In Camargue, at the place where the Rhone’s billows meet the Mediterranean, stands the ancient town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. The rustling wind creeps through the picturesque streets, sweeps the fine sand over the wild, unspoiled shoreline, stirs the mane of white horses racing along the foreshore. The sound of galloping, softened by the wave-like motion of the sea foam, is driven by the voices of the Romani people who numerous animate the town. Everywhere you go, raising your eyes, you glimpses the outline of the church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer, where landed the Holy Marys in Provence.
Looking more like a stronghold, this fortified building of worship has an imposing bell tower. Battlements and a patrol walk for the sentries enriches it. Moreover, it was part of the town’s defensive structures in the Middle Ages. It certainly could not have been otherwise since the village was the maritime gateway to the entire Camargue. In case of the enemies’ arrival from the sea, such as the Barbary pirates, the population could barricade themselves within its walls. Thus, they could resist for days, thanks in part to a well placed inside.
But the real treasure of the church of Notre-Dame lies in the legend. These are the great tales that makes Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer one of the most important places of pilgrimage in France. This is the village of the Holy Marys in Provence. That is the place of the miraculous landing of Christ’s disciples and Sarah the Black, the patroness of Romani people.
Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer between history and legend
The Holy Marys of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, as tradition says, came to the village from far away, crossing the sea in a boat without oars. A legend widespread in France in the Middle Ages, which had great literary fortune, states that some of Christ’s disciples were loaded onto a raft. Then, they were left shipwrecked among the waters at the behest of the Jewish Sanhedrin. The Messiah had ascended to heaven; that was the time of preaching and equally of persecution. The number and identity of the biblical castaways changed as the legend was renewed, from mouth to mouth, but it was always said that they came from Bethany and especially that Mary of Magdala was among them1.
The legend says that the disciples were left at the whims of the Mediterranean until they landed on the coast of Provence. In some versions of these hagiographic vitae of Magdalene, as in the famous Legenda Aurea by Jacopo da Varagine2, the miraculous landing was located in Marseilles. For Gervasius of Tilbury, an English jurist who wrote between 1210 and 1214 the Otia Imperialia, the event occurred near the mouth of the Rhone, at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. A church dedicated to the Mother of God, still called Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer, arose near that site. Here later the bodies of the saints of Bethany found rest. Above all, the author of the legend revealed who the Holy Marys were, namely those “quae mane prima sabbati cum aromatibus venerunt videre sepulcrum“3.
“There beside the sea-shore, is the oldest of all the churches on our side of the Mediterranean. It was founded in honour of the most blessed Mother of God, and consecrated by some disciples who had been driven out of Judea and sent out to sea on a raft with no oars. These were Maximinus of Aix, Lazarus of Marseilles (the brother of Martha and Mary in the gospels Eutropius of Orange. George of Velay, Saturnius of Toulouse, and Marital of Limoge, all of whom were numbered among the seventy-two disciples. Martha and Mary Magdalen, along with many other people, were present at the consecration. […] They claim that the two Maries, who came bearing spices to see the tomb early in the morning of the first day of the week, are among them”.
Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, 1210-1214. Translation by S. E. Banks, J. W. Binns, Gervaise of Tilbury: Otia Imperialia, Recreation for an Emperor, Oxford, 2002.
The Saintes Maries of the Gospels
According to the canonical Gospels, albeit with some differences between them, the women who brought the ointments to Christ’s tomb, and found it empty because of the resurrection, were Mary of Magdala, Mary Jacobé and Mary Salome. So says the evangelist Mark:
“When the sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go and anoint him. Very early when the sun had risen, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb. They were saying to one another, «Who will roll back the stone for us from the entrance to the tomb?». When they looked up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back; it was very large”.
Gospel of Mark 16, 1-4
Interestingly, Salome is never mentioned as Mary, a name attributed to her by tradition. The three women who went to the tomb were the same ones who had witnessed the crucifixion:
“There were also women looking on from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of the younger James and of Joses, and Salome. These women had followed him when he was in Galilee and ministered to him. There were also many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem”.
