In art historical terms, a black Madonna is a painting or sculpture depicting the Virgin Mary with dark or black skin, created in Europe in the late medieval period, or sometimes an older image whose documented popular cult dates from that time. Some are made of dark or black materials such as ebony, others are said to have become blackened from the soot of candles, although this explanation and the significance of the Madonna’s skin colour is contested. There are several hundred black Madonnas in Europe. The topic of black Madonnas has attracted a considerable literature in recent decades approaching the subject from the perspectives of anthropology, psychology, art history, feminism, and Black history.

The Abbey of Einsiedeln is a Benedictine monastery dedicated to Our Lady of the Hermits and located in the village of Einsiedeln twenty miles southeast of Zurich. According to 9th and 14th-century sources, the hermit St Meinrad (d. 861) was especially devoted to the Virgin and was given a miracle-working statue of the Virgin and Child by Abbess Hildegard of Zurich around which he built a chapel. Following his murder, a church was built over this chapel. The new church was dedicated but not the chapel. In 948 Conrad of Constance was praying in the chapel when he witnessed Christ and the angels performing the dedication rites. A papal bull of 11th November 966 allowed the celebration of the anniversary of this miracle and granted indulgences to pilgrims to the shrine.