes at Walsingham. Writing about it last year I reflected to myself about the amount of attention it has received from scholars and that summarising that is difficult. Nonetheless new material emerges. Relatively recent archaeological investigation has found physical evidence for the Anglo-Saxon origin of the Holy House. Much more recently we have had theories about the identity of Richeldis.

That was in my mind as I wrote and published last year my post for today’s last stage of the virtual pilgrimage at Our Lady of Walsingham

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At almost that time there emerged the fascinating, and deeply attractive, theory that the famed statue of Our Lady was not burned in 1538 but rather that a substitute went into the flames at Chelsea, and that, against surely all the odds, the true statue, the much battered so-called Langham Madonna, survived, and can now be seen in the Victoria and Albert Museum. I posted about this last August in Our Lady of Walsingham  

What better tribute could one have to the vitality of the English devotion to Our Lady.

Our Lady of Walsingham Pray for us