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.

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....

Notre Dame de Tudet

Previously published on my old website.

 

The first visit.

I have been unlucky in many ways regarding my visits to the various Black Madonnas in the vicinity of my home in Toulouse. At Aspet, Oust and St. Béat, I was unable to enter the chapels and thus only able to present a picture of the chapel and give a description of the Virgin culled from various sources. At Montaut I was without camera. At Tudet I had access and a camera, but no batteries. This lack of photos means my little “essays” on Black Madonnas are not as useful I would like them to be, for these Madonnas are among the lesser photographed and an online image of them would provide those interested in the phenomenon with examples of the variation and similarities one can find among the existing corpus.

Visiting Dame de Tudet was a last–minute deal arranged with my pal Dan, an agreement to finally make a road trip together before he left Toulouse for good to make a go of his music back in his native Scotland. We’d considered Rennes-le-Chateau or Montsegur, but I’d come across a reference to Gimont (Notre Dame de Cahuzac) on a Black Madonna list and suggested going there instead. The next morning, I considered the evidence and decided we’d be more likely to have success in Gaudonville.

So I loaded up my kids, brought along a sack lunch and set off in the rain to pick up Dan, poor lad, still a bit peaked from the night before. A word to the wise: Never mix the grape and the grain. ‘Nuff said.

Our route took us in the direction of Gimont upon the road to Auch, but we turned off towards the north in the direction Cologne and Mauvezin, finally turning onto one of those small one-lane blacktops which wend their way through the countryside cheerfully oblivious to the rest of the world; it was conducive to good conversation. We remarked upon a number of topics, from the syncretic accretions Jesus has accumulated, his role as a vegetal god, the concept of the Messiah, King Arthur’s Welsh roots. The rain had cleared.

We presently found ourselves on an even smaller road and after a short spell we rounded a curve and entered Gaudonville. The town was deserted. The church was very old, almost "primitive", with a low “clocher-mûr” made for five bells but containing only two. Begg states that in the house next to the church one can ask for the key so I did. My heart sank when the occupant of the house told me the man with the key was not in town that day.

I ventured to ask if in fact this town was also called Tudet. No, no, Tudet is a kilometer down the road. See, we’re looking for the rather well-known statue, a Black Virgin and….oh yes it’s down the road, but the lady with the key might not be there….

Cheered at this nonetheless we continued towards Tudet, which is really just a collection of three or four houses. The first house we visited turned out to be occupied by an Englishwoman, who seemed a bit wary of the two scruffy young men who’d rung unannounced at her door. Children, however, work wonders when it comes to allaying people’s natural suspicions and she pointed us in the right direction. In short, we met the guardian of the keys and she handed them over without a blink and before we knew it we were inside the sanctuary.

It was at Gaudonville that we discovered our batteries were dead and that we would have no pictures of our outing. Which is truly a shame. Notre Dame de Tudet is quite alluring—a small, lithe, black stone effigy which has a vaguely Hellenic feel to it. It is placed on a round pedestal about six feet high in a position of honor behind the altar. The church is simple, very spare, with only two other statues flanking the apse and the only other ornamentation in the nave are plaques representing the stations of the cross. Here’s a bit of history: 

At the exit of the village (of Gaudonville) in the direction of Saint-Clar, one can take a footpath on the right which leads to Notre-Dame de Tudet, a celebrated pilgrimage site since the 12^th century.

Vivian II, Viscount of Lomagne, had a modest chapel built here between 1137 and 1152,  to which Henry II of England added a larger church between 1152 and 1168.  This church was later rebuilt, with the exception of the choir, at the end of the 15^th  and beginning of the 16^th centuries.  The ensemble was destroyed in 1793, with the exception of the octagonal bell tower still visible today.

Attached to this rather robust tower is a house, a remnant of  a monastery from another time.

In 1877, about 100 meters from this bell tower, a chapel of 16^th century appearance was erected in the presence of the Monsignor of Langalerie, revealing the emplacement of a fountain situated 100 meters below the site of the chapel.

The pilgrimage to Notre Dame de Tudet takes place each year on September 8^th, sometimes in the presence of the archbishop of Auch. 

From the website of  the Communauté de Communes Coeur de Lomagne, my translation.  Much of  this text either comes from or forms the basis of the text of the Patrimoine de France entry.

According to Begg, “Tudet” means “protection”; indeed, in at least one source she is referred to as ND of Protection and at least two of the memorial plaques in the chapel come from soldiers spared in the first and second world wars. There are surprisingly few of these marble votive plaques, however, given the supposed antiquity of this pilgrimage site.

Begg states that the current statue dates from the 15th or 16th century, replacing the original of 1152. This jibes perfectly with the dates from the Commune’s text (above). The statue is made of black marble and stands 47 centimeters in height. In this she appears to be at the smaller end of the spectrum when it comes to “les Vierges Noires.” Notre Dame de Tudet has an origin story with many themes common among Black Virgins: apparently an ox, who had grown fat without eating, was one day gazing into a spring. A young herdsmen, curious about the strange behavior of the beast, looked into the spring and discovered the Virgin. Tudet, not so much of a town as a “lieu-dit” (a “named place”), is still a site of cattle farms; I loved the sign which said “Attention aux Bovines.”

Whatever the origin, the site was an important pilgrimage by the 12th century, and the Virgin merited the grander accommodations accorded her by Vivian and Henry II. Begg states that it may be the oldest pilgrimage in Gascony. But not everyone shared the love; the statue was damaged during the Revolution (and wasn't restored until 1963). The chapel which housed her had no such luck. Only the bell tower remains, with rusted cars and farm equipment huddled at the base.

