Contents -- List of illustrations -- List of tables and appendices -- Abbreviations -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction -- Chapter I. STORIES OF ORIGIN -- 1. What is acheiropoietos? -- 2. The image of Our Lady of Częstochowa as acheiropoietos -- 3. The oldest legends about the image and how it cameto Jasna Góra -- 4. Translations of the image - variations of texts -- 5. The contemporary legends of origin -- 6. The great story as a contemporary etiological legend -- Chapter II. THE WOUNDED IMAGE -- 1. The image of Our Lady of Częstochowa as a woundedpicture -- 2. Changes within the oldest legends concerning the woundingof the image -- 3. The meanings attributed to the attack of 1430 -- 4. The contemporary tale of the wounding of the image -- 5. The bleeding and weeping of images -- 6. "The wounds are elongating" -- 7. The symbolism of the wounds in the underground art of the 1980s -- 8. The wounds in the transitory poetry of the 1980s -- 9. "Wounded and Black" -- Chapter III. QUEEN OF THE NATION -- 1. The myth of the miraculous defense in European culture -- 2. The miraculous defense of the Jasna Góra Monastery -- 3. Contemporary memory of the defense -- 4. The miraculous defense and the story of the wounding -- 5. The coronation of 1717 and the title of Queen -- 6. The Miracle on the Vistula -- 7. Miraculous defense in stories about World War II -- 8. The great story as a national myth -- 9. Jasna Góra - the spiritual capital of Poland -- 10. Queen and Mother - a documentation of one exhibition -- Chapter IV. THE IMAGE-FIGURE IN LIVED RELIGION -- 1. Sensual non-differentiation -- 2. "Countenance" -- 3. "Mother" -- 4. Mater Dolorosa -- 5. Miraculous consciousness -- 6. Peregrination of the image-fi gure -- 7. "A Guest in the home" -- 8. The figure without the image - the peregrination of an emptyframe -- Epilogue story.

APPENDIX. Chronology of the events connected witha peregrination of the copy of the image of Our Lady of Częstochowa in Poland -- Selected bibliography -- Index.