| Editor : Abbé Georges de Nantes | N° 82 – July 2009 |
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DID SAINT MARY MAGDALENE
COME TO PROVENCE? (2)
At the moment when the persecutions against the Christians were unleashed in Judea in the year 42, the original community in Jerusalem was forced to disperse. James, the brother of John, had perished, and Saint Peter was arrested and then miraculously delivered. (Ac. 12, 1-17.) Mary Magdalene, Martha, and their brother Lazarus, pursued by the vindictiveness of the Jews since the time of Jesus (cf. Jn. 12, 10,) were compelled to leave the Holy Land.
A certain eastern tradition has them exiled to Ephesus, where her tomb was said to be located, as Gregory of Tours mentioned, with reservations, at the end of the sixth century: “In this city, as it is believed, Mary Magdalene rests with nothing to cover her.” If Ephesus does really contain, near the grotto of the so-called “seven sleepers,” the tomb of a Magdalene “virgin and martyr,” it seems that that latter lived during the sixth century. Her body, as well as that presumed to be of Saint Lazarus, were transferred in 899 to Constantinople where the proud Photius made use of them to mark the superiority of his patriarchate over that of Rome! All this, however, rests only on “scanty traditions, inconsistent and uncertain” (P. Sicard, Sainte Marie-Madeleine, 1910, vol. 1, p. 40.)
Is the tradition of the apostolate of the “saints of Bethany” in Provence any better established? The question is an important one, not for our Faith, which is founded with certitude on the holy Gospels (cf. Il est ressuscité n° 82, June 2009, p. 17-28,) but for our comprehension of the divine orthodromy and our devotion.
THE “INVENTION” OF THE RELICS
On 9 December 1279, Prince Charles of Salerno, eldest son of Charles I of Anjou, Count of Provence, King of Naples and of Sicily, decided to undertake a systematic excavation of the crypt of the oratory of Saint-Maximin, in order to locate the relics of Saint Mary Magdalene.
For more than two centuries, the celebrated Burgundian abbey of Vezelay had claimed to have these precious relics. The abbey was mistaken, according to the young prince, a great devotee of the saint and Provençal by adoption. It was wrong first of all because, when the monks had excavated there in 1265, on the orders of King Saint Louis, they found only “a few scattered bones and hair.” Furthermore, it was said in the “legend” of the Saint that her body had been venerated from time immemorial in Provence, before being transferred to Burgundy in order to save it from pillage by the Saracens in the eighth century.
The traditions of both pilgrimage places thus rested upon each other, and Saint Louis went to Vezelay, before leaving on his first Crusade in 1248, and then to Saint-Maximin and the Sainte-Baume on his return in 1254, as Joinville reports.
“After these things, the King left Yères and came to the city of Aix en Provence, to do honour to the blessed Magdalene, who was buried a day’s journey away, at Basme, on a very high rock, where it was said that Saint Magdalene had lived for a long time as a hermit.”
After having opened the few sarcophagi that were found in the crypt of Saint-Maximin and seen that they were empty, and after having sounded the walls and corners of the sanctuary, Prince Charles wanted to pursue his investigations further. “Finding himself near the sepulchre of Saint Amante, he decided, after mature deliberation, to dig deeper into the arid soil between the other stone monuments. Removing his royal chlamya and arming himself with a hoe, he dug in the earth with great energy. Laboriously, the pious King dug with furrows a large ditch. He was so wet with sweat that the drops fell one after the other like rain water.”
After a while, a new sarcophagus in marble appeared. As soon as the cover was raised, a strong and marvellous odour struck all those present. It was “as if one had opened a storehouse of sweet perfumes,” wrote a chronicle, Bernard Gui, who questioned those involved in the discovery. Prince Charles, having had the cover of the tomb raised, could then contemplate with joy and emotion the remains of the sacred body of Saint Mary Magdalene.
Among these remains, which seemed to be jumbled together, the witnesses remarked that the cranium was “separated” from its lower jaw, while a sprig of fennel, still green, protruded from the tongue that was pressed against the palate, and a small piece of flesh remained attached to the frontal bone. It was soon thought to be the sign of the risen Lord who, on Easter morning, touching the forehead of Mary Magdalene, gently pushed her away saying, “Do not touch Me,” or rather “Stop touching Me.” This piece of flesh dropped off five centuries later, at the time of the French Revolution. It would be preserved in a separate reliquary. The “Noli me tangere.”
Despite his great joy, Prince Charles refrained from touching the remains himself. After having closed the sarcophagus and placed his seals upon it, he convoked the archbishops and bishops of Provence for an official recognition.
RECOGNITION AND AUTHENTIFICATION
Nine days later, 18 December 1279, in the presence of the archbishops of Aix and of Arles, and several other prelates, the tomb was again opened. The archbishops, in their pontifical attire, were taking inventory of the contents, bone by bone, when suddenly a piece of old cork appeared in the midst of the dust. When Prince Charles snatched it in order to examine it more closely, it broke and fell into dust. It then appeared that the cork had contained a small sheet of papyrus, on which the following inscription could be read:
“The year of the Nativity of the Lord 710, the sixth day of December, very secretely and during the night, in the reign of the very pious Eudes, King of the Franks, during the period of the ravages of the perfidious nation of the Saracens, this body of the very dear and venerable Saint Mary Magdalene was, out of fear of that perfidious nation, transferred from its alabaster tomb into this marble tomb, after the body of Sidonius was removed, because there it was better hidden.”
This was not all. During the transfer of the relics into the richly ornamented reliquaries of their solemn “elevation,” which took place 5 May 1280, the same prelates discovered in the dust a globule of wax, to which they had paid no attention during the first recognition. This globule concealed a small wooden tablet, coated with wax. It bore these words, difficult to read because of the age of the characters:
Hic requiescit corpus beatæ Mariæ Magdalenæ.
Here rests the body of the blessed Mary Magdalene.
This double authentification filled the witnesses with joy. Saint Mary Magdalene was there, at Saint-Maximin! The “invention,” or rediscovery, of her body in December 1279 made a great stir throughout the Christian West, which professed a great devotion to her. This was particularly true of the Crusaders who had been to the Holy Land. Liturgical feasts were instituted with texts recalling the event. The sanctuary of Vezelay, after having protested against “the usurpation,” and submitted the matter to the court of Rome, where it was dismissed, was obliged to give place to the sanctuary of Saint-Maximin, of which the young and dynamic Dominican Order rapidly took charge.
A FORGERY? A FRAUD?
The detractors of the Provencal tradition claim that the “invention” of the relics was an enormous hoax. For them, even before any examination of it, the papyrus was necessarily a forgery, since the coming of Mary Magdalene and her companions to Provence is “only a pious legend of the eleventh century,” and because there is found “no trace of the Magdalenian cult in Provence during the first millennium” (Saxer!) The whole question is to know if this affirmation results from a rigorous critical study or purely and simply from a rationalist and Modernist prejudice.
Msgr. Victor Saxer is an authority on the question, but he is obliged to construct a real work of fiction in order to explain the discovery of the relics his way, as well as the act of authentification accompanying them.
