An ‘unmissable’ 800-year-old natural light display in France this month
Art historian Dr Julia Faiers discovers how a medieval PR campaign about a saint’s holy relics determined the rags-to-riches story of Vézelay Abbey in Burgundy
Between June 20 - 30, nine spots of light will appear on the floor of the nave, creating a path towards the altar in the east end of the abbeyCorinne Vasselet / BFC Tourisme
The Benedictine abbey of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Vézelay in Burgundy has for centuries made the bold claim that it holds the relics of Mary Magdalene, to whom the church is now dedicated.
How the relics of Jesus’s disciple left the Holy Land and came to rest in a church in Burgundy is, however, more fiction than fact.
Regardless of the veracity of the tale, the magnificent 12th-Century basilica of Mary Magdalene in Vézelay is a testament to the fervent beliefs of medieval Christians, and the result of money that flooded in from the countless pilgrims who came to venerate the holy woman’s remains.
Why did Mary Magdalene’s relics come to rest in Vézelay?
In the early 11th Century, the monastery at Vézelay was experiencing hard times. It was poor, vulnerable, and in competition with the nearby flourishing abbey of Cluny. So the monastery at Vézelay began a campaign effectively to rebrand itself.
The imposing west facade of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine. Churches built in the 11th and 12th Centuries often had two towers, but only one was built here, probably due to lack of funds.Corinne Vasselet / BFC Tourisme
At the time of its foundation in 853, the monastery was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and saints Peter and Paul. What it needed was something that would re-fill its coffers, and so the monks of Vézelay began to circulate the story that after Jesus’s resurrection, Mary Magdalene had fled Jewish persecution in her homeland and come to Marseille.
From here, with another apostle, St Maximinus, she apparently went to Aix-en-Provence, where the pair evangelised the population. Mary Magdalene apparently spent her final years living as a hermit in a cave in Sainte-Baume in Provence.
According to the Vézelay monks’ account, when Mary Magdalene died on 22 July 1026, Maximinus buried her in Aix. They chose to ignore the inconvenient truth of her actual death and burial in Ephesus in the Holy Land.
The monks reported that many miracles occurred in the region after her death. This was all to the good, for miracles bring the sick and needy with money to spend. The monks’ new version of events turned around the waning fortunes of Vézelay’s monastery.
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A centaur shooting an arrow on one of the capitals of the west portal. Although this is likely to be the subject of the original 12th-Century capital, it was probably heavily restored in the 19th Century as part of a wider programme led by Viollet-le-Duc, who was also responsible for renovations at Notre-Dame de ParisCorinne Vasselet / BFC Tourisme
But how did the remains find their way from Provence to Burgundy?
One thing we can say for sure is that the Vézelay monks knew how to spin a story. By the early 12th Century, a text they had written called the Translatio posterior (‘translation’ being the term for moving holy relics ceremonially from one location to another) was accepted as the correct story.
In this text, the monastery’s founder and its abbot sent a monk called Badilo to rescue the body of the saint from the southern town, where it was under threat from marauding Saracens (the word used in the medieval era for anyone practising Islam).
Badilo carried out what was called a furtum sacrum, a ‘sacred theft’, in which the body-snatching monk’s actions were supposedly condoned and assisted by the saint herself. The text then described a series of miracles that occurred after the translation of the relics to Vézelay.
A successful medieval PR campaign
The abbey of Vézelay was already a convenient pit stop along a major pilgrim route through France to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain. The installation of the Magdalene’s relics, however, turned Vézelay into a pilgrim destination in its own right, drawing thousands upon thousands of visitors – and their money – to the abbey.
The inner central portal of the abbey shows exceptional carvings from the early 12th Century depicting Christ in Majesty, welcoming pilgrims.Corinne Vasselet / BFC Tourisme
The existing church was simply not large enough to accommodate the influx of pilgrims, and so by 1104, a new abbey was built. However, the outcome of such rapid congregation growth was not without drama. The cost of building the new abbey put such a burden on the local peasants that they revolted, killing the abbot in the process.
To add to this, the newly constructed abbey was still not big enough to hold all the pilgrims, and so they built an expanded narthex (enclosed porch). This triage system allowed for staggered entry times for pilgrims to venerate the holy relics. This was the abbey’s peak pilgrim moment.
Its fortunes waned from the 13th Century as the cult of the Magdalene took deeper hold in Provence.
The abbey still inspires wonder today, and not only because of its beautiful architecture and serene atmosphere. Every year for the past 800 years, between June 20 - 30, nine spots of light have appeared on the floor of the nave, creating a path towards the altar in the east end.
Whatever your religious persuasion, why not put on your pilgrim shoes and head to Vézelay to witness this unmissable natural light display?
