Magical Mystery Tour

The route....

You don't need to be a Romantic to be drawn into magic of the French Southwest, but driving through it may convert you into one.  In the space of an hour you can pass from picturesque villages nestled among sprawling vineyards to sublime mountain peaks, crowned by decaying castles, the silent sentinels of a bygone era.  In 2011 alone, France received nearly 80 million tourists.  Take a trip through the Southwest and it's easy to see why.  Whereas most tourists head directly to Paris, for good reason, one could easily skip the City of Lights altogether and spend weeks exploring the Aude and Languedoc-Roussillon and not have "missed out" on a great French vacation.  From hiking to mountaineering, canyoning to mountain biking, the region has you covered.  History buffs will be thoroughly satiated.  Amateur sleuths will find mysteries galore.  Foodies will have to be careful not to eat until they explode.  Thin mint, anyone?

I travelled through the Aude and Languedoc-Roussillon this week.  My itinerary was only a few hundred kilometers, but I saw enough to write a thick book....and what I saw was only a splinter from a massive oak.  Like I said, you can spend weeks exploring an area which can be crossed in a couple of hours.

My journey began at Saint Papoul.  I wanted to visit the Benedictine abbey (founded in the 8th c.) there in the hopes I might stumble across something which might increase my store of knowledge about Saint Sernin and the Saintes Puelles.  Papoul, or Papulus, was a priest who assisted Saint Saturninus (Sernin) in his efforts to evangelize the Gauls.  He's an obscure saint and there's not much that can be reliably said about him.  He was imprisoned for a while in Carcassonne and was killed during the Diocletian persecution, apparently beheaded.  He was also a cephalophore.  I can't find a detailed account, but apparently where he picked up his own severed head, a spring appeared.  The severed head is certainly a pre-Christian mytheme and recalls the rumours about Templar head worship.  The miraculous spring is also a familiar element.  Many of the Vierges Noires we have discussed are associated with sacred springs, as are many of the Virgin Martyrs; several among these latter were also cephalophores.  The cephalophore is not unique to France, but appears most frequently in French hagiography.  Sacred waters will reappear in this post.

In any event, we'd gotten a late start and only had a half an hour to explore the abbey; we decided to skip the visit and press on to out next destination, Saint-Hilaire.

Cloister of Saint Hilaire Abbey

Saint-Hilaire is about 50 minutes southeast of Saint-Papoul.  Like the abbey of Saint-Papoul, it was a Benedictine abbey founded in the 8th century as a dedication to Saint Sernin, a dedication changed in the 10th c. to honor Saint Hilaire (Hilarius), a fifth-century Pope.  The saint himself holds little interest to my researches, but the abbey is the site of Saint Sernin's tomb.  His sarcophagus is an exquisite Romanesque masterpiece and is carved to recount the legend of his martyrdom.  Thus it also features one of the very few depictions of the Saintes Puelles.  But France pretty much shuts down between 12 and 2, so again, I missed out.  I was able to enter the cloister, a tranquil place with a calming fountain at the center of the courtyard, but that was it.  The cloister is much like that of abbey of Saint Peter in Moissac (founded in the 7th c.) and that of the Dominican convent known as les Jacobins in Toulouse (early 14th c.), demonstrating a remarkable consistency in French monastic architecture.  A shame we missed out, but it was a fine day and a pleasant place to have lunch, a good way to ease into a long day of sightseeing.

Notre Dame de Marceille

Our next destination was Rennes-le-Chateau (RLC).  We had to pass through Limoux, a place I visited last year in order to see its famous Carnaval.  A chapel along the road caught my eye and so we popped in for a brief visit.  Lo and behold, my spider senses started tingling and indeed, the basilica is dedicated to Notre Dame de Marceille, a Vierge Noire I hadn't realized was there.  Apparently, the site is very ancient, with Paleolithic and Gallo-Roman remnants.  A church is mentioned as early as 1011.  It remains an important pilgrimage destination and has all the classic elements of Black Virgin stories.

At one time, in the quite remote past, a ploughman who cultivated his field on the slope of Marcellan saw his ox stop, as if halted by an invisible obstacle. He pushed it in vain, to urge it on, but it stood stock-still and resisted every prodding. The ploughman, who was amazed at first, suddenly felt the only other thing he could do was to call to Heaven for help. Then, somehow inspired by this plea for divine assistance, he began to dig the ground where the ox had stopped, only to find that it contained a statue. It was that of a wooden Madonna, brown and dark, with a celestial smile on her face. With great respect, he took the statue to the door of his house, where everyone in his family rejoiced at the sight of it. But their joy was short-lived: the following morning, the Madonna had disappeared. The ploughman returned to his field, and found the image in the place where he had discovered it the day before. Again, he rejoiced and carried it home, but in vain. It returned once again to the place where he had found it. He tried a third time, but to no avail. The statue returned to its hole in the ground.

Source

Compare this story to that of Notre Dame d'Alet; note also that in the vicinity of this basilica there is a village named Alet-les-Bains.....

The basilica is also built over the site of a Gallo-Roman well and a miraculous fountain reputed to cure blindness is located on the site.  This Virgin also appeals to newlyweds who leave their bridal veils to ensure a happy marriage.  It would be redundant to make a list of all the Vierges Noires whose legend involves the strange behavior of cattle, a miraculous insistence of where to be worshipped and the special place she holds in the heart of women seeking aid in matrimony and maternity.  For the general tourist, it's also an amazing basilica, beautifully appointed and covered from floor to ceiling with elaborate frescoes.  Score!  The place was officially closed but the door was unlocked, so I slipped in for some photos.  I later learned that in 2007, while the place was being renovated, someone snuck in and decapitated the statue and spirited the head away, along with Her mantle!  Nothing else was stolen.  Given it's proximity to RLC, I wonder if this was a symbolic act and can't help but recall the cephalophore mytheme of nearby Saint Papoul and the head wound of Saint Sernin.  The current statue, then, like so many others, is a replacement.

Baptismal font, Rennes-le-Chateau

RLC. I won't go into the history associated with this place, but for fans of the esoteric, the town is legendary.  The first book about RLC appeared in 1967 (L'Or de Rennes by Gérard de Sède), inspiring a long series of books speculating about the town and its famous church.  Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Da Vinci Code both owe their material to de Sède.  Countless books have appeared on the subject and the mysterious Priory of Sion.  It's a vast and complex story the center of which involves hidden treasures and the idea that the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene continues to this day.  Gérard de Sède was involved in both surrealist and Oulipo groups and I think his work should be approached with this in mind.  De Sède's son Arnaud said in a 2005 interview that his father and Pierre Plantard invented the legend from whole cloth and created the documents "proving" the existence of the Priory of Sion.  It's a fascinating hoax, so well-constructed that despite Arnaud de Sède's statements and the rather extensive debunking, people still believe it's true.  The sheer number of books and websites devoted to the subject boggles the mind.  People believe what they want to believe.  It would be a great Ph.D. thesis to analyze how disinformation works in a a non-propaganda context, as fact and fantasy are mixed to create a viable and enduring story.  There are so many odd coincidences, everything begins to link up and "possible" become "probable" until so much stuff piles up that the "where there's smoke there's fire" mechanism kicks in and fabulism becomes accepted as history.  There are a lot of gold ingots found among the turds, however, and one can read these books with a critical eye and still glean some important insights into the region, like good literature is often more useful than poor history.