“That this ‘authentic’ document is apocryphal, Duchesne had already seen.” We will return to this affirmation, as peremptory as it is false. “But who fabricated it? Two possibilities present themselves: either the Prince or his counsellors introduced it into the sarcophagus between the 9 and the 18 December, or else it was one of the prelates present the 18 December, who let it fall out of his sleeve [sic!] in the course of the verification. The first hypothesis could be the most likely, on one hand by reason of the declared wish of the Prince to find the relics and establish the pilgrimage of the Magdalene at Saint Maximin, and on the other hand, because of the editorial blunders of the note, that did not show great familiarity with this type of document and which are better explained as the work of a layman rather than a cleric. Thus, it is to Charles of Salerno and his entourage that must apparently be attributed not only the initiative, but also in great part the staging of the inventions.
“In this same perspective, but for exactly opposite reasons, we would be inclined to see a clerical hand in the fabrication of the second ‘authentic’ document found on 5 May 1280, of which the sobriety – much more in keeping with the laws of the literary genre – could support an accusation of fraud against one of the ecclesiastics intervening on 18 December 1279 or 5 May 1280. Whatever it may be, for the two ‘authentic texts’, it is a question of fabrication and forgery. These documents are in no way fit guarantees for the relics that they claim to authenticate; just the opposite, in fact. They disturbed one of the occupants of the Gallo-Roman memoria in her final sleep [sic!]
“There remains a final point to elucidate: what was the origin of the Magdalenian devotion of Charles of Salerno?… We have remarked, concerning Vezelay, that the Magdalenian devotion was a family tradition within the royal house of France and certain princely houses that sprang from it. This was the case with Louis IX, Charles V, and his brother Louis I of Anjou. We must believe that Charles of Salerno, who was the nephew of Louis IX, had inherited it from his uncle. He would have wished to imitate him and surpass him. The former had been the protector of Vezelay and the devotee of the Magdalene of Vezelay; the latter was resolved to thwart Vezelay by ‘launching’ the Magdalene of Saint-Maximin. In order to do this, he staged the Saint- Maximinian ‘invention’ of 1279-1280, on the model of the one at Vezelay in 1265-1267, and adjusted it so as to place the latter in an awkward position.
“It is true that the partisans of Vezelay had made his task easier by imagining the provencal stage, during which the relics of the Magdalene would have stayed there until 745 or 749. What could then be easier than to thwart the Vezelayan pretentions by contrary affirmations? To the Vezelayan claim that they had transported the relics to their church in the eighth century, it was enough to say that the remains had been moved into another sarcophagus, unknown to them, in 700-716, and that thus they could not have possessed them.” (Provence historique, tome XXVII, juillet-septembre 1977, p. 288-290)
All that is pure imagination, and rests on no historical proof. It attributes to Prince Charles, nephew and imitator of Saint Louis and father of another Saint Louis, of Brignoles and Toulouse, shameful intentions that he never would have imagined for a moment. He was, in fact, one of the most religious and wisest princes who ever governed Provence.
TRUSTWORTHY WITNESSES
Let us return to real history. There are few archaeological discoveries in history that benefited from so many guarantees as that of 1279 at Saint-Maximin. Prince Charles took all necessary precautions for that purpose. Official statements were drawn up on the spot by competent authorities, witnesses of the discoveries and of the different translations. In 1660, by the will of King Louis XIV, attested copies were transcribed and are still conserved in the archives of the convent of Saint-Maximin and at the seminary of Saint-Sulpice.
Celebrated chroniclers of the period reported the event as they had been able to know it, either through eyewitnesses or by in-depth investigations. Among others, there was Ptolémée de Lucques (d. 1327) who, because of his duties, knew the Vatican archives and library well; Bernard Gui (1261-1331), Dominican, an honest and precise historian, who took pains to make his investigation on the spot; and finally Cardinal Philippe de Cabassole (d. 1372,) counsellor at the court of Naples of King Robert, son and successor of Charles II, Count of Provence.
There is no reason at all to call their accounts into question, or to suspect the good faith of the witnesses whom they had interrogated. To transformer Prince Charles or one of the prelates who were present at the invention of the relics into a conjuror who let the papyrus fall surreptitiously into the sarcophagus by a “trick of the sleeve,” is pure fantasy. Moreover, the forger would have had to be really skilful in order to fashion a piece of cork around the papyrus, which fell into dust as soon as it was touched!
As for internal criticism of the “authentic” document, the disputes centre on three points:
1. The formula of dating from “the Nativity of the Lord” was not in use before the eighth century. Response: the first trace of it is found in Italy in 567, in the chronicle of Victor, Bishop of Tumnone. It was introduced into England in 587, and is found in use at Dijon in 632. There is no reason to be surprised, therefore, that it was used at the beginning of the eighth century in Provence.
2. On the date of 710, several interpretations are permissible, due to the variants in punctuation made by the copyists: either 710, on the sixth day of the month of December, or 716 in the month of December, or again in 700 on the sixteenth day of December. If we consult the attestation of 1660, a faithful copy of the original act contained in the reliquary, we have: “in the year 710, the sixth day of the month of December.”
Then it was questioned whether the Saracen threat was, on one of these three dates, so pressing that in Provence it was considered a good thing to hide the bodies of the saints. The “Saracens,” however, or Berbers from Africa, had taken over Spain from the beginning of the eighth century and were already issuing coinage in 710. After having crossed the Pyrenees, they were at Narbonne in 719; in 721 there were seen near Sens, and in 732 Charles Martel stopped them at Poitiers. From the beginning of the eighth century, then, all of southern Europe was in turmoil. It was known that, from Syria to Spain, these redoubtable “Saracens” were demolishing churches from top to bottom and destroying holy relics, not counting their raids from the sea: pirates had appeared on the Provencal coasts beginning in 705. It was thus very probable that the Cassian monks of Saint Victor of Marseilles, who had at that time the care of the sanctuary of Saint-Maximin, had buried their precious relics in order to hide them from the looters.
3. Above all, an attempt was made to demonstrate the falsity of the document by stating that because of his title, “King of the Franks,” the “very pious Eudes,” could only be King Eudes of Paris, brother of Duke Robert the Strong, who reigned at the end of the following century (888-898.)
The objection puzzled historians for a long time, beginning with the secretaries of the Prince of Salerno, in the thirteenth century, who were ignorant of the existence of a duke of Aquitaine reigning five centuries earlier over part of Provence, which was at that time a dependency of the kingdom of Neustria. He had not accepted the taking of power by Pepin of Heristal (687,) and he was called… Eudes. As a direct descendant of the Merovingian dynasty, he had the right to the title of “King of the Franks.”
“In Launoy’s time, the inscription of Saint Magdalene was considered to be apocryphal because the date of 710 could not be reconciled with the reign of Eudes, King of the Franks. Since a more detailed study of eighth-century monuments has been made, however, our best textual criticism has recognised – and it remains demonstrated – that this same inscription is utterly unassailable, and that for the history of Provence it is actually the most precious monument of this period.” (Faillon, Monuments inédits sur l’apostolat de sainte Marie-Madeleine en Provence, t. I, col. 704)
“It is impossible and dishonest,” Brother Devoucoux concludes, “to refuse to authenticate this writing of 710 together with the bones found in 1289. In itself, the authenticity of the papyrus does not signify that the bones contained in the sarcophagus are those of Mary Magdalene. This writing signifies only – and it is tremendous! – that in 710, the Cassian monks declared, in transferring them into this borrowed sarcophagus, that these bones were those of Mary Magdalene. Did the monks of that time speak truly or falsely? That is another question. The fact remains that the great value of this document is to discredit the fallacious teaching, unfortunately widespread, that the tradition of Mary Magdalene in Provence is nothing but a ‘pious legend dating only from the eleventh century.’” (Les cahiers de la Sainte-Baume no 6, 1989, p. 21) Exit Saxer !
