Featured Window

Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

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MSGC : Collections : Window

Window

Building Name: St. Mary's of Redford Church

City: Redford

Window Shape: 3 (arched)

Subject/Title of Window: Holy Virgin of Virgins

Brief Description of Subject: The clerestory windows are designed to let light into the Church and all have the same design --- a wide border of stylized lilies and three medallions. The center medallion will contain a symbol for an avocation found in the Litany of Loreto. The avocation in this window is "Holy Virgin of Virgins, Pray for us."

Pictured in the center medallion is a fleur-de-lis --- a stylized lily formed by three petals bound together near their bases. The suitability of this symbol is described in the 1750 book "The Illustrated Litany of Loreto" by Franz Xavier Dornn and illuminated by the Klauber Studio. Translated in 1878 from Latin by Thomas Canon Pope.

Holy Virgin of Virgins
The daughters saw her, and declared her most blessed. Cant. vi. 8

The virginity of Mary is here symbolically represented under the type of a lily, to signify her triple virginity, namely, the virginity she enjoyed before parturition, the virginity which she retained during parturition, and the virginity which she preserved after parturition. It is in regard to this triple and pre-eminently perfect virginity that not only these words may be attributed to her: "Una est columba mea, perfecta mea --- One is my dove, my perfect one;" but, moreover, the Church venerates and invokes her as the Virgin of virgins.

Height: ~64"

Width: 36"

The MSGC is a constantly evolving database. Not all the data that has been collected by volunteers has been sorted and entered. Not every building has been completely documented.

All images in the Index are either born-digital photographs of windows or buildings or are scans of slides, prints, or other published sources. These images have been provided by volunteers and the quality of the material varies widely.

If you have any questions, additions or corrections, or think you can provide better images and are willing to share them, please contact donald20@msu.edu