Mariental (Germany)

In 1309, when the first pilgrims came to Mariental, a huntsman named Hecker Henn, who was blinded by accident and written off by doctors, Jonker Hans Schaffrait, knelt before the statue of the Virgin and asked Our Lady for intercession while he had returned from bathing .

Because of the remarkable healing, Junker Hans Schaffrait decided to build a chapel with a Pieta image. With more and more miraculous healings, a crowd arrived and in 1326 construction of the church began. The chapel, built in 1326, was expanded in 1313 and on September 8, 1330 into a church on the occasion of the birth of the Virgin Mary, consecrated by Archbishop Balduin of Trier. After a partial collapse in 1782, it was restored in 1858.

On September 8, 1858 - on the feast of the birth of Mary - the same day on which the church was first consecrated 528 years ago by Archbishop Balduin, the new church was consecrated by the Bishop of Limburg, Peter Josef Blum. On this solemn occasion, a procession of many thousands of pilgrims brought the miraculous statue from Geisenheim back to Mariental.