THREE CENTURIES OF DISORDER
Between the eighth and the tenth centuries, Provence experienced a period of upheavals, great misery, and anarchy. Its towns and villages, especially those near the coast, were regularly pillaged by the Saracens. “At the beginning of the tenth century, Marseilles was at the low point of a long period of decadence. Its maritime commerce was annihilated, its land deserted by the farmers who no longer felt secure there. People lived in fear of the Saracen invasions on land and sea.” (G. Seinturier, Marseille chrétienne dans l’histoire, 1987, p. 135)
In this context of pillage and devastation, it is not surprising to find a large historical “hole” in the Provencal cult of Saint Mary Magdalene, and not to find, for example, documents concerning the Cassian priories established in the mountains of Saint-Baume and Saint-Maximin before the eleventh century.
“It seems, however,” writes Brother Devoucoux, “that during this long period of insecurity and desertification, there remained, lost in the neighbouring mountain later called ‘Sainte-Baume,’ a small centre of religious life where there was preserved the memory of the woman who had so loved the people of Marseilles and Provence in bringing them the Good News of Jesus… The living memory of the “apostle of the Apostles” was thus kept for a long time through the prayer and the words of two or three poor hermits who took refuge in the icy shade of a damp cave that had formed in the side of a sheer cliff, towering over an ancient and majestic forest… Even at this dark period of the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, however, audacious and courageous pilgrims were still venturing across the mountain and the forest to reach this sacred grotto where it was said that the Magdalene had lived. The Cassian guardians kept a “Diary” in which could be read, until the Revolution, the names of some of those pilgrims.” (Les cahiers de la Sainte-Baume no 6, p. 6)
It was necessary to await the vigorous enterprise of Guillaume Geraud, called “the Liberator,” at the head of a powerful coalition of Provencal and Lombard knights, to see the dawn of a renaissance. In 972, with the reduction of the last Saracen stronghold of La Garde-Freinet, liberated Provence could finally come alive once again.
Recent archaeological excavations have established that it was around the year one thousand that an “ecclesial village” was formed at Saint-Maximin around the ancient basilica.
It is not “pious legends” that were then created, as Msgr. Saxer claims (Le culte magdalénien, p. 107,) but rather ancient traditions that again came to light. There was a desire to rediscover the links of that uninterrupted chain which connected the Provencal faithful to their founders and holy martyrs of the first centuries. It was thus that the archbishop of Aix, Rostang de Fos, revived their cult in 1070, by writing on the subject of Saint Maximin and Saint Mary Magdalene: “Sepulcrum utriusque apud nos. We possess the sepulchre of both saints.”
The whole question, however, was to know whether it was possible to go back further than the famous date of “710.”
THE SARCOPHAGI OF THE FOURTH CENTURY
This crypt contains four very beautiful sarcophagi of the fourth and fifth centuries. That of Mary Magdalene (in the background,) of which the upper frieze has disappeared, now serves as the altar in front of the head of the saint. On the right is the sarcophagus of Saint Sidonius, companion of Saint Maximinus, in which the relics of Saint Mary Magdalene were found in the thirteenth century.
Among the sarcophagi found today in the crypt of Saint-Maximin, there is one that is distinguished by the very rare quality of its marble, of a grain so fine that it was long believed to be alabaster. It came, in fact, from the quarries bordering the Sea of Marmara, near Constantinople. Many arguments based on appropriateness pleaded in favour of its attribution to Saint Mary Magdalene rather than to some “Gallo-Roman” matron, even a Christian one.
In the course of drainage work at Saint-Maximin in 1954, a multitude of tombs were found dated between the fifth and the tenth centuries, all oriented towards the crypt of the present basilica. It was the custom to have oneself buried near a saint, “ad sanctos, ad martyres.” The sepulchre or sepulchres of Saint-Maximin were thus very likely those of several very famous saints.
The sarcophagus known as “Saint Mary Magdalene’s” has within its back part a “fenestella” that is characteristic of the tombs of saints. Through this “fenestella,” explains Gregory of Tours, the pilgrim addressed his petition to the saint and inserted some object with which to touch the relics of the saint.
Though scenes of the Passion of Christ are represented in the round on the casket of the sarcophagus, it was formerly topped by a lid with a frieze, now destroyed, which depicted the various scenes of the life of Mary Magdalene from the Gospels: Mary Magdalene at the house of the Pharisee, at the anointing in Bethany, going to the tomb of the Saviour laden with ointments, finding Him and announcing His resurrection to the Apostles.
These bas-reliefs no longer exist, which permits the adversaries to triumph by denying that they ever existed. Unfortunately for them, many ancient authors testified to them and described them.
In the “VIE PRIMITIVE,” which goes back to the fifth or sixth century, one can read that at Saint-Maximin “they show her sepulchre of white marble, representing in sculpture how, in the house of Simon, she merited the pardon of her sins and at the same time she fondly performed the service of piety concerning the burial of the Lord.” Gislebert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster (d. 1117,) even used the sculptures of this frieze to prove that the sinful woman and Mary of Magdala were identical.
One might add other writers of the thirteenth century such as Jacques de Voragine, Pierre de Noel, Claude de la Rote, and Vincent of Beauvais, who wrote: “At Saint-Maximin, that marvellous basilica… they display a white marble tomb with sculptures representing the saint coming to the Lord in the house of Simon and offering the Master the homage of her humility and her perfume, unashamed to weep in the midst of the guests.” (Speculum historiale, lib. x, chap. iii)
If these sculptures had actually existed, the question of attribution of the sarcophagus is resolved in favour of Saint Mary Magdalene; all the more so since there is no other place in the world, either in Palestine or in Asia Minor, that seriously claims the honour of possessing her tomb.
A CONSTANTINIAN BASILICA
Important excavations in 1993-1994 to the south of the basilica of Saint-Maximin revealed the existence of a religious complex of great importance. It consisted of a basilica “of fine architecture” with three apses, at least twenty-five meters in length, that could be dated to the fifth century, along with a baptistery of the same date.
The ground floor of these buildings is more than two meters below the present level, and at the same level as what is conventionally called “the crypt.” The latter is thus not a subterranean edifice, as had been long believed, or “a funerary vault,” as Saxer claims, but a sort of oratory or “small temple.” This is precisely the oratory of Saint-Maximin of which the most ancient texts speak, where Saint Magdalene had stayed as an “intimate friend,” where she died, after having received Communion from Maximin, and where she was poorly buried before being transferred into a valuable sarcophagus when the Christian religion became official.
The very rare quality of the marble of this sarcophagus led Brother Devoucoux to think that “it was the Emperor Constantine himself who ordered it to assure the body of Mary Magdalene the most prestigious of burials. There is nothing surprising in such a hypothesis when one knows that this emperor often resided at Arles, which he had made one of his capitals and where one of his sons was born.