Next stop, Rennes-les-Bains.  This has been a spot for thermal cures for literally thousands of years.  The healing properties of its waters is almost certainly connected to the legends surrounding religious sites.  Whereas the claims that a spring can cure blindness (perhaps a metaphorical cure à la Amazing Grace:  "Was blind but now I see") are dubious, the healing benefits of thermal springs are real.  Thermal cures can be prescribed by doctors and are subsidized in part by the French health care system.  We stopped for an hour or so to soak in the warm waters collected in two basins by the side of the Sals River.  A lovely spot that, like every other place in the vicinity of RLC, has been brought under the umbrella of its mysteries.  Indeed RLB's former parish priest Abbé Henri Boudet, contemporary of RLC's Bérenger Saunière, wrote La vraie langue celtique et le cromleck de Rennes-les-Bains (1886), in which he argued that that all languages derived from English!  An earlier book from RLB (1832) by Auguste de Labouïsse-Rochefort also recounts a legend about the Devil's treasure.  Clearly, the roots of the hidden treasure story lie farther back in time than de Sède.

Just to tighten the circle a little further, there is a plaque at  the Marceille basilica honoring Boudet!  but then again, he was born, lived and died very close to all of these places....

Our next goal was to see the Gorges de Galamus.  On the way we passed through a wide, green valley with a solitary mountain at the far end.  Some memory stirred in me.  When we passed through the town of Bugarach, something clicked.  I'd read about this place in the NYT.  Apparently in the 60's this mountain, the Pech de Bugarach, became a favored destination of French hippies, a powerful place along the lines of Sedona or Taos in the American South West.  In 2012 things came to a head, many New Age types descended on the place, there were more visitors than normal and the rhythm only increased as the fateful day in December approached that would mark the end of the Mayan calendar....and the world.  Some believed aliens living inside would carry people away.  This is essentially a New Age version of the Rapture.  Curiously, the Nation of Islam also has some teachings about UFOs and mountains:

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said these planes were used to set up mountains on the earth. The Qur'an says it like this: We have raised mountains on the earth lest it convulse with you. How do you raise a mountain, and what is the purpose of a mountain? Have you ever tried to balance a tire? You use weights to keep the tire balanced. That's how the earth is balanced, with mountain ranges. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said that we have a type of bomb that, when it strikes the earth a drill on it is timed to go into the earth and explode at the height that you wish the mountain to be. If you wish to take the mountain up a mile [1.6 km], you time the drill to go a mile in and then explode. The bombs these planes have are timed to go one mile down and bring up a mountain one mile high, but it will destroy everything within a 50-square-mile [130 km²] radius. The white man writes in his above top secret memos of the UFOs. He sees them around his military installations like they are spying.

Louis Farrakhan.  Source

Apparently, these UFOs will destroy America, but spare the Nation of Islam.  These UFOs all come from within one great Mother Plane, the spaceship of God, another take on the Rapture.  At Bugarach, a group of Gendarmes and firemen were called in to block access to the mountain due to fears of Heaven's Gate-like mass suicides. 

Pech de Bugarach; note the two aliens disguised as horses on the right

This was all a pleasant surprise.  It is a beautiful place and not devoid of a sense of mystery, something I felt before I even realized where I was.  Lonely mountains are often Holy Mountains, it's almost hard-wired into the brain.  A holy mountain in New Mexico called Chimayo, for example, receives over 300,000 pilgrims each year and the sanctuary there is said to be built where a hot spring once flowed, revered by Tewa Indians for....its healing powers.  The Pech de Bugarach was considered holy long before the hippies took it up for the very same reason as the Tewa.

Hermitage of Saint Anthony

The road through the Galamus gorge is perhaps the wildest road I've driven, cut straight into the rock, a sheer drop off one one side, a sheer cliff on the other.  It's not as hairy as it sounds, but it's certainly impressive.  Near one end of the road there is a hermitage built into the cliff.  This hermitage was built in 1782 following a miraculous intervention by Saint Anthony to save a nearby village from the ravages of "sweating sickness."  It's a beautiful place and a guy actually rents it from the town of Saint Paul de Fenouillet.  I asked him about the recent events at the Pech de Bugarach.  According to him, there were lots of journalists and policemen, but not the multitude of New Agers depicted in the media.  Perhaps his perception the events were not the same as those of the journalists.  Perhaps the journalist exaggerated it all for a good story.  I'd first read about in the New York Times, so who can say?

Sculpture group

I was struck by a prominent image of Saint Anthony at Rennes-le-Chateau, so this correspondence was especially meaningful in the context, especially given that there is grotto on the site dedicated to Mary Magdalene.  There's also a crucifixion sculpture which includes a blindfolded woman gazing into a hand mirror.  I've discussed the hand mirror before, as a woman reflecting the Divine light of reason onto an allegorical scene of Liberty.  It's also used to represent Venus, who I've also discussed in a previous post.  A blindfolded woman is often used to represent Justice.  But the two elements together is very curious and I wasn't certain what it represents until I asked around to some friends.  I'll come back to her.

This grotto also houses a spring at which a reproduction of Saint Bernadette's vision of the Virgin Mary.  Healing waters, yet again....

Chapel dedicated to the Saintes Puelles

From Galamus we pressed on to Tautavel in the hopes that I could get into the chapel dedicated to the Saintes Puelles.  It was too late to get the key the day I arrived and the following day also proved fruitless, as the woman with the key was occupied at the parish church for a funeral.  As I drank my coffee I heard the death knell and laughed at my own selfishness.  Too bad this funeral cock-blocked me from seeing the Puelles, I'd thought.  Oh yeah, that and someone's family was grieving!  So basically, no Puelles.  But Tautavel is an impossibly charming village, with a lovely space to camp by the river, abundant vineyards with wine of high repute and a museum dedicated to prehistory.  Some of Europe's oldest prehistoric artifacts were found here and the 450,000 year old Tautavel Man, perhaps a subspecies of H. erectus, inhabited the area.  Again, one is struck by the long history of human presence in the whole region, which adds a sense of wonder to the presence of healing waters and springs, most certainly the reason why people settled in these spots to begin with.  The life-giving waters took on a spiritual dimension over time, which seems only natural and for me anyway, adds a positive dimension to Catholic veneration.  Which is exactly why some Protestant groups vilify Catholicism as being too pagan and thus dilutes if not negates Christian exceptionalism.  My own view is that this exceptionalism is born of insecurity.  If so much of the Christian story can be found in classical and pagan prototypes, the belief in an exclusive path to salvation is threatened, which is simply bad for business.  Jewish precedent is okay, but God forbid if Christianity takes something from legends of Attis, Dionysus, Horus, Isis, Mithra...

Day two of my voyage was more abbreviated.  We left Tautavel towards Perillos, which has only come to my attention sometime in the past few years.  Perillos is an abandoned town now part of the municipality of Opoul.  Perillos is a bit of blank to me, but some believe that it is an element of the RLC mysteries, or rather, that the RLC mystery is actually part of the Perillos mystery.  Is the tomb of Christ located there?  What is its connection to the Apocalypse (shades of Bugarach).  Dig this:

The "secret" of Perillos really isn't so much a secret. The locals near Opoul-Perillos, the "old guys", still remember... they have stories of "the tomb of God", a site they were told by their elders not to go to and play. There are locals who observe bizarre events in and around Perillos, but keep quiet. Our organisation is almost like a "confessional", whereby these people can finally say, in all anonymity, what they see and know, and we often don't even shrug our shoulders when they tell what they know their wives or husbands would claim as "idiotic". This includes seeing apparitions of God, straight out of the Old Testament. Inverted rainbows.

