Featured Window

Our Lady of Grace, Dearborn Heights, Michigan

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MSGC : Collections : Window

Window

Building Name: St. Mary Catholic Church

City: Royal Oak

Window Shape: 3 (arched)

Subject/Title of Window: Queen of Peace

Brief Description of Subject: This clerestory window is one of 17 windows illuminating titles for the Virgin Mary found in the Litany of Loreto. The title pictured here is "Queen of Peace."

Pictured is a crown and an olive branch.

An olive branch as a symbol of peace comes from the end of the great flood in Genesis 8:11, when a dove came back to the ark "carrying a bough of an olive branch, with green leaves, in her mouth. Noe therefore understood that the waters were ceased upon earth," (Douay-Rheims).

The story of how the title came about and added to the Litany begins in 1518 with an 11 inch high wooden statue. Jean de Joyeuse gave this statue as a wedding gift to his wife. It had the Virgin Mary holding an olive branch in her right hand and the Christ child in her left. It remained in the family through a few generations and was known as the "Virgin of Joyeuse." Eventually it came into possession of the Capuchin Franciscans of Paris. It remained there for over two hundred years and they gave it the name that is still used today for this statue, "Our Lady of Peace." In 1806 it came to be possessed by its present owner --- The Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary, located in Paris. In 1906 crowns were added to the statue by the Archbishop of Paris in the name of the Pope. In 1916, while the "War to end all Wars" was raging, Pope Benedict XV added "Queen of Peace" to the Litany.

Height: 10'

Width: 4'

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