“One might be surprised that such a majestic tomb was then pushed into a corner in a minuscule ‘crypt,’ even if that crypt had formerly been the paleo-Christian oratory of Saint Maximin. It would be more fitting to think that in the fourth century they put this illustrious sarcophagus on display for the veneration of the faithful. The ‘Vie primitive’ of Mary Magdalene, written down in the fifth or sixth century, should indicate the true and original location of the tomb of the apostle of the Apostles. Does not this ancient text tell us, in fact, ‘that they placed in an honourable mausoleum’ the body of Mary Magdalene and erected over her blessed remains a basilica of beautiful architecture. It would seem that the excavations undertaken at Saint-Maximin in 1994 at the side of the present basilica had uncovered the then ‘Constantinian’ basilica, in which the sepulchre of the Magdalene would have been placed in honour.” (Les cahiers de la Sainte-Baume no 13, p. 16)
THE PALEOCHRISTIAN TOMBS
In 1859, in the course of repairing the pavement of the crypt, the workers were greatly surprised to discover, at a depth of fifty centimetres, three ancient tombs of the Gallo-Roman period, two in stone and one in tiles. Except for a few bones conserved in a small wooden case, these tombs were empty. The bodies that had reposed in them had probably been transferred at a later period.
Had the three original sepulchres of Mary Magdalene, Maximinus, and Sidonius been found, then? We are entitled to think so.
“The odds are,” writes Brother Devoucoux, “that we find ourselves faced here with the same phenomenon encountered at Saint Peter’s in Rome: namely, the transfer of the bodies of saints, poorly buried at an early period of persecution, into more elaborate sarcophagi during the official Christian period. The wax tablet found in 1280 with the inscription, ‘Here rests the body of the blessed Mary Magdalene,’ the sobriety of which argues in favour of antiquity, could date from this first transfer.”
The remains found in 1279 had also been protected with wax which, during the anthropological analysis done in May 1974 by the Institute of Mediterranean Archaeology, prevented the carbon 14 test – which would have produced a more precise dating – from being applied to them. Nevertheless, Doctors G. and S. Arnaud, of this same Institute, concluded, “that they belonged to a woman of small stature, of slender Mediterranean type, about fifty years old.” This is all that can be said with certitude and precision, in the present state of the research.
“THE FIRST RESURRECTION”
The “raising” of the remains of the saints and their transfer into an elaborate sarcophagus corresponds to what Saint John calls, in the Apocalypse, the “first resurrection.”
“Then I saw thrones on which the judges took their seats, and judgement was handed over to them, and also the souls of those who had been beheaded for their witness to Jesus and the Word of God, and all those who refused to adore the Beast and his image, or to be marked on the forehead or the hand. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years… This is the first resurrection.”
These words must be interpreted in a spiritual sense, as our Father explains in his commentary on the Apocalypse:
“When we visit the catacombs in Rome, we see all those loculi, where the martyrs and the faithful of Christ were buried in time of persecution. They were hidden in the earth, in ignominy according to men. They were guilty of sedition, they had been condemned to die in a manner ignominious for them; and then the peace of the Church had come. Their bodies were taken up, transported into the basilicas, put upon the altars, and it was they who triumphed with Christ, in the Roman basilicas. They reign over the people of God in a new life that is their spiritual glorification. When the second resurrection comes we will see them living, taking up their bodies again, and they will share in a complete manner in the joy of God.
“It is thus that Saint John encouraged the persecuted Christians: you are the white knights behind the Word of God and, one day, you will be victorious over this pagan society. By your martyrdom, you will constrain men to convert; you will lead them to conversion. When they will be converted, the Church will be radiant, the Church will be free, the Church will convert, and the saints will be remembered. Our Church is founded on Christ and the saints, the holy martyrs, virgins, confessors, and doctors.” (L’Apocalypse, commentaire littéral, S 25, automne 1974)
This is what happened to Saint Mary Magdalene and her companions, Saint Maximinus and Saint Sidonius, of whom the Church of Aix faithfully keeps the memory.
A PROBABLE AND VENERABLE TRADITION
Arguing from the lack of documents and monuments, certain historians claim that the evangelisation of Provence was belated and slow. Beginning with the Edict of Milan (313) that legitimised the Christian cult, however, there is found in the Mediterranean region a very dense Christian “network,” much stronger than in the rest of Gaul. It was at Arles in 314 that the Emperor Constantine convoked the first Church council, assembling the heads of the six bishoprics of Provence. From the fourth century, and for two hundred years, one can speak of a golden age of Christianity in Provence. And before that?
We know almost nothing. Roman “Provincia” seems to have been evangelised from the second half of the first century, no doubt by sailors or slaves in contact with Rome, Greece, or even Palestine. We know, for example, that around 25 a.d., four Roman legions were in Palestine, almost entirely composed of soldiers recruited in Gaul: the sixth Ferrata, the tenth Fretensis, the twelfth Fulminata, and the third Gallica – thus more than twenty thousand men from Provincia. Pilate himself was probably a native of the valley of the Rhone and his spouse, Claudia Procula, a relative of the Emperor Tiberius, had spent her first years at Narbonne, where a letter from her to a childhood friend has been discovered.
On the other hand, two epitaphs were discovered in Marseilles in 1837, one near Saint-Victor and the other in the valley of the Huveaune. The first is addressed to two martyrs, Volusianus and Fortunatus, who had suffered the torture of fire; the second speaks of a certain Vetinius Eunoetus and also bears an anchor flanked by a symbolic fish. According to their epigraphic characteristics, both were dated from the first or the beginning of the second century.
Thus, starting from Arles, Christianity seems to have very early gone up the valley of the Rhone by way of the valleys of the Comtat to Vienne and Lyon, where Saint Blandina and Saint Pothinus were martyred in 177. From Marseilles, it could very well have spread into the valley of the Huveaune and along the coast to Toulon, Frejus and Nice, and then, from Nice, spread into the valley of the Var and towards the Alpine regions. Of this discreet missionary expansion, however, there remains no trace except the testimony of tradition, which is a transmission, from generation to generation, of facts necessarily rooted in history.
This tradition is not limited to one place alone, but to at least six places, which together form “the Provencal tradition of the founding saints:” Saint Lazarus at Marseilles, Saint Trophimus at Arles, Saint Maximinus at Aix, Saint Martha at Tarascon, Saint Mary Magdalene at Saint-Maximin and perhaps at Sainte-Baume, and the saints Mary Jacobi and Salome at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, without forgetting their servant Sarah, said to be of Egyptian origin, who became the patroness of the gypsies!
We will adopt here the balanced conclusion of Brother Devoucoux, according to whom “there are too many monuments, documents, and congruity to reduce this tradition of Provence to a mere ‘pious legend,’ but on the other hand, there is not enough, particularly during the first four centuries, to give it a historical status. Thus, with regard to this very respectable tradition, there would be as much intellectual dishonesty in wishing to affirm that it is totally false and purely imaginary, as to wish to establish its historical authenticity by indubitable proofs. At the most, one can say that the Provencal tradition is ‘probable’ and ‘reasonable,’ in its original purity.”
At the school of our blessed Father, Charles de Foucauld, we would have no difficulty in imaging Mary Magdalene living the life of Nazareth in Provence as a “missionary hermit,” praying, sacrificing herself for sinners, exercising charity around the oratory built by Saint Maximinus on the edge of the Via Aurelia, or retiring to her Thabor of Sainte-Baume, for the extension of the reign of Jesus, her one, sovereign Love, and in the expectation of His return. Then, when the time came, she died of desire and of hope, and was buried by Saint Maximinus, like a grain of wheat thrown into the earth, the earth of France, future Eldest Daughter of the Church.