Source

Chateau de Perillos

The way I went in is along a long and empty canyon.  There is definitely a mysterious feeling as one approaches the place, but then again, knowing what I know, this could easily be chalked up to a Romantic imagination.  It has even been connected to Notre Dame de Marceille.  It all links up because well, they are linked.  Perillos is only a few minutes from Tautavel, and Galamus, and Limoux.  Find the connections, run with it, speculate a bit, write a colorful account....good for tourism, good for making money on the flourishing trade in esoterica of all sorts.  That said, Perillos is worth looking into and the Societé Perillos has a good website that I've consulted more than once during the course of this post to verify my impressions of what I'd seen.  A lot of the information seems deliberately cryptic, but the Societé itself has mentioned they want to discourage the kind of treasure hunters who dug up the area around RLC looking for buried treasure.

This page sums up the Perillos "mystery"pretty well:

Apparently in 1995, one André Douzet found a model, allegedly made by or made for the priest Bérenger Saunière, of the areas associated with the passion of Christ, including the location of the tomb of Jesus and his uncle Joseph.  Thing is, it didn't match Jerusalem.  Douzet then recognized one of the features as a rock formation near Perillos.  The Seigneurs of Perillos were an illustrious family among whose number was once counted the Grandmaster of the Knights of Malta.  Our man Abbé Henri Boudet, contemporary of RLC's Bérenger Saunière, once directed the parish.  Saunière himself was known to have visited the area to have a look at local families' archives.  Douzet also came across a reference in local archives to a piece of land which prohibited anyone, including the Lords of Perillos, from collecting rocks, cutting wood or otherwise molesting it; it could not be sold, transferred or divided.  It was within the lands of the Lords, but they didn't own it, they merely guarded it.  Furthermore, cartographer Jacques Cassini, whose family made the first general maps of France, was known to have spent a year and a half there, yet his maps leave the site of the tombs blank.  Which means they either aren't there or he was looking for them and then kept it secret.  There are a lot of other details, but that's the general story.  Douzet claims to have found the tombs and some artifacts inside, yet in 2008 another researcher pronounced it was all a hoax.  Hoax or not, it is a lovely and wild spot and I loved it not for being the site of Jesus's tomb, but merely for the fact many believe it's true!

The rest of my journey was for the kids.  A human labyrinth in Trouillas, burro riding in Castelnou (another amazing village), a visit to the beach in Spain.  The last LoSian aspect of the trip was in Thuir, where there is yet another Vierge Noire, but alas!  This church too was closed.

Notre Dame de la Victoire

According to Ean Begg, Notre Dame de la Victoire is 50cm tall and made of lead, which accounts for her dark hue.  She dates from the late 12th century.  Apparently four statues were made from the same mould, two of which went to Spanish Catalonia and two to the Massif Central; both regions have dense concentrations of Black Virgins.  This statue replaced an earlier one, mentioned in the 10th c.  Like Notre Dame de Sabart, She helped Charlemagne defeat the Saracens; in this case by providing his exhausted troops with water.  Charlemagne apparently brought an image of the Virgin to a dry river bed and thrust his sword into the earth and a spring gushed up from the spot, which sounds very sexual to these ears.  A sword is planted and the earth gets wet, thus sustaining and bringing life to his troops.  This sexual/birth motif may be why, like Notre Dame de la Daurade, she is a patroness of childbirth.  Pieces of her robe, or a birthing belt are placed on the bellyof a woman in labor.  If I understand correctly, her feast day, October 7th, predates the defeat of the Ottoman Turks at Lepanto on the same day in 1571.  Like a lot of info from Begg, however, I'm careful about repeating that as fact.  For another example of a battle with Saracens which involves planting a phallic object in the ground, causing a spring to spurt out on the spot, see my discussion of St. Fris.

Castelnou

The conclusion of my voyage was a jaunt to the beach in Spain, then the long-ish drive home.  But there are any number of alternatives.  One could strike north for the arid beauty of the Corbières wine country, with a stop in Carcassonne on the road back to Toulouse.  The route between Perpignan and Andorra is magnificent, with two fortified cities I've yet to explore.  You get the picture.  I chose our route for it's convenience and it's mixture of history and pop-esoterica, sites never more than a half an hour or 45 minutes apart.  Drive a bit, explore a bit.  None of these places takes up too much time to explore.  I plan to return to Tautavel very soon, just camp and enjoy the river.  If I don't see the Saintes Puelles due to some reason or other, I'll only be able to conclude that there is a conspiracy of silence to keep me from seeing the chapel and exposing its secrets to the world!

But seriously, I do hope to explore Perillos a bit more, as there's talk in the air that it might be made off limits to protect it from treasure-seekers, even perhaps put under the control of the military!  This isn't as ominous as it sounds, as there is a large military base nearby which may in fact be contiguous with the abandoned town.

Bottom line is that if you want to travel in France, you've got something for everyone in this little itinerary, a logistically perfect little nugget.  I went to see many of the thing I've previously discussed on LoS, such as the sarcophagus of St. Sernin or the statue of the Saintes Puelles.  On that front it was something of a failure.  But I made a lot of little discoveries and connections to other areas of interest, all the while spending some good times with the kids, teaching them some proper camping skills and a little about history.  Cathars, UFOs, esoteric sects, what could be better?

I'm also going to look into this Boudet character.  His book is full of wordplay and puns.  Given that de Sède was involved in surrealist and Oulipo groups, this makes me wonder if de Sède had read this book and it influenced him to write his own book.  RLC research is rife with mystical toponymy, puns, double-entendre and decoding ciphers.  In 1991 a Flemish researcher decoded some of Boudet's book and was led to Limoux, more specifically the basilica of Notre Dame de Marceille, where he discovered secret vault by the river.  Some have speculated that an entire underground complex exists beyond a blocked-up tunnel from the vaults.  So that underground treasure people are looking for around RLC may just be slightly farther afield than thought.  If we think back to the legend of this particular Black Virgin, we recall that She was dug up from the ground.  Is it possible that this is the vault where She was found, and that the vault is the original chapel built to house Her?  Or, if it is indeed far older, could it have been a pagan temple or shrine and that the Virgin found there was in fact a pre-Christian idol?

Further inquiries in my library reveal that Saillens (Nos Vierges Noires) says the locals called her "our sibyl" and believes that to be the case, the pagan prototype being Cybele.  Cybele is a mother of the gods and is often associated with Attis, whose myth has many features later ascribed to the birth, life and death of Jesus.  In Vierges Noires, Cassagnes-Brousset notes that a nearby (how near?) archaeological dig uncovered a figurine of Belisama, a Celtic goddess the Gallo-Romans identified with Minerva/Athena.  This goddess was both warrior and healer, associated among other things with lakes and rivers.

Marceille is an ancient place with Paleolithic, Neolithic, and Bronze age articles found in the vicinity; a Gallo-Roman villa was located nearby.  Perhaps the vault was related to the villa, its location near the church coincidental, unless the basilica replaced a pre-Christian temple.  The current statue is a reproduction of the decapitated version dating back to the 11th c., yet the basilica was begun in the 14th.  Was the vault its original shrine?  Tradition holds that like so many other Vierges Noires, this wooden sculpture replaced an even older version.  As it turns out, this theory is discussed in some detail by the Societé Perillos.  I urge you to read that essay, if only for this curious detail:  She was originally inscribed with the words "Do not look at me, because I became brown." according to a text entitled Hommage au Baron Podenas.