Gospel of Mark 15, 40-41
They were therefore the most important witnesses to the story of Christ. The three Marys had seen the death and resurrection with their own eyes. Hence, they were called to preach the good news to the world. Yet, after these events, the Gospels tell nothing about the rest of their lives. Legend and story filled this lack: on board a raft adrift, the women arrived as far as Provence, at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the landing site of the Holy Marys in Provence
Beyond the legend, the historical documentation in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer reveals the origins of an ancient city. The first mentions of the place where the Holy Marys supposedly landed in Provence, a marshy island in the Rhone delta, date back to the 4th century. The Roman poet Rufus Festus Avienus testified to the existence of an “oppidum priscum Ra“, a fortress that the author believed was dedicated to the Egyptian deity Ra4. Instead, it is likely that the toponym referred to the Gallic word rātis, which actually meant “fortress”. Ratis then became the name of the early Christian city, meaning “small island” or “raft”, with a shift in meaning.
In the 6th century, a community of nuns occupied the oppidum, at the behest of the bishop of Arles, Caesar, with the intention of eradicating the pagan cults present there. The island then took the name Sancta Maria de Ratis, a clue that dates back to that time the first church dedicated to the Mother of God5.
Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer
A rebuilding of Notre-Dame and the village took place several times. Certainly following the Viking and Saracen invasions in the 9th century, which had devastated the region and driven the nuns away. It was only in 973 that William I of Provence freed the Camargue from Saracen rule. It is likely that a first reconstruction of the church took place in the following years. The building was initially under the jurisdiction of the cathedral of Saint-Trophime in Arles. Later, it passed to the abbey of Saint-Pierre de Montmajour in 1078. The place name then changed to Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer in connection with the spread of Provençal legends. The town church had to fall into ruin again as we know that it was renovated around 1170, in Gothic style6.
A remodelling of the building, consisting of a single aula, a chapel and the choir, occurred in the 15th century. The lengthening of the nave, the addition of a walkway and the crypt date back to that time. It is the church that contributes to the fascinating atmosphere of the place today. In 1838, the village finally assumed its current name, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, in honour of the patron saints.
The Translatio Terrae Sanctae in Provence
In the Middle Ages, Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer was one of the most important places of worship in Provence. The maritime village was the chosen place that first welcomed Mary Magdalene and Christ’s disciples. Hagiographies of the time tell us that from the town, the saints began preaching throughout the region. The legendary corpus makes it possible to reconstruct a hypothetical evangelisation map of Provençal towns based on the relics kept in them. Maximinus preached at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume7, where he was buried with Mary Magdalene, who arrived there after living for thirty years in the cave of Sainte-Baume as a hermit8. Instead, the remains of Martha would rest in Tarascona9, those of Saint Trophimus in Arles and so on. According to tradition, however, not all the disciples who came from Bethany left Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Mary Jacobé and Mary Salome decided to stop and preach here.
This kind of Translatio Terrae Sanctae in Provence had a decisive impact with the fall of the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187, due to Saladin. The desire to create a parallel Holy Land, animated by the same evangelical protagonists, responded to the need of all those who could not reach the places of Christ. In Provence, pilgrims could thus follow in the footsteps of the first disciples, going to their tombs and venerating their relics.
The cult of the Holy Marys in Provence
Gervase of Tilbury assured the presence of several burials of the saints of Bethany, including Mary Jacobé and Mary Salome, in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. Even Guillaume Durand, Bishop of Mende, had confirmed this in the Rationale divinorum officiorum of around 128010. The spread of the cult of the Marys, however, was only just beginning. In 1315, a Confrérie des Saintes Maries was founded with the task of accommodating pilgrims on their way to Spain and the Way of Saint James of Compostela11. In 1342, Pope Benedict XII instituted the feast of the Saintes Marys, to be celebrated on 25 May each year, and in 1357, the Carmelite chronicler Jean de Venette wrote the Historie des Trois Maries based on Provençal legends12.
The relic inventio of the Holy Marys in Provence
The complete definition of this local legend lacked only one, albeit indispensable, element, namely the inventio of relics. In other places, the authorities, whether religious or aristocratic, had done their utmost to search for the mortal remains of saints in the places of worship indicated by tradition. For example, in 1279, Charles II of Anjou ordered excavations at the basilica of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume. On 9 December, the work uncovered four sarcophagi attributed to Mary Magdalene, Maximinus, Cedonius and Marcella. The purpose of these searches was not only cultic but also economic. In fact, the possession of a relic allowed to attract pilgrims and thus obtain the rich inducements that this entailed.