A CATHOLIC AND FRENCH DEVOTION
PATRONESS OF PROVENCE
Nothing could be too fine for the beloved disciple of the Lord! As soon as the relics were found and recognised, Prince Charles ordered from his goldsmiths two reliquaries destined to house the precious treasure. Into the first one, made of silver and enhanced with various gold decorations, he had most of the remains of the Saint placed in 1281. The other reliquary, containing the skull, took longer to make: it was in the form of a bust in gold, covered with a multitude of stones of great value. King Charles I, the father of the prince, sent his royal crown from Naples in order to place his kingdom under the patronage of Saint Mary Magdalene. In 1295, this magnificent reliquary was placed in the oratory of Saint-Maximin, which had become the crypt of the basilica. It remained there until the Revolution, when Barras seized it in order to pay the war expenses of the Republic.
Prince Charles, who became Charles II at the death of his father, had a premonition of the immense movement of piety that the relics of Saint Mary Magdalene were going to attract to Saint-Maximin and Sainte-Baume.
The youthful apostolic Order of the Dominicans seemed to him the best adapted to the new impetus that the ancient pilgrimage was receiving. Thus he obtained from Pope Boniface VIII that the sons of Saint Dominic would be established there, to guard the relics of the saint and to preach her virtues. At the same time, he had built by his best architect, Pierre d’Agincourt, called “Pierre the French,” a royal basilica above the ancient oratory of Maximinus.
Oh sweet, intimate friend of Jesus Christ,
Oh Apostle, the first of the mortals who deserved to see Christ risen,
Oh model of penance, who with abundant tears washed His feet and dried them with your hair,
Oh very sweet Lady, oh my only hope,
Oh most holy patroness, what praises shall I offer you?
The kings of the Angevin dynasty, that branch of the Capetian trunk cast onto the shores of the Mediterranean, from Marseilles to Naples, then to Parma and as far as Jerusalem, would not be less zealous in the service of their holy Patroness. For its part, the papacy did not wait to settle in Avignon to manifest its attachment to Saint Mary Magdalene.
When Charles II came to Rome to obtain the establishment of the preaching brothers at Saint-Maximin, he brought with him the head of Saint Mary Magdalene without its lower jaw. When he was presented to Pope Boniface VIII, the pope declared that in the sacristy of Saint John Lateran a jaw was venerated that was said to be that of the saint of the Gospel. The Pope had it brought, and when it was moved near the skull from Provence, everyone observed with joy the perfect conformity of the two pieces. King Charles then left with the whole relic.
The arrival of the popes on the banks of the Rhone allowed John XXII, Benedict XII, Clement VI, Innocent VI and Urban V to go on pilgrimage to Sainte-Baume. After them, innumerable were the princes, prelates, and simple faithful who came to ask of the “dear Lover of Christ” healing, light, and peace.
THE “BOOK OF MIRACLES”
Miracles multiplied in response to the faith of the pilgrims. Jean Gobi the Elder, second prior of Saint-Maximin (1304-1328,) testifies to this in his “Book of Miracles.” This collection, which was thought to have disappeared, was providentially found a few years ago and recently became the subject of a learned publication, Miracles de sainte Marie-Madeleine, with an introduction and translation by Jacqueline Sclafer (cnrs éditions, mars 2009.)
Seeing in the prodigies that accompanied the beginnings of the pilgrimage proof of the actual presence of the body of Saint Mary Magdalene at Saint-Maximin, and the manifestation of a divine intention that recourse should be had to her intercession, Jean Gobi wished to preserve the memory of it for posterity. Eighty-two miracles were collated, to which the prior had often been a witness: freed prisoners, the half-blind, the deaf and dumb, the paralytics, and the mentally ill, but also debauched persons who implored the grace of a true conversion.
If the formulas employed are those of the registering of miracles, the account is nonetheless vivid, concrete, and edifying too, recalling with faith the place that Mary Magdalene held near Christ in the Gospel. An example is those Provencal knights taken prisoner while they were fighting for their lord:
“They had recourse with confidence to Magdalene, as to a singular refuge and to the particular patroness of those who are of this earldom of Provence, because her body is kept there, at Saint-Maximin. They prayed to her and beseeched her: ‘Despite the murmurs of the Pharisee, she did not cease to render the homage due to her lord, the Lord Jesus Christ! As for them, it was because of the service that they were bound to render their lord that they were destined for torture and death! Let her free them from danger, therefore, by her mercy, as her Lord and Ours had liberated her from the malicious remarks of the Pharisees!’”
PILGRIMAGES OF SAINTS AND KINGS
In 1340, there arrived in the land of Avignon from Sweden an amazing princess, Saint Brigit, accompanied by her husband, her children, and a procession that included bishops. They climbed together to Sainte-Baume.
When going to visit the popes at Avignon or their cousins in Provence, the kings of France did not fail to go there: John II in 1362, on leaving his captivity in England, Charles VI in 1389. A few years later, it was the turn of Saint Catherine of Siena and Saint Vincent Ferrier. Across the division caused by the Great Schism, the saints of both sides shared in the same cult.
Charles VII went down to Provence accompanied by Queen Marie, who was from Anjou, to thank Saint Mary Magdalene for the deliverance of the kingdom. The dauphin Louis walked in his father’s footsteps:
“Seeing that he had no children with his wife, Charlotte of Savoy, whom he had married against the wishes of his father, the king, for which reason he was relegated to his principality of Dauphine, he had recourse to Saint Magdalene. He came with great devotion to implore her assistance and begged his maternal uncle, King René, to take him to Saint-Maximin, where they arrived 3 March 1456. They asked that the head of the saint should be placed on the high altar, before which they knelt and Louis placed both hands respectfully on this holy reliquary. He made a vow to our saint that if, through her merits, she obtained a son for him who would be the cause for his restoration to the good graces of his father, he would build for her a beautiful chapel at Sainte-Baume, which he would furnish with all the necessary embellishments and would give, for a daily Mass in her honour in perpetuity, the sum of twelve hundred pounds. God having granted his wish that very same year and made him the father of Charles VIII, who was his successor to the crown of France, he fulfilled his vow and had built this white ashlar chapel with the arms of the Dauphin, and embellished it with all the ornaments.”
A few years after his visit to Sainte-Baume, Louis XI, at the death of his uncle, King René, inherited Provence. Sainte-Baume thus entered the domain of the Kingdom of the Lilies, and would share its destiny. The cult of Saint Mary Magdalene, without ceasing to be Catholic, became more and more French. The feast of 22 July, “the Magdalene,” took its place beside “the Saint Martin” and “the Saint Joan,” in the ranks of feasts most dear to the people of France.
Louis XII and Queen Anne of Brittany, Francis I after his victory at Marignan, Charles IX and his brother, the Duke of Anjou, the future Henry III, came in turn to pray to Saint Mary Magdalene. The whole history of France can be read in the chronicle of the Provencal pilgrimage; not without reason is the road from Nans, which goes up to the Grotto, still today known as “the kings’ way.”
The profound piety of Louis XIII could not remain insensible to the attraction of Sainte-Baume. He came there in 1622 after the siege of Montpellier, which ended the Protestant revolt in Languedoc. Two years later, he ordered the first president of the parliament of Aix to send a few fragments of the relics of Saint Mary Magdalene to the Queen, his wife, in order to obtain the birth of a dauphin and, “in doing this, to participate in their particular and praiseworthy devotion; we cannot be too careful in protecting and conserving such a precious treasure, which it has pleased God to leave on deposit in our kingdom.” (Letter of 4 February 1624.)