Became?  Very curious, but we must be cautious, for I can find the Hommage au Baron Podenas  referenced anywhere else....bear that in mind as you read what follows.

There seem to be some curious traditions about eyes of this statue, which are indeed quite large.  The imperative to "avert your eyes" made me think of the blindfolded figure at Galamus and another curious detail popped up: both figures are smiling....tradition even has it that "he who sees the statue [ND de Marceille] smiling at him, is certain to obtain the grace which he came to beseech.”  A pal suggests the blindfolded figure is Synagoga, a figure usually paired with Ecclesia  to represent the replacement of Judaism by Christianity; the Jews cannot "see" that Jesus was the Christ.

Confirmation is to be found at the site itself, I'd neglected to read the sign.  This sign states that the group depicts Ascension of Christ and is called Christ and Humanity.  The woman standing represents hope for salvation, whereas the seated woman is blind to this opportunity.  Thus my friend is right, she is essentially Synagoga and the other woman, Ecclesia.  My friend also points out this page with a picture of the group, but it appears to be in white marble; a caption says the photos were taken at an unused church some years ago but the sculpture is now at the hermitage.  So the red version we see is either a copy, or it has been painted.  This latter possibility seems odd to me, but is is possible  One would then wonder why such a dark, earth-red hue was chosen.

Perhaps any explicit reference to Synagoga has been removed due to some interpretations of the figures as essentially anti-Semitic, although recent scholarship is apparently more nuanced.

The ensemble was a gift of local sculptor G.A. Grouille, not an especially common name and not usual for this area.  The verb grouiller, which I came across looking for the name, means to be full of something or to swarm.  Thinking I might have a pseudonym, I looked for clues in the name, but it doesn't help much.  It is a real name though, I just can't seem to find any other references to the artist.

I also recall that there was a Sator Square carved into a stone in a chapel at the hermitage.  This kind of word square is pre-Christian and consists of a series of five words written on a grid.  It is a palindromic acrostic.  Best thing is to follow the link and see it for yourself.  Needless to say, this kind of wordplay would have appealed to Boudet, or to de Sède.  Ostensibly it is Latin, but one of the words, "Arepo", may be Celtic in origin.  That would certainly have interested Boudet.  Could he have placed it there?  The possible translations that have been proposed include "The farmer Arepo has [as] works wheels [a plough]" and "The sower holds the works and wheels by means of water."  This seems to relate to elements of the Marceille legend, and the Sator Square is believed to have magical uses, including putting out fires, which just happens to be one of the properties of Notre dame de Marceille.

Leaving that question aside, I should also report that She was also stolen during the Revolution; the records of the case do imply a kind of conspiracy involving people who knew about, and used, the secret vaults.  Again, curious details.  Secret vaults, a theft, a later decapitation.  Little wonder she has excited so much interest.

There's certainly more to investigate here, but that may best be left for time and serendipity to work out.  My inquiries keep leading me to the same unique sources, which is a good enough reason to pause and look for other angles.

But for the moment, Daurade is tired out.  I'm sure I'll come across more in my further readings and travels that will lead me back to these speculations, but for now, I feel this is the post I was looking for, hopefully a return to productivity, if not form!

Notre Dame du Taur: Our Lady of the Bull

Reprinted from the now-defunct Reticenteer, my old website, written in 2007.

According to most of what I've read, Notre Dame du Taur is not a Black Virgin.[1] Though her skin is dark, there is no mystery surrounding her origins; she is from the 16th century and she is not particularly noted for any miracles. Despite that I would like to talk a bit about her in the context of the Black Virgin phenomenon for two principal reasons. The first is that in appearance she looks strikingly similar to the Notre Dame de la Daurade and the second is that there are curious pagan associations with the place of her cult, which is a common feature of Black Virgins.

As you can see from comparing their pictures, Notre Dame du Remparts (Our Lady of the Ramparts) and Notre Dame de la Daurade (aka La Noire) are very much alike. Both wear crowns and carry batons, both wear actual dresses. Their pose and the position of the infant Jesus is more or less the same, but there are differences: ND du Taur holds her baton in front of her and ND de la Daurade holds hers in a more upright position; the infant Jesus carried by ND du Taur does not carry a baton but a globe, in his left hand and the infant Jesus carried by La Noire holds a baton in his right hand and the left hand is hidden. What makes these differences so minimal is the form of the two Virgins: the shape of their heads, their features, their hair and their proportions are almost identical. They are so close that one might venture to say that one was modeled on the other. Although La Noire is a bona fide Black Virgin with a much more ancient—and fervent—cult, the current statue could very well be the copy, for the 14th century sculpture burned in the bonfires of the Revolutionary government of Toulouse was said to resemble a much different-looking effigy, that of Mare de Déu del Claustre at Solsona Cathedral in Spain. The current statue dates from 1807, much later than the 16th century statue of ND du Taur. It is also possible that ND du Taur was originally inspired by La Noire, and that when it became necessary to replace the latter, the inspired piece became the inspiration.

Notre Dame du Remparts is so very similar to La Noire that at first I mistook her for a Black Virgin. A glimpse at her history, however, eliminates that as a possibility. She is too recent, there is no miraculous origin, she wasn’t found in a cave or discovered by a skittish bull. She was made to commemorate a specific event. As you can see from the photo above, her uneven brown color, noticeably light in places, especially around the eyes, suggests that she is in fact dark because of the years of incense and candle smoke left under her statue by the faithful….which is often how some have dismissed all Black Virgins.

According to a brief history at the church, Notre Dame du Remparts dates back to 1562. On May 13 of that year the Huguenots captured the northern part of Toulouse (Tolosa) including the Capitole. Four days later, after tremendous street fighting, they were driven out and forced to flee via the Porte Villeneuve (located at the current Place Wilson). To commemorate this event the effigy was created and placed in an oratory[2] within the fortifications there, where she became an object of great devotion and where she was known by the titles Notre Dame de Bon Secours or Notre Dame de Delivrance.

On June 3, 1783, the Taur parish inherited the cult after the statue was taken from its place at the Porte Villeneuve, but it was not until 1785 that it was placed in the central chapel of the current church, prominently ensconced above and behind the altar. Every May 17 a procession was held from the Église du Taur to the old oratory where mass was celebrated. As the procession returned to the Church, the crowds shouted “Vive Marie, Vive le Sainte Vierge.” Today, she is more commonly known as Notre Dame du Remparts is still an object of devotion to whom prayers are addressed.

According to legend, the Église du Taur is built on the spot where St. Sernin (Occitan for Saturnine, from the Latin Saturninus) was detached from the bull that dragged him to his death. Sernin was one of the seven "apostles to the Gauls" sent out by Pope Fabian (236 – 250 CE) and is credited with the establishment of churches in Eauze, Auch, Pamplona, and Amiens. According to the fanciful Acts of Saturninus, he often passed the pagan altars on his way to his church and the priests blamed him for the silence of their oracles. One day, after refusing to sacrifice to their gods, he was condemned to be dragged by a bull about town until dead.

After his death two Christian women remembered as "les Puelles"[3] buried his corpse in a "deep ditch." More than a hundred years later, Sernin’s successor Hilary (bishop 358 - 360) erected a simple wooden oratory over this place in order to accommodate the pilgrims who visited the site, but the increasing popularity of the pilgrimage encouraged bishop Silvius (360 - 400) to build a larger church, finished by his successor Exuperius (400 - ?) in 402. The body of St. Sernin, which was said to emanate sweet and gentle odors, was then transferred to the new church, which today forms the crypt of the Romanesque masterpiece, the Church of St. Sernin. The original site is now occupied by the 14th century Church of Our Lady of the Bull. Legend states the church is built where the execution bull stopped, but some believe it is in fact a place previously dedicated to a pre-Christian sacred bull. It is, after all, “Our Lady of the Bull,” and the street on which it sits—the rue du Taur—is the “Street of the Bull.”

