'Reformulating the Cult of Scherpenheuvel: Marie de'Medicis and the Regina Pacis Statue in Cologne (1635-1645)'

The Marian shrine at Scherpenheuvel in Zichem, a municipality located in the province of Flemish Brabant, is today the most important pilgrimage site in Belgium. During the first decade of the seventeenth-century Scherpenheuvel, situated close to the border between the Spanish Netherlands and the Protestant Northern Provinces, had gained a reputation far beyond the provincial level. The prolific amount of miracles it produced soon sparked a debate about the tenets of Catholicism and Protestantism. The generation of a series of satellite cults across Europe is one of the unique aspects of Scherpenheuvel. This article examines the hitherto neglected topic of the appropriation of the Marian cult of Scherpenheuvel in Cologne and its transformation to make it fit new religious and political agendas. This process will be analysed in the light of visual evidence in the form of prints and little known archival sources.