In February 1660, after the signing of the Peace of the Pyrenees, Anne of Austria, become regent, made a pilgrimage of thanksgiving with her son Louis XIV, who liked to think of himself and call himself the “royal son of Saint Mary Magdalene!”
A COUNTER-REFORMATION SAINT
“Confession, contrition, contemplation, ecstasy, prohibition of luxury in the churches. All by herself, Mary Magdalene furnishes Catholics with formidable arguments against Protestantism. She was thus to become one of the favourite figures of the Counter Reformation, from the end of the sixteenth century, taking first place in the litanies just after the Blessed Virgin, inspiring a number of poets, authors of books of penance and, of course, painters, under the influence of their patrons.” (L’héroïne de la Contre-Réforme, Odile Delenda, Le Monde de la Bible n° 143, juin 2002, p. 40)
Throughout the seventeenth century, crowds of pilgrims flocked to the Provencal sanctuaries of the Magdalene. Among them is found the name of Saint Francis de Sales, who had a particular fondness for the Beloved of the Lord, whom he called “His perfumer,” because she had anointed Him with the perfume of “her wholly admirable charity and dilection,” and so that “we might justly call her the queen of all Christians and children of the Church..” (Sermon of 22 July 1621.)
Saint Jane de Chantal went there after her dear Father, from Marseilles where she was visiting the convent of her order, and testified that it was “a place of true devotion.” (Letter of 2 July 1636.) There were in the grotto at that time twenty-one silver lamps surrounding the statue of Saint Mary Magdalene, of which seven were burning night and day in the presence of the Lord and in memory of her.
Saint Vincent de Paul, in his turn, went up to Sainte-Baume. He recommended to his missionaries, in order to love God at the cost of their labour and the sweat of their brows, “to join the office of Martha to that of Mary,” and to his dear daughters, the Sisters of Charity, to care for their sick “purely for the love and pleasure of God,” following the example of the saints of the Gospel, among whom he placed Mary Magdalene in the front rank.
Pierre de Berulle, for his part, drew up for Queen Henrietta of France, sister of King Louis XIII and wife of Charles I of England, in order to console and encourage her in her exile, a very beautiful series of meditations on the Magdalene, “the humble and fervent disciple of Jesus, assiduous at His feet, attentive to His word, and most eminent in the school of His love.”
“Recall, Madame, that the beauties that you see are perishable and that they are only shadows of the supreme and eternal beauty, and that all that strikes your eyes, in that court where you are, is dead and contaminated before God – for heresy brings the death of the soul – and perhaps destined for the eternal flames. Instead of that, this soul, unknown and hidden in this desert, is alive with the true Life, the Life of Heaven, and is now one of the highest and most noble persons at the Court of the King of Heaven and earth.” (Élévation sur sainte Madeleine, Adresse à la sérénissime Reine de la Grande-Bretagne, 1636, éd. Cerf 2008, p. 37)
In the eighteenth century, when the elites were losing the Faith, the Provencal people remained faithful. “The movement of pilgrims was briefly slowed by the terrible plague of 1720, but never did it cease. In this desert, for sanctity, that was the century of the Enlightenment, we see at Sainte-Baume two authentic representatives of the virtues of the people of France: John-Baptist de La Salle and Benedict-Joseph Labre. Pursued by the Jansenists, the founder of the Brothers of the Christian Schools came at the beginning of the century, in 1713. As for the saint of the poor wretches, it was towards the end of the century that he arrived: he was going to Rome and to Loreto, bringing with him his mute protest against a society that had ceased to honour the poor, in ceasing to love Jesus Christ.”. ( P. André-Vincent, Marie-Madeleine et la Sainte-Baume, 1950, p. 54)
DEATH AND RESURRECTION
Came the Revolution. The 13 February 1790, the religious orders having been dissolved, inventories were drawn up and the religious of Saint-Maximin and Sainte-Baume were expelled. At the beginning of 1793, Barras and Fréron, delegated by the Convention, took over all the treasures of piety kept at Saint-Maximin – the head of Mary Magdalene and several other relics were providentially safeguarded by the sacristan, Joseph Bastide – then, with a band of “patriots,” they went up to Sainte-Baume which they set on fire, breaking to pieces with picks and hammers everything that survived the flames.
There was in the Grotto a very beautiful marble statue of Our Lady of the Rosary. Eight peasants of the Plan-d’Aups succeeded in taking it and bringing it down to the church of their village before the arrival of the revolutionary vandals. It is today, in the holy Grotto, the only witness of the cult during the Ancient Regime. (cf. infra, p. 31.) For several years, Sainte-Baume was nothing but a heap of rubble, where only a few courageous pilgrims still dared to venture. Beginning with the return of the Bourbons, however, a unanimous surge of piety carried the populations of Aix and Marseilles to the deserted sanctuary.
On 5 May 1815, the anniversary of the translation of the relics, twenty-five thousand pilgrims were at the feet of their patroness in her “holy Baume,” and the outrages renewed at the Grotto during the Hundred Days, by the soldiers of Marshal Brune only stimulated their zeal and their immense desire for reparation.
A kind-hearted man, the Count of Villeneuve-Bargemont, who was prefect of Marseilles, became their spokesman and put everything in order for the restoration of the ancient sanctuary. He drew up a notice that, read in a public session of the royal Academy of Marseilles, stimulated an immense movement of generosity. By royal ordinance, the Grotto was designated a vicarial chapel. Pope Pius VII renewed the plenary indulgences that had been attached to it and, at Pentecost 1822, forty-five thousand pilgrims surrounded the Archbishop of Aix for the inauguration of the new chapel. “Saint Mary Magdalene once more presided over the renaissance of Christian life, in the country to which she had brought the Gospel.” ( P. André-Vincent, ibid., p. 60.)
The legitimist prefect was not content with merely assisting in this restoration; recalling the words of Our Lord, “The poor you will always have with you,” and moved by the pitiable state of the working class, abandoned after the destruction of the corporations, he put into action a whole plan for assistance and professional economic and familial management which made him one of the first “social Catholics” of his century.
Following the failure to establish first a community of Trappists from Aiguebelle and then Capuchins at Sainte-Baume, it was the Dominicans who, starting in 1860, took up again their mission of guardians of the sanctuaries that they had fulfilled since the end of the thirteenth century.
FOR THE SALVATION OF FRANCE
The French province of the Dominicans had been restored in 1850 but, from the start, it was torn between two contrary influences: that of opening and adaptation to the world, advocated by Father Lacordaire, the first Provincial of France, and that of fidelity to the tradition and the strict observance defended by Father Jandel, whom Pope Pius IX named Master General of the Order of Preachers.
In the work that he consecrated to her, “Saint Mary Magdalene or, Friendship” (1859,) Lacordaire speaks of her in a sentimental, not to say romantic, way, while Father Jandel and his disciple and successor, Father Cormier, revived her cult in Provence and in the Church with strong spiritual reasoning, demonstrating in Saint Magdalene a model for conversion, not only for souls but also for nations, France in particular.