There is a profusion of names in Toulouse that refer to the bull. For example: the large bell in a Toulouse-style carillon is called “Le Grand Taur”; the church built over St. Sernin’s original resting place is still called Notre Dame du Taur; and the name of the Matabiau neighborhood is said to come from the words “matar” (“killing”) and buèu (“bull). Owing to this profusion, some have linked the martyrdom of St. Sernin with the mystery religion called Mithraism. The tauroctony, or "killing of the bull," is the central rite of Mithraism. Some have even speculated that the “deep ditch” in which St. Sernin was buried, and thus the site of the current church, was a former Mithraeum.

Just as often as others have disputed it, some have suggested that the tauroctony evolved from Mithraic ritual into bullfighting, which is still practiced in Spain, Portugal and southern France. I think it is quite possible. After all, the martyrdoms of St. Sernin and his protegé St. Fermin are linked to bull-sacrifice, and in their 3rd century milieu, Mithraism was Christianity’s biggest competitor. When relics of St. Fermin were brought to Pamplona from Amiens in 1196[4], the city decided to mark the occasion with an annual festival. This Saint Day evolved over time to include the festivals which feature the famed running of the bulls and the bullfights which occur at the same time. That he was sometime given St. Sernin’s death attests to the power of the association of the bull with the sacred. Is it so improbable that the tauroctony could have been absorbed by the Christians martyr myth and then transformed into the tauromachy? At some of the towns where St. Sernin is said to have founded churches, such as Eauze and Pamplona, the tauromachy exists today.

Just so how does all this fit into the story of the Virgin?

The so-called Occitan cross serves as the official symbol of Toulouse. The four arms, each with three points, are said to represent the twelve signs of the zodiac.[5] Many symbols of Mithraism were also based on the zodiac; the central motif, the tauroctony, results in the replenishment of the earth with life, and some accounts suggest Mithras himself died, was entombed and then resurrected. The cave-like place of Mithraic worship, the mithraeum, can be interpreted as the cosmos, the dome of heaven. It is surprising that a religion so enamoured of the turn of the star wheel would build their places of worship in caves. Some believe that the Mithraists worshipped Mithras as the mediator between Man and God. Other commentators have compared the religion to that of Isis, even Jesus.

Without stretching it too thin, I suggest that Jesus had some competition in Toulouse by the name of Mithras, and that the bull which killed Sernin was perhaps a real event perpetrated by Mithraic rivals or a later invention which recalls the rivalry of the two sects. In 205, Christianity was still not beyond the persecutioner’s arm. One can see the symbolism in the act: Mithras kills the bull to bring forth life, the representative of Jesus (Sernin) dies. But Christianity marches on. A century and a half later and the Christian bishops of Toulouse have a bit more say in local matters. They build shrines, they don’t try to hide the story; they turn the humiliation back on their tormenters. Jesus was reborn after all, see, our sacrifices reflects His. We took the bull’s place as the blood-sacrifice necessary to turn the sky wheel. Bullfighting takes the place of the sacrificial killing as a natural development. The cross and the zodiac are reconciled as new traditons develop as one sect is absorbed into another. Virgin births, feast days, communal meals, ressurrections….bulls, whatever functon they serve in the the life-death-rebirth scheme of things, so appealing to the human heart, which makes butterflies of men.

It is with a poetic imagination that we must approach these things. Some critics might think me too loose with the data. Of course, I work with a limited pool, but there is enough to suggest that there was something in the air those days which is stuck to the bricks. There is a feeling and common sense. We cannnot simply divorce Christian history from its pagan milieu. There was never a “pure” Christianity. Its converts brought their ways and created something new, where the resonant images could persist, and like the ringing of the Great Bull Bell of a Toulousain belltower, the sound has lasted, getting dimmer as time goes by. But there are plenty of legends which have trapped those errant waves and pegged them onto a page. The Mithraic current lives on. Both Jesus and Mary have assumed his role. They are waiting for your call for a session of intercession.

The Black Virgin, like the Mithraic cult, is linked to the stars and the moon but is always found in live-giving earth, the Virgin associated with fecundity and the lush rebirth, the sacrifice of blood. She intercedes between the earth and the heaven, can talk to God and protect an unborn child with equal aplomb.

Notes:

[1] So I say, quite forcefully, thus opening my mouth wide enough to put my foot in it. I’vee seen it identified otherwise in at least two places. Until I get more precise information, however, I’m letting this stand.

[2] An oratory is a place of worship created for a special group of people, such as pilgrims. It is semi-private, in that unlike a church it is not open to all who may wish to worship, but it is not as exclusive a say, a private chapel.

[3] Puella means girl in Latin. In the Lauragais, the local traditions of Mas Saintes Puelles report that the two young girls brought the body to the town, then called Recaudum, and buried it there.

[4] Although Fermin was from Pamplona, said to be a son of a prominent Roman official, he is believed to have been beheaded in Amiens.

[5] Place Capitole, the site of the pagan altars Sernin was to have so disdainfully dissed on the day of his death, is today emblazoned with an enormous Occitan cross, in bronze, each point culminating in a sign of the zodiac.

Variations upon a theme: Pelagius(es) versus the Moors

Pelayo of Asturias unifies sky and earth....

You will recall in our survey of Virgin Martyrs that their martyrdom often resulted from a refusal to marry what these young Christians would have considered heathens.  Saint Quiteria, Liberata, Saturnina, Pelagia....each one slain for their chastity before the pagans.

The Saintes Puelles were likewise martyred for refusing to bow before pagans.  Saint Sernin was murdered for his refusal to offer sacrifices at the pagan temples.  Defying the pagan authorities, the Puelles gathered his remains and gave him a Christian burial; for this they were beaten and exiled.  The abbé Rous makes much of the fact that the word "puelle" signifies "virgin".

This resistance of "puelles" to heathen approaches is also illustrated in the the tale of nunnery of Sant Pere de les Puel·les.  According to the legend, the nuns there were daughters of noble families who retreated to the convent to avoid arranged marriages.  One version has it that the puelles, the nuns, disfigured themselved in order to avoid being violated by Moorish invaders under Al-Mansur in 986 CE.

In this case then, the resistance is to Islam.  Certainly the diffusion of these tales not only recalls Chritianity's era of weakness and vulnerabilty under the Roman persecutions, but under the later Saracen occupation of the Iberian peninsula.  It would necessarily bring to mind the (then) more current struggles with the Muslims in the Holy Land.  (It would be interesting to see if their cults are undergoing a resurgance given the current climate of anxiety and hostility towards Islam in the face of terrorism, immigration etc.)

There is a whole genre of religious lore constructed around the crusades against the Moors in Spain.  Saint James appeared at one particularly pitched battle, leading the Christians to victory, thus earning him the epithet Santiago Matamoros (Moor-Slayer).  Notre Dame de Sabart, a Black Virgin, appeared to no less a personage as Charlemagne, preventing him from entering a death-trap set by his Muslim foes in the valley of Vicdessos.  La Virgen de Montserrat was hidden from the Moors at its current location for protection.