Evidence of an active cult includes votive objects left, such as rosaries, prayer cards, a pair of child’s earrings, a child’s ring, a broach. In an adjoining room, damp smelling and empty save for a few cleaning supplies and a low table, we found the litter used to carry her around in processions. We also saw a banner in the church with a brocaded image of the Madonna, unmistakably white, which only reinforces the sense I’ve had that the skin color of “Black Madonnas”—or rather the perception of that skin color and its importance—is remarkably fluid.[1] Seeing the banner of a white Virgin in this context reminded me of Montaut’s Notre Dame des Ermites, lily-white, which was inspired by that of Einsiedeln, which is very black not only in actual hue but according to the importance placed upon her blackness by devotees.

The second visit.

Some cursory after-the-fact research led me to a website which spoke of a pair of lectures to be given in Gaudonville regarding Notre Dame de Tudet, to be followed by a mass (in Occitan) in the chapel at Tudet.  I was, needless to say, interested in going.  I vowed to take the opportunity to learn more and get some photographs.  Timed passed and the day arrived, a bit less gloomy than the first, and I set out alone from my new home in Aucamville a mere half hour from the site.  As it turns out, the lectures followed the annual meeting of the association “La Lomagne, Memoire Pour Demain”.  It lasted too long for me, eager as I was to get to the lectures, listening impatiently to the summary of their financial details, plans, and projects accomplished in 2006.  I needn’t have been antsy, unfortunately, as the first lecture merely recapitulated everything I have already stated on this page in a typically French (that is to say, circumloquacious) fashion.  Ho-hum.  The second speaker, Mr. Passerat, spoke of Notre dame de Tudet’s place in Occitan literature.  Apparently, it’s not a very prominent place, which in itself is significant.  How large could her cult have been?  Another important thing I did get from these lectures is that there is in fact no way to verify that her cult is especially old.  The current statue is from the 16^th century and may not have replaced anything older; there is no textual evidence to suggest otherwise. 

It was worth visiting this meeting for I was able to get some decent pictures and visit the spring where the sculpture was said to have been found—I’d missed that the first time around.  Just as I was willing to write off the lectures off as a loss, however, a friendly old fellow in attendance rose to comment that Tudet may have come from the Latin word “tutela,” meaning “protection”[2], and that in Spain we find more than one city named Tudela whose names certainly derive from it.  Another gentleman elaborated that Tutela was in fact personified as a woman and worshipped as a minor goddess.  It was in his eyes another example of a pagan survival.

Indeed, according to Stephen McKenna in Paganism and Pagan Survivals in Spain up to the Fall of the Visigothic Kingdom :

Tutela was probably the most popular abstract conception that was worshiped in Spain. Sometimes the name Tutela is found alone, but more often the formula is met, Tutela colonorum Cluniensium, or Genius Tutela horreorum. All of the fourteen inscriptions in Spain have been found in western Tarraconensis. Three towns of the Peninsula have derived their names from Tutela: Tudela Vegún near León, Tudela de Duero near Valladolid, and Tudela not far from Saragossa.

This photo from the British Museum by Barbara McManus (1999) depicts a personified Tutela wearing an elaborate headdress representing the days of the week.  The cornucopia she holds is adorned with the heads of Luna and Sol—the Moon and the Sun.  It comes from a hoard of coins and statuettes, possibly from a sanctuary, buried at Mâcon, France sometime after 260 CE; the figure itself dates from the 3^rd century.  Despite the extravagant allegorical headdress, her basic crown and the crescent moon at her waist are echoed in countless Marian sculptures; one might even be tempted to sea a precursor of the infant Jesus on her arm.  There is even something of her sumptuous curves in Notre Dame de Tudet.

Rodriguez Morales in "Tutela Nauis" e Isis Pelagia en el Satyricon ("Tutela Nauis" and Isis Pelagia in the Satyricon), explains that  there are two references to Tutela Nauis in Petronius’ Satyricon.  After analyzing their context he deduces that the "protecting divinity" (Tutela) referred to is the goddess Isis.  None of this says that Tutela was always an aspect of Isis, but it does remind us just how often Isis thus assumed in many guises and how many local tutelary goddesses were often regarded as one of these.

Which brings us back to the Virgin, Notre Dame, who is in this writer’s opinion is most certainly a descendant of Isis both in her iconography and her functions.  One must not however, exaggerate.  Tutela and Tudet are not necessarily etymologically related and even though in Spain we find towns called Tudela, a connection remains tantalizing conjecture.  Given that both signify “protection” makes it far from extravagant.  Tutela was an abstraction deified as a woman.  Isis was also in a way a kind conflation of many such minor deities; as her cult spread she absorbed many pre-existing goddesses and attributes; her cult eventually spread throughout Europe.  The idea that the iconography of Isis was an important influence on Marial iconography, though certainly contentious, is a well -supported argument.

The basic question remains:  Is Notre Dame de Tudet a very ancient pagan survival?  Mary glued upon Isis as Tutela?  Apparently the first textual evidence of Notre Dame de Tudet surfaces in the 18^th century and people speak of her cult as being “as old as anyone can remember” which could merely be a generation or two.  It’s generally accepted that the current statue dates from the late-15^th/early-16^th century.  This then could be the beginning, with no pagan survival.

Notes:

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[1] Her names is literally the Latin word for “protection”, especially of wards, as in guardianship, and survives as the root of the English words “tutor” and “tutelage.”

[2] An essay located here makes some useful observations regarding how the perception of certain Madonnas' blackness has changed over time.