“Faced with men hostile to the reign of Jesus and the redemptive order,” said Father Cormier in a memorable sermon at Saint-Maximin on 22 July 1874, “a little phalange of believers is arising that keeps the treasure of grace and the standard of the Faith as an Ark of the Covenant and a rallying point. They go from pilgrimage to pilgrimage, imploring the mercy of God. All those here, my brothers, we are of this number. We have our contradictors, but we also have our defenders, and in their ranks, I love to greet Mary Magdalene.
“‘Persevere,’ she seems to say to us, ‘be proud of giving a solemn manifestation of your religious sentiments from time to time. Do not, however, scorn to learn from me certain dispositions of soul that will render your supplications more efficacious, and will assure you of a full correspondence with the designs of God. Thus, through you, my life will be better understood and I will have fulfilled the plans that Jesus Christ sent me to you to accomplish, as the apostle and the friend of the French nation.’”
At the same period, holy souls, figures of that France “ pœnitens et devota ”that the Dominican preacher hoped for, found in Saint Mary Magdalene a sister and a model of sanctity. After the miracles of the centuries of faith, there were so many marvellous graces of conversion and of love that Father Vayssière, guardian of the sanctuary at the beginning of the twentieth century, used to say as a witticism: “I do not know if she came or if she did not come; what I know is that she is here!”
“THE DEAR SAINT IS SO CLOSE TO ME”
During the summer of 1877, the Duke of Alençon was seen to go up to Sainte-Baume, “the most accomplished man of his time,” in the words of his Uncle Aumale. He was accompanied by his wife Sophie-Charlotte, who had been strongly impressed, the previous year, by the sermon of a Dominican Father on “the courage given by God to those whom He has chosen.” She resolved to ask of Saint Magdalene a burning love of the divine Master, capable of giving her the spirit of sacrifice.
They assisted at the Mass, receiving Communion together, and remained for a long time in prayer in the Grotto. The Duke then confided to the brother guardian the sentiment that gripped them both: “I am struck by this word of Our Lord: ‘If you do not do penance, you will all perish!’ In our situation, however, the difficulty is to be able to do penance.” The religious reassured them, telling them that exactitude in fulfilling the duties of their state was a penance very agreeable to God. From the time of that pilgrimage, both their souls tended with one same movement toward sanctity, the one thing necessary:
“My thoughts go every day into the Grotto when I pray to Saint Magdalene,” wrote the Duchess, “and I find a great consolation in this devotion. The relic, which stays with me, is my joy. It seems to me that the dear saint is so close to me that she cannot forget me for a moment. May she often present my soul to her divine Master and ask pardon and mercy of Him for me, who have so cruelly offended Him.”
Consecrating her time and part of her fortune to the poor and the sick, she was admitted into the Third Order of the Dominicans in 1880, and chose the name of Sister Mary Magdalene. She wrote then to her spiritual father, Father Boulanger, a Dominican: “How close one feels to one’s friends when the hour of suffering has sounded! How happy I am to be a daughter of Saint Dominic, to belong to this Order that is persecuted and that some wish to annihilate.” She went often to Notre Dame des Victoires: “It is a church that I love very much, and now that we suffer with the poor country that is in such a sad crisis, it is good to take refuge there and pray to the Blessed Virgin.”
About the month of February 1897, “she felt moved,” her husband recounted, “to offer herself entirely and without reserve to God as she had not yet done. On the counsel of her venerable director, she obeyed the inspiration and made this absolute offering. It was no doubt around this time that, speaking to a lady who was close to her, she told her: ‘If God asks for my life, I will sacrifice it to Him in an instant.’” The following 4 May, she died heroically in the fire at the Charity Bazaar. The counter that the Duchesse of Alençon was managing for the Work of the Dominican novitiates was decorated with a cloth representing Joan of Arc at the stake…
THE MYSTERY OF THE DIVINE PATIENCE
A few years previously, another prayerful soul, little known, but one that our Father places among the greatest mystics of his time, also entrusted herself to Saint Mary Magdalene. She was Matilda Boutle, whose spiritual journal was published in 1909 under the name of “Lucie-Christine. ” We now know, thanks to the research of our sisters, who Lucie-Christine was and what trials she endured: in-laws who were worldly in religion, and never stopped trying to detach her husband from her, while he slipped into the vice of alcoholism.
This was a very heavy trial for Lucie-Christine, above all when, one day in April 1885, she came to Marseilles to fetch her husband upon his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and realised that he had given up the struggle. They went up together to Sainte-Baume. She wrote in her Journal:
“At the foot of Sainte-Baume. My God again wanted from me that act of entire abandonment that I renew to Him so often. To will, if He wishes, to suffer this poignant bitterness, such a martyrdom! I will it, but my soul trembles and yesterday I told Him: ‘Oh my Lord, what do you want me to do in order to suffer such trouble!’ He answered me with very great gentleness, ‘I certainly suffer it, Myself!’ And I felt and caught a glimpse of this mystery of love and divine patience that waits for and supports sinners, and my soul was fully comforted.”
On returning to Vernon in Normandy, where the family lived, with her husband’s condition worsening, there were two years of incessant sufferings and humiliations for Matilda Boutle. “Oh Jesus, there remains my heart, my broken heart that I offer you continually in silence for this soul, for souls.”
Like Mary Magdalene’s vase of precious ointment, the broken heart of “Lucie-Christine” consoled her crucified Lord, who appeared to her one day wearing a purple cloak strewn with fleur de lys: “The edges of this cloak were covered with flowers and gems, which seemed to have been scattered there; I did not know what it was. Jesus told me, ‘These are your works; and it is you who have clothed me in this cloak… This cloak is called Charity.’ I think that my Lord wished then to speak of the charity that loves and pardons, no matter what.” (13 November 1886.)
This heroic charity obtained for Thomas Boutle the grace of a Christian death. From that moment, Matilda felt in her prayer the soul of her husband “in God”: “Now, when I speak of him to Jesus, He calms and consoles me.”(3 January 1888.)
THE PASSION, BUT THE LOVE ALSO!
A few days after learning that Captain Pierre-Dominique Dupouey had been killed in action, Mireille, his wife, a Third Order Dominican, went on pilgrimage to Sainte-Baume. Rereading the account she gave of it, it is permissible to think that she was magnificently sustained by Saint Mary Magdalene in her trial.
“19 April 1915. At Saint-Maximin we visited the church of the thirteenth century that is part of the Dominican convent founded at that period. Their stalls occupy the upper part of the church and are in wood sculpted in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Medallions, all different, represent episodes in the lives of Dominicans – the doors are admirable. The cloister of the convent communicating with the church – a little overgrown garden, all in flower.
“The crypt under the church contains several reliquaries: the head of Saint Magdalene, on the forehead of which until 1789 remained living the part on which the finger of Christ was placed. It later became detached and was kept in another reliquary. Finally, her hair, thighbones and an arm are the other remarkable relics in the crypt.
“There are also various sarcophagi in which the saint was successively buried in order to foil the searches of the Saracens. Following their invasions, everything was buried, and it was Charles of Anjou who had the honour of making the excavations and restoring the precious remains to public veneration.
“From Saint-Maximin to the Baume, desert – Nans – then the twisting mountain roads – coppices – distant blue – Saint Magdalene was carried by the Angels.
“In the hostelry, the Blessed Sacrament day and night – oh marvel of the love of this Jesus whom we meet everywhere, who wishes to be everywhere – Lord, take this heart that I do not know how to give You. The Passion, but the Love also.