Let's cut over to Asturias.  The Moors had defeated the Wisigothic King Roderic in 711 at the Battle of Guadalete.  Subsequent Moorish conquest of the Iberian peninsula was both fast and thorough.  In the years following 711 a Wisigoth by the name of Pelayo came to lead the resistance.  Traditions states that in 722 Pelayo made his stand at Covadonga, where a hermit had hidden a statue of the Virgin (Our Lady of Covadonga) to protect it from the Moors, like at Montserrat.  Pelayo prayed in this cave for the help of the Virgin; in the battle that ensued, miraculous intercession is described.  The Christians were victorious and this event is cited as the beginning of the reconquista; indeed, the Kingdom of Asturias was able to maintain its autonomy for the duration of the Moorish occupation.

The first monastery and chapel at Covadonga date from the reign of King Alfonso I (739-757) and to this day the place remains an important destination for pilgrims.  What we find interesting is that in some legends associated with Pelayo, his uprising was sparked by the forced marriage of his sister to the Moorish governor Mununza:

Tradition has it that he fell in love with Pelayo's sister, Ormesinda, and that, together with Kazim, kidnapped and married her. The chronicle of Alfonsio III speaks of a "compulsory marriage", the failure of which compelled Pelayo into rebellion.

Historians speculate that this was a move on Pelayo's part to create an alliance with the new power structure and secure a preferential place among the defeated Wisigothic nobles.  Others, however, claim that Pelayo opposed the wedding and imply his armed resistance was a result of protecting his sister's virtue.  It would be useful to point out that Pelayo is the Spanish name; in English he is know as....Pelagius.  One cannot help but recall the many tales of fearless resistance to heathen advances by a young virgin named....Pelagia (please see our earlier post  for details).

Shrine of Our Lady of Covadonga

The name Covadonga comes from Latin, Cova Dominica, or "Cavern of the Lady".  So this Pelagius starts the reconquest of Spain to protect a woman's virtue, winning a battle by successfully defending a place known as the lady's cavern.  Paging Dr. Freud....

The shrine sits in a cave perched above a sheer rock face from which water pours at different spots, forming a large pool at the base.  This impressive sight of living water pouring forth from the rock seems strikingly akin to a metaphor for the miracle of life itself, like the child emerging from the mother's womb.

Living Water

It also recalls Jesus as the Water of Life and brings the following verse to mind; John 19:34:

But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.

Easy to see how this could be associated with childbirth, involving as it does water and blood.  This post-crucifixion/childbirth link is intriguing.  Jesus, after all, was about to be reborn.  His crucifixion, the sacrifice, expiates us from original sin and pain in childbirth is explicitly mentioned in the Bible as punishment for Adam and Eve's sin.  Jesus and the Virgin Mary were both paths to override this malediction.  It also strikes us that Pelayo's entrance and victorious emergence from the cave in a way echoes Jesus's own resurrection; the reborn Christ becoming a handy and inspirational metaphor for the eventual rebirth of Christian Spain.

This could be developed quite a bit but somehow we figure in some ways it's already been done, more nimbly by people much more clever than we.

Finally, we'd like to venture that yet another Pelayo, Pelagius of Cordova, represents a type of masculine Virgin Martyr.  The story here is that Pelagius (c. 912-926) was left with the Caliph Abd-ar-Rahman III as a trade for another captive...a trade that never occurred.  After three years, he was offered his freedom on the condition he convert to Islam; his refusal led to his torture and susequent execution.

Yet some versions of this story aren't about his refusal to convert but his refusal to bend over.  The physical beauty of the boy and the homosexual desire of the Caliph is emphasized.  Details differ according to some versions, but in each, the boy refuses to submit, his chastity is preserved.

According to Wikipedia, "The cult of Saint Pelagius is thought to have provided spiritual energy for centuries to the Iberian Reconquista...."  This is certainly true of our Asturian Pelagius!  Pelagius of Cordova's feast day is on June 26, which doesn't necessarily correspond to those of our female Virgin Martyrs, but it is interesting that the major shrine of this Pelagius, despite the Andalusian setting of his tale, is to be found in Oviedo, capital of Asturias.  Asturias is a northern province just next to Galicia, origin of the Liberata/Quiteria cult....and where of Pelagius, instigator of the reconquest, first defeated the Moors....

Of course this tale demonizes the Moors and upholds Christian virtue, but at least one author thinks that on some levels it is a warning about same sex desire, a cautionary tale of sorts.

Whatever the sexual overtones of this story, it's not unsurprsing as a bit of propaganda that works on many levels.

Not having a snappy ending, we'll admit to not knowing where to go next and can only state our wish that you visitors, apparently numerous, would leave some comments and give your thoughts....

Saintes Puelles, Part 3: Holy Virgins

Please see Les Saintes Puelles and Les Saintes Puelles 2 before continuing.

My research into the Puelles has led me to Toulouse, Mas-Saintes-Puelles and even Asturias, but the next line of inquiry practically started  in my own backyard.

St. Libérate; reliquary in the Eglise Notre Dame, Bouillac

Not long from Aucamville there is an empty field where a large and prosperous monastery once stood. The Abbey of Grandselve, or Abbaye de Notre Dame de Grandselve, is known primarily as a Cistercian abbey but was in fact established by Benedictines, in 1114. The history of this abbey would be a story unto itself. All that remains is the gatehouse; the cloister, abbey church, dormitories etc. exist only as hedges planted to give visitors an idea of the size and layout of the place. Striking if you consider that the abbey church here was once the largest Romanesque church in Europe, an honor now belonging to the St. Sernin Basilica in Toulouse.

Several items from the church are now located a few kilometers away in the village church at Bouillac; these include ornate gold and silver reliquaries, pillars and the remnants of sculpted works.

The sculptures struck me because of the iconographic elements recalling the Puelles statue at Tautavel.  These sculptures depict Mary Magdalene and Saint Anne: Magdalene is identified by her flowing hair and the jar she carries. Saint Anne is identified by her book. This symbolizes her teaching the Virgin Mary to read and is a common attribute from the Middle Ages onwards.  If you've read our previous posts, you may recall that at Tautavel our Puelles carry a book and a jar as well.

Continuing through the church, I came across a reliquary in the form of a bust: Saint Libérate.  Hold on to your hats.

According to a note at Bouillac, Libérate, aka Livrade or Liberata, was a the daughter of Catillius, the King of Galicia. The King ordered his daughter marry a pagan and she fled to Aquitaine with her twin sisters (!) Quitterie and Gemine. In Aquitaine, they had a lot of success spreading the Christian faith. Eventually, they were denounced by their father, arrested and beheaded by a Roman official by the name of Moderius.

Libérate's remains were in Sigüenza, Spain by 1082. In 1114, the year Grandselve Abbey was founded, they were said to be at the abbey. A “notable” part of her remains are now found in Mazères.

The idea of twin sisters spreading the faith in their place of refuge echoes the Puelles and the legends associated with Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. The martyrdom resulting from rejecting a pagan spouse is a genre unto itself: recall if you will the Benedictine convent Sant Pere de les Puel•les in Barcelona, where legends have the young women, puelles [maidens], disfiguring themselves in order to escape being defiled by Moorish invaders. Alternate versions generalize self-mutilation as a means of escaping arranged marriages.

As we will see, this theme is repeated in several variations upon the Libérate legend originating in northern Portugal and Galicia. What we find emerging is a subset of the virgin martyr type--the precise emphasis abbé Rous placed on the legend of the Saintes Puelles (see part 2).

