Of the miracle that gave rise to this sanctuary the day is known but not the year. Everyone knows it happened on the eighth of September; on the year the sources give 1530, or 1536, or 1540. It is not an oversight: the eighth of September is the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin, so the date was fixed by the calendar and nobody needed to note the year.
What to see
The story runs like this. A paralysed man who lived on alms was going along a rough path near the town; the beast carrying him was tired, he threw himself down and fell asleep on a stone. Waking, he found himself healed, and began first to walk and then to run, shouting. People came running, rummaged among the brambles and found close by an image of the Virgin and Child painted on a stone.
On the spot a shrine was built to hold the image, then a small church, and finally the sanctuary, the work of the Dominicans. Other graces were added to the first, among them the healing of a child of prince Lanza's family. In the eighteenth century the painting was restored by Domenico Provenzani, a painter from Palma di Montechiaro.
Visiting
The sanctuary is at Mussomeli, in the heart of Sicily, and is a diocesan sanctuary: it opens for services and is busiest around the September feast. Half an hour.
Our editors' tip
Look at the support, not only at the painting. That Madonna is not on panel nor on a wall: it is painted on a stone, and it was found on the ground, among the brambles. All the image's authority comes from that, from where it lay and what it is made of. In sanctuaries born from a finding, the object counts for more than the style.