“I occupy the Saint-Peter cell, facing the grotto and the Saint-Pilon. The pain of not being able to clasp your dear hand while looking at these sublime horizons, and yet you are here – my friend, my brother, my invisible one, my love – Pierre, how sweet it would have been! But you are here – to each thought is joined a prayer for you, a thanksgiving for your happiness, my angel… How you would have savoured with me the sight of all these things, my beloved, you who sought God in the little ones, who saw Him in their persons.
“To restore everything to Him, that is what seems to be the motto of this country: Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini tuo da gloriam. Beati immaculate in via qui ambulant in lege Domini.”
TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH
We have saved for the end, as a spiritual bouquet of this study of Saint Mary Magdalene, the example of two contemporary saints who can still today inspire the pilgrims of Sainte-Baume and Saint-Maximin: Blessed Charles de Foucauld and Saint Therese of the Child Jesus.
Father de Foucauld had an immense devotion, tender and ardent at the same time, for Saint Mary Magdalene, the converted sinner. It seems that it was Our Lord who gave her to him for his spiritual mother, in his retreat in Nazareth in 1897:
“I want, in conclusion, to give you a recommendation: cast yourself into the arms of Saint Magdalene; she is the first inhabitant of Heaven that I have made you know and love, and I did not do it without a reason. Long ago I gave you My Mother as your mother, and My Father as your father: you have them, you have the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph, and they are yours. I give you now Saint Magdalene as a second mother, telling you to pray to her, to love her well, to implore her, to ask her to teach you how to love Me. I give her to you as a model; look at her and ask her to direct you interiorly, to teach you to pray, to teach you to contemplate Me, to keep you always, always, at My feet, to look at Me always, always, to love Me always, always, to live in this world and in the other with your head on My breast. Ask her in My name, on My behalf, to be your guide and directress; I charge her with teaching you how to love Me. Thank Me and be faithful to us – to Me and to her…
– Thank You my God, thanks, thanks, thanks, what could you give me better than a soul, and such a soul, a saint, and what a saint!”
When he returned to France in August 1900, he would not rest until he went up to Sainte-Baume. “My first move, on arriving from the Holy Land,” he wrote to his friend, Father Jerome, “was to go up to Sainte-Baume. May this dear and blessed Saint Magdalene take us under her protection, or rather keep us there, for she has already taken us, and may she teach us Love; teach us to lose ourselves completely in Jesus our All, and to be lost to all that is not He.” He met there Father Marie-Etienne Vayssiere, guardian of the Grotto, with whom he contracted a profound spiritual friendship. These two elite souls were made for understanding each other.
Father returned the eve of embarking for Africa, in September 1901, in order to confide to his “Mother” the work to which he was called: to make Jesus and His charity reign among the most disinherited of the infidels. He counted on drawing on the capital of her prayers, so powerful with the Heart of Jesus, and asked that a lamp be maintained burning day and night before her relics.
In 1913, accompanied by his nephew and godson, Charles de Blic, and by the young Targui Ouksem, he confided to his dear Saint his project for a Catholic Colonial Union.
IN THE FURNACE OF MERCIFUL LOVE
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus did not go to Provence, but in the garden of the Carmel of Lisieux, there was a grotto that represented the hermitage of Saint Mary Magdalene, in which, in July 1889, the young novice felt herself “as if hidden under the veil of the Blessed Virgin.” The heart of Saint Mary Magdalene bore such a likeness to her own that Saint Thérèse, the “miniature of the Immaculate, burned like her with the desire to love Jesus, and to do anything for Him, keeping herself always before Him with the heart of a spouse, a disciple, a child. She loved to cite her as an example. Thus, in completing The Story of a Soul, she wrote:
“My dear Mother, now I would like to tell you what I understand by the odour of the perfumes of the Beloved. Since Jesus has returned to Heaven, I can only follow Him in the traces that he has left, but these are so luminous, so fragrant! I have only to cast my eyes upon the Holy Gospel to breath the perfumes of the life of Jesus, and I know which way to run… It is not to the first place but to the last that I hasten; instead of going forward with the Pharisee, I repeat, full of confidence, the humble prayer of the Publican; but above all I imitate the behaviour of Magdalene, her astonishing, or rather her loving, audacity that charms the Heart of Jesus, captivates mine. Yes, I feel it, even if I had on my conscience all the sins that can be committed I would go, heartbroken with repentance, to throw myself into the arms of Jesus, for I know how much He cherishes the prodigal child who returns to Him. It is not because the good God, in His considerate mercy, has preserved my soul from mortal sin that I go up to Him by confidence and love.”
In order that her thought not be misunderstood, she insisted to Mother Agnes: “Be sure to say, my Mother, that if I had committed all the crimes possible, I would always have the same confidence: I feel that all that multitude of offences would be like a drop of water thrown into a fiery furnace.”
Nevertheless, it is necessary “to love much,” after the example of Saint Mary Magdalene, that is to say, to give oneself over wholeheartedly, without going back, “to the merciful Love” of her Lord Jesus. That is what made Saint Therese, in truth and in total humility of heart, to the point of dying of love. “She has again taught the Church Love,” says our Father. Such was her mission, “the mission of making the good God loved as I love Him, of giving my little way to souls.”
It is again from our Father that we must learn the secret of this conquering Love:
“The Church,” he wrote, “and in her each mystical soul, cannot consider herself the Spouse of Christ in any other way than that of Mary Magdalene adoring her Saviour crucified and risen. She does not fear to approach Him and to unite herself to Him in love, because the stigmata of His wounds assure her of His pardon, and the glory that radiates from Him makes possible the nuptials of eternal life…
“The renaissance of the Church will sound when she again becomes the humble servant of the Lord, and no longer the proud servant-mistress of an apostate world. When again she is accepted as the spouse, virgin, and beloved only daughter of God alone, spouse of the Word and Temple of the Holy Spirit.” (Le triomphe de la mystique, CRC n° 133, septembre 1978, p. 11-13)
THE FOLLY OF THE LOVE OF CHRIST
“What happiness to suffer for Him who loves us to folly, and to pass for madmen in the eyes of the world. One judges others by oneself, and since the world is insane, it naturally thinks that it is we who are insane!… After all, though, we are not the first; the only crime with which Herod reproached Jesus was that of being mad, and I think like him!… Yes, it was madness to seek the poor little hearts of mortals in order to make of them His thrones; He, the King of Glory who is seated upon the Cherubim… He whose presence cannot fill the heavens… He was mad, our Beloved, to come to earth in search of sinners to make them His friends, His intimates, His likenesses, He who was perfectly happy with the two adorable Persons of the Trinity…
“We are no longer the do-nothings, the prodigals. Jesus has defended us in the person of Magdalene. He was at table, Martha was serving, Lazarus was eating with Him and His disciples. As for Mary, she was not thinking of taking nourishment, but of giving pleasure to Him whom she loved. So she took a vase full of perfumed ointment, very costly, and poured it on the head of Jesus by breaking the vase, so that the whole house was fragrant with the liquid. The Apostles, however, murmured against Magdalene… It is as with us, the most fervent Christians; the priests find that we exaggerate, that we ought to serve with Martha instead of consecrating to Jesus the vases of our lives with the perfumes that are within them… And yet, what does it matter that our vases are broken since Jesus is consoled, and in spite of itself the world is obliged to smell the perfume wafted from them and that serves to purify the poisoned air that it does not cease to breathe.”
TO HER SISTER CÉLINE, 19 AUGUST 1894.