As it turns out, the cult of Libérate is rather secondary to that of her sister Quiteria (whose name, incidentally, comes from a title of Astarte meaning “the red one”). According to Wikipedia, Quiteria (Quitterie) was the daughter of a Galician prince. Rejecting an unwanted marriage she fled to Aire-sur-l’Adour in Gascony, where she was captured and beheaded in the Montus forest, along with her sister Liberata. Quiteria's remains are in Aire-sur-l'Adour and Libérate's are said to be contained in a 14th century sarcophagus in the church of St. Jean-Baptiste in Mazères.

English Wikipedia leaves something out. An alternate legend related in Catalan Viquipèdia states that she was the daughter of a Wisigoth king--Aeci--in Toulouse.

According to Portuguese tradition, there were nine sisters in total (nine muses?), born in Minho to the wife of a Roman military official. The mother was mortified at having so many children, like an animal, and ordered them drowned. The maid entrusted with this task secretly refused, instead bringing them to be raised by local women .

As adults, they, like Sernin, refused to worship local gods. They were brought before their father and ordered to marry. They refused and were imprisoned. They then escaped and went on to lead a guerrilla war against their father! (Shades of Jeanne d’Arc, aka la pucele....) In this version Quiteria was caught and beheaded.

Euphemia, or Eumelia, another sister, threw herself from a cliff to avoid capture.  When she fell, the rock opened and swallowed her whole; a spring immediately appeared on the spot. This idea of being swallowed by rock and a subsequent spring echoes the Galician legends around St. Jacques and legends around Saint Fris, whose cult is centered in Gascony....where much of the 9-sisters action was said to have taken place.

Other Portuguese legends have it that these sisters came from Baiona, Pontevedra. In this version Eumelia is beheaded and thrown into the sea, from whence she emerged with her head in her hands, holding dogs at bay. The first festival honoring Eumelia took place at Tui, Pontevedra in 1688. Quiteria’s cult, centered in Aire-sur-l’Adour is on the St James Way; the cult could have easily traveled back and forth between Gascony and Galicia. Her cult is thus found France, Spain, Portugal and was brought by the latter to Brazil and India.

One of the nine sisters, mentioned by name at Bouillac along with Quitterie and Libérate, is Gema, also known as Marinha or Margarida.

She has been identified/conflated with Saint Marina of Aguas Santas (119-139 CE). The details of her legend should by now be familiar; she was one of nine sisters born Baiona to the wife of Lucius Castelius Severus, the Roman governor. The mother, Calsia, ordered them drowned in the Miñor River. The servant thus entrusted, Sila, was a secret Christian and left them with several families later to be baptized by Saint Ovidus. At age 20 they were brought before their father and ordered to renounce their faith. Refusing, they were imprisoned and escaped. Where they were beheaded, a spring appeared—the Aguas Santas.

So, obviously this is a variation upon the same legend, with differing details and adapted to another location. Marina died on January 18th but her feast day is exactly seven months later on July 18th. Libérate is celebrated on July 20th, the date her relics were brought from Sigüenza to Baiona by Bernard de Sedirac, a Benedictine.

Wikipedia also has a brief entry on Saint Liberata and Saint Faustina of Como, in Italy. These sisters, holy virgins, founded the convent of Saint Margarita and died c. 580 CE. Their feast day: January 18th. Interestingly, French Wikipedia states that when Saint Quitterie was decapitated in Aire-sur-l'Adour, a bishop named Faust converted the entire town to Christianity, aided by a miracle: the decapitated head fell to the ground and a spring appeared. The virgin then took her head in her hands and placed it on a hill in the town, where her sarcophagus rests today. Elements of this story are found in that of her sister, Saint Eumelia and that of another Saint, Saturnina, whose story is clearly another version of that of the nine sisters.

The patroness of Pizzone is a holy virgin by the name of Saint Liberata. In Pizzone her feast day is on June 10th and in the Chicago area on the 8th. Other celebrations include January 11th and July 20th. In Chicago, there is a special mass and a procession in her honor: she is usually portrayed crucified. Her parents names, as well as those of her 8 sisters, confirm she is one and the same as Libérate.

Margaret the Virgin (Margaret of Antioch) is yet another variation on the holy virgin, celebrated by Anglicans and Catholics on July 20th, just as Libérate. (Orthodox Christians celebrate her on the 17th). Margaret the Virgin was the daughter of a pagan priest who lived apart from her family because they scorned her faith. She was offered to Roman governor in marriage. Her refusal led to being tortured and beheaded in 304 CE. The Eastern Orthodox Church calls her San Marina and identifies her with Saint Pelagia.  This holy virgin leaped from a rooftop rather than suffer dishonor from soldiers, much like the “puelles” of Barcelona and Saint Eumelia. Another Pelagia, of Tarsus, refused marriage to both Diocletian and his son and was thus burnt at the stake.  Pelagia is sometimes conflated with Marina the Monk, who we will look at more closely in a minute.

Another curious conflation of the Libérate figure is Saint Wilgefortis. Her cult appeared in the 14th century. Her story begins like the others, often set in Portugal. A young noble, she was promised by her father to a pagan king. She took a vow of virginity and tried to stave off the wedding through prayer; she hoped to become repulsive and thus undesirable. Her prayers were answered in an odd way: she sprouted a beard! Her father, furious, had her crucified, like Saint Liberata of Pizzone.

Folk etymology has it that her name comes from “virgo fortis” but this is likely spurious. Her name in France and Italy is Liberata and in Sigüenza she is said to be "confused" with the sister of Saint Marina of Aguas Santas. However, her feast day of July 20th may indicate the “confusion” was widespread—her cult spanned Europe but was officially suppressed in 1969. Wilgefortis is invoked by women seeking to be liberated from abusive husbands or unhappy marriages. Not to say this isn’t a true today, but in the Middle Ages, this was undoubtedly a chronic problem.

Wilgefortis is a curious image, something like a crucified, bearded transvestite. But this theme of transvestism appears in another saint known as Marina, or Pelagia: Marina the Monk. Marina was the child of a wealthy Christian family in Lebanon. After the death of her mother, the young girl’s father wanted to enter a monastery. The girl wanted to go as well, so they came up with the idea that she should dress as a man. She spent her life as a monk, until a fateful incident at an inn. The night she and some brothers were staying at this inn, the innkeeper’s daughter and a soldier got jiggy and a few months later, her pregnancy was obvious. Confronted, the innkeeper’s daughter blamed Marina, who was expelled from the monastery and lived as a beggar at its gates. Eventually she was allowed back into the monastery, but was given all the shit work. Upon her death, it was discovered that she was in fact a woman; the innkeeper’s daughter and the soldier fessed up and the abbot was devastated by his unjust actions. Marina the monk died, incidentally on July 19th but is celebrated on February 12th.

If I may add just another variation upon the transvestite theme. You will recall that in some versions of the Quiteria/Liberata story, the sisters waged war against the pagans after escaping from captivity. Some versions of the story have the women escaping not from a Portuguese or Galician king, but a Wisigoth in Toulouse; in these, Quiteria fled to Gascony dressed as a cavalier. This may be a chicken or egg question but I find strong parallels to the story of Jeanne d'Arc. I've already noted she was called the "pucelle". As Wiktionary has it: "Old French pucele, from Late Latin pulicella ‘young girl’, a popular diminutive of puella ‘girl’."

Jeanne d'Arc, then, "la pucele" is known as a warrior, a "liberator" and much is made of both her virginity and her cross-dressing: "Joan of Arc wore men's clothes almost continually from her first attempts to reach the Dauphin, later crowned Charles VII, until her execution twenty-eight months later."

