In Chartres, Mary was venerated before the birth of Jesus!

In Notre Dame of Chartres Cathedral, 55 miles southwest of Paris, a statue of the Madonna and Child is venerated in an intimate space known as the “Underground Crypt.” This statue, called Notre Dame de Sous Terre (Our Lady Underground), has a very old tradition.

On the spot where the Cathedral of Chartres now stands, the Druids apparently had an altar in a grotto dedicated to the “virgin who would bear a son” and placed a prophetic statue depicting a pagan virgin, and called it the Virgini Pariturae (virgin who would bear a son). The Druids ruled the Celtic inhabitants of ancient Gaul (now France), Britain and Ireland. As one old story goes, in the year 50 B.C., the Druids heard of Isaiah’s prophecy: Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son… (Isaiah 7:14). They instinctively knew that this would be the one true God who would prove their old gods to be mere idols.

When Christian missionaries (c. 4^th century) arrived in Chartres, they found the ancient shrine. They converted the shrine into one dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Mother of God. Throughout the centuries, through fires, the building and rebuilding of different churches, the original Druid grotto, called Our Lady Underground, was kept in the underground crypt of the Cathedral of Chartres. 

The crypt is a beautiful shrine to Our Lady venerated in a small statue of Mary with her eyes closed. The statue is a copy of a 12th-century Romanesque one that was burnt during the French Revolution. In 1857, the underground shrine was restored and a new statue carved of stone placed in it. So, Our Lady is still Our Lady Underground and the shrine was built on what is probably the oldest shrine dedicated to Our Blessed Lady anywhere in the world. In fact the shrine is even ‘pre-Christian,’ being as it is the site of an original pagan temple from before the birth of Christ!

The Marie de Nazareth team

Adapted from Templiers and Catholicism Pure