Vézelay

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Vézelay is a commune in the Yonne département in the Bourgogne région of France.

The Abbey of Vézelay

In the 9th century, the Benedictine abbey of Vézelay was founded, as many abbeys were, on land that had been a late Roman villa, of Vercellus (Vercelle becoming Vézelay). The villa had passed into the hands of the Carolingians and devolved to a Carolingian count, Girart, of Rousillon. His two convents were looted and dispersed by Moorish raiding parties in the 8th century, and a hilltop convent was burnt by Norman raiders. The 9th-century refound under the guidance of Badilo became an affiliate of the reformed Benedictine order of Cluny. The Benedictine abbey church of Ste-Marie-Madeleine, with its complicated program of imagery in sculpted capitals and portals, is one of the outstanding masterpieces of Burgundian Romanesque art and architecture, though much of its exterior sculpture was defaced at the French Revolution.

About 1050 the monks of Vézelay began to claim to have the relics of Mary Magdalene, brought, they related, from the Holy Land either by their 9th-century founder-saint, Badilo, or by envoys despatched by him. A little later a monk of Vézelay believed that he had detected in a crypt at St-Maximin in Provence, carved on an empty sacrophagus, a representation of the Unction at Bethany, when Jesus' head was anointed by a woman of Bethany, assumed in the Middle Ages to be Mary Magdalene. The monks of Vézelay pronounced it to be Mary Magdalene's tomb, from which her relics had been translated to their abbey. Freed captives now brought their chains as votive objects to the abbey, and it was the newly-elected Abbot Geoffroy in 1037 who had the ironwork melted down and reforged as wrought iron railings surrounding the Magdelen's altar. Thus the erection of one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture which followed was made possible by pilgrims to the declared relics and these tactile examples demonstrating the efficacy of prayers. Vézelay also stood at the beginning of one of the four major routes through France for pilgrims going to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, in the north-western corner of Spain. Mary Magdalene is the prototype of the penitent, and Vézelay has remained an important place of pilgrimage for the Catholic faithful, though the actual relics were torched by Huguenots in the 16th century.

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To accommodate the influx of pilgrims a new abbey churchj was begun, dedicated on April 21 1104, but the expense of building so increased the tax burden in the abbey's lands that the peasants rose up and killed the abbot. The crush of pilgrims was such that an extended narthex— an enclosed porch— was built, inaugurated by Pope Innocent II in 1132 to help accommodate the pilgrim throng.

Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preached there in favor of a second crusade at Easter 1146, in front of King Louis VII. Richard I of England and Philip II of France met there and spent three months at the Abbey in 1190 before leaving for the Third Crusade. Thomas Becket in exile, chose Vézelay]] for his Whitsunday sermon in 1166, announcing the excommunication of the main supporters of his English King, Henry II, and threatening the King with excommunication too.

The nave, which had burnt once, with great loss of life, burned again in 1165 and was rebuilt in its present form.

The start of the decline of Vézelay coincided with the well-publicized discovery in 1279 of the body of Mary Magdalene at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume in Provence, given regal patronage by Charles II, the Angevine king of Sicily. When Charles erected a Dominican convent at La Sainte-Baume, the shrine was marvellously found intact, with an explanatory inscription stating why the relics had been hidden. The local Dominican monks soon compiled an account of miracles that these relics had wrought.

After the Revolution, Vézelay stood in danger of collapse. In 1834 the newly-appointed French inspector of historical monuments, Prosper Mérimée (more familiar as the author of Carmen), warned that it was about to collapse, and the young architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was appointed to supervise a massive and successful restoration in stages between 1840 and 1861. The flying buttresses that support the nave are his.

Vézelay, Church and