Another link is that chief among the Saints whose voices she heard was Margaret of Antioch. As we have seen, Margaret of Antioch, or the Virgin, has variously been identified at Saint Pelagia or the transvestite Margaret the Monk. Another one of her Saints was Catherine of Alexandria. Catherine was the daughter of a pagan governor and is revered as a virgin martyr. She refused to marry anyone beneath her station and eventually found one who met her standards: Christ. She was thus, as with many another example, a bride of Christ:

Saint Catherine also had a large female following, whose devotion was less likely to be expressed through pilgrimage. The importance of the virgin martyrs as the focus of devotion and models for proper feminine behavior increased during the late middle ages. Among these, St. Catherine in particular was used as an exemplar for women, a status which at times superseded her intercessory role. Both Christine de Pizan and Geoffrey de la Tour Landry point to Catherine as a paragon for young women, emphasizing her model of virginity and "wifely chastity."

St. Saturnina; Eglise de St. Saturnine, Sains-lès-Marquin (photo, echo62)

St. Sernin; Eglise St. Sernin, Merville

Finally, I came across another obscure saint by the name of Saint Saturnina, with a legend very much like what we have already seen. She was a king’s daughter and took a vow of celibacy at the age of 12. At twenty (the age if you recall, of the 9 sisters) she was forced into marriage. She escaped this unwanted marriage by fleeing to Arras in northern France. With her parent’s permission, the pagan lord chased her and upon catching up to her, attempted to rape her. She resisted and was beheaded.

Somehow, this offending noble miraculously drowned in a fountain. Saturnina then arose, carried her head in her hands (like Eumelia) to the church of St. Remi. An alternate take is that she placed her head upon a stone in Sains-lès- Marquion and declared she would be the last human sacrifice to be performed there. The tree planted on this spot allegedly still stands. Her relics were taken to Neuenheerse in Saxony and the Convent Church of St. Saturnina was built the between 1100 and 1130. Her feast day is June 4th.

Interestingly, images of Saint Saturnina have her flanked by a pair of what appear to be bulls, holding an object resembling the alabaster jar of Magdalene or even our Saintes Puelles. Her shrine contains a reliquary, flanked by two women, one of whom carries a book.  These women, as far as I can figure, are Saints Saturnina and Fortunata.  I don't know the latter's story, but Catholic Online describes her as a virgin martyr; killed in 303 CE in Ceasarea, now in modern Israel, along with three of her brothers.  I've had a difficult time finding details about her in English, but this manuscript description says: "From Caesarea in Palestine, St. Fortunata was a virgin martyr [who] surrendered her soul to God after she enduring the rack, fire, wild beasts, and other tortures in the time of the persecution of Diocletian".  It occurs to me that Diocletian reappears in many of our stories.  The Church appears to bear a grudge.

Reliquaries of Saint Saturnina and Fortunata (rear), Church of St. Saturnina, Bad-Driburg-Neuenheerse (photo, Wikimedia Commons)

Among the many questions this welter of information raises, I'd like to address but a few.

The first question is: what does all this have to do with the Saintes Puelles? First of all, the virgin martyr is a well-established type. Abbé Rous goes to great pains to establish that the very word "puelles" means in fact, just this. From the other holy virgins herein described there are important differences: there was no forced marriage and they were never executed, merely flogged and exiled.

Yet the fundamental pattern is the same. Even though the tale of the nine sisters revolves around the refusal to marry, there is another lesson in addition to preserved chastity; that is, the refusal to sully oneself by marrying a heathen. In some versions, the daughters refuse to acknowledge the pagan gods. And this is the precise "crime" of both Sernin and the Puelles. This was followed by punishment and then flight. In exile, the young women are very successful in spreading the faith.

The Saintes Pulles were also said in some cases to be sisters and some have even speculated that they were twins. Other legends have them as noblewoman and servant--from northern Spain.

If we examine the legends around the nine daughters, one is naturally inclined to wonder about the origin of these tales.  Were they based on a pre-existing pagan story and then embroidered upon in order to serve as a Christian morality tale? Was there in fact a real event so poignant in its details that it spread far and wide in various permutations? It surely reflects the social dislocation as the pagan world evolved into the Christian one and serves to illustrate and condemn the former for its barbarity.

Of course, the tale may have simply bee invented out of whole cloth by some bored monk. Although the tale of the Puelles and the 9 sisters all take place in late antiquity, mostly between the late fourth and early sixth centuries, the legends themselves first appeared much later and were diffused throughout the Romanesque and Medieval periods. They would have served to illustrate a number of spiritual values: chastity, courage, strength; they may have been used to impress young women with the virtue of abandoning the world of marriage and the world in favor of the monastic life.

The diffusion of the cult may have been communicated between monasteries, a tale told for the edification of far-flung parishes. The Benedictines reoccur in our tale; were these legends part of Benedictine culture? Their concentration in the southwest of France, from Toulouse to northern Portugal and Galicia, may indicate that the stories were communicated up and down the St. James Way. The Way itself has pre-Christian origins; the terminus at Compostela has been a gathering place for pilgrims since time immemorial. You may be aware that the south of France and the north of Spain traditionally have more in common with each other than with that with the north of France. The Visigoths had a capital at Toulouse and then Toledo; their kingdom was demarcated against the northern Franks.

This division lasted well into the Middle Ages. The culture of Languedoc had a different regard for women. Whatever didactic function they may have served, the tales certainly must have resonated among woman, whose lot in life was definitely difficult. Used since pagan times as a commodity, to be traded in marriage in order to cement alliances or consolidate territorial claims. The woman at all social levels must have been able to relate to the horrors of the forced marriage.

It is not unlikely, given the geographic concentration of the tales, that they were spread by the troubadours. The tragic fate of a woman would have certainly been an attractive theme and there are parallels between the tales and the ideals of courtly love:

That sort of history which views the early Middle Ages dominated by a prudish and patriarchal theocracy, views courtly love as a "humanist" reaction to the puritanical views of the Catholic Church. In the language of the scholars who endorse this view, courtly love is cherished for its exaltation of femininity as an ennobling, spiritual, and moral force, in contrast to the ironclad chauvinism of the first and second estates. The condemnation of courtly love in the beginning of the 13th century by the church as heretical, is seen by these scholars as the Church's attempt to put down this "sexual rebellion."

However, other scholars note that courtly love was certainly tied to the Church's effort to civilize the crude Germanic feudal codes in the late 11th century. It has also been suggested that the prevalence of arranged marriages required other outlets for the expression of more personal occurrences of romantic love, and thus it was not in reaction to the prudery or patriarchy of the Church but to the nuptial customs of the era that courtly love arose.

In our stories, however, courtly love is like an expression of divine love; our women would be those who had symbolically "wedded themselves to Christ." They could serve as a condemnation of a barbaric social order, a valorization of chastity and a nifty bit of publicity for the nunneries.

That varieties of this tale appear throughout Europe and the Orthodox world may be a reflection of the kind of geographic mobility of the troubadours, crusaders and pilgrims along the routes to Jerusalem, Compostela and Rome. Unsurprisingly, the versions which differ the most are found farther away from the versions promulgated in Gascony and Galicia. Saturnine and Wilgefortis, for example, cults found mostly in northern France, Belgium and Germany, are clearly based upon the nine sisters, but the differences are evident in both names and in the case of Saturnine, the geographical setting. But the tale and the moral lessons are essentially the same.

It is said that a work of art is never finished, merely abandoned.  At this point I'll concur with the caveat that the abandonment is temporary.  We'll be back to this story soon enough.