The inventio at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer took place at a later age than at the other Provençal places of worship. An initial attempt by Charles II of Anjou was unsuccessful. Only in 1448, with the intervention of the Count of Provence, René d’Anjou, the relics of the Marys were rediscovered. The Count obtained permission from Pope Nicholas V to excavate along the nave of the small church of Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer13.
In the presence of the papal legate Pierre de Foix, the archbishop of Aix Robert Damiani and the bishop of Marseilles Nicolas de Brancas, the excavations brought to light the remains of a hypogeum room under the presbytery. There was a marble altar and, above all, two bodies, which were removed and displayed in the upper chapel of the church14. To whom those remains really belonged is difficult to say. However, it was enough for local tradition: the inventio was accomplished and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer could boast its relics.
The cult of Sarah
But in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, that of the Marys is not the only popular cult. The church aula is dedicated to the veneration of the relics of these saints. Instead, the crypt houses the remains of another important woman of local tradition. In fact, the greatest mystery of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer concerns the figure of Sarah. She is the patron saint by the Romani communities of Europe. Local folklore says that Sarah was a servant of the Marys from Egypt.
It is not clear where the Romani’s popular devotion to Sarah the Black originated. It only developed in the 19th century in the wake of the cult of the three Marys. The first mention of the servant girl in hagiographic sources is very late. Only with the writing of La Légende des Saintes-Maries by Vincent Philippon, dated 1521, we encounter her mysterious figure. According to the author, Sarah’s remains were found together with those of the women of Bethany during excavations in 1448. Then, the crypt of Notre-Dame hosts them.
Each year, on 24 May, Romani people carry in procession the richly dressed statue of the saint. The procession proceeds from the sea towards the shore, recalling the miraculous landing of the Holy Marys in Provence and their servant Sarah. A crowd and the Gardians, riding the elegant white Camargue horses, accompany the saints. And one seems to catch a glimpse in the distance of a boat without oars, docile in the midst of the water, swaying towards the solitary beaches of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.
Samuele Corrente Naso
Map of places
Notes
- The first mention of Mary Magdalene’s landing in Provence is contained in the 11th-century text Omnipotentis dei clementia, made by an anonymous person inspired by the homily Sermo in solemnitate sanctae Mariae Magdalenae attributed to Odon of Cluny (around 878 – 942). See D. Iogna-Prat, La Madeleine du Sermo in veneratione sanctae Mariae Magdalenae attribué à Odon de Cluny, in Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen-Age, 104, 1992. ↩︎
- Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, 1260-1298. ↩︎
- Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, 1210-1214. ↩︎
- Rufus Festus Avienus, Ora maritima, 4th century. ↩︎
- Also called at the time Notre-Dame-de-la-Barque. ↩︎
- Jean-Maurice Rouquette, Provence Romane 1, vol. 1, Zodiaque, coll. La Nuit des Temps, 40, 1974. ↩︎
- Ibidem note 1. ↩︎
- Vita eremetica beatae Mariae Magdalenae, around 1173. ↩︎
- Pseudo Rabanus Maurus, Vie de sainte Marie-Madeleine et de sa sœur sainte Marthe, end of the 12th century. ↩︎
- Guillelmus Durantus, Rationale divinorum officiorum, 1280 circa. See F. Reynaud, La tradition des Saintes-Maries, Dumoulin-Marius Lebon, Paris, 1874. ↩︎
- A. Rucquoi, Maria y Iacobus en los Caminos Jacobeos, Santiago de Compostela 21-24 October 2015, Xunta de Galicia, 2017. ↩︎
- M. T. Driscoll, L’histoire des Trois Maries by Jean de Venette, Cahiers de Joséphologie, 23, 1975. ↩︎
- C. M. Girlderstone, The Tradition of the Maries in Provence, New Blackfriars, 32, 379, 1951. ↩︎
- Jean-Paul Clébert, Guide de la Provence mystérieuse, Paris, Tchou, 1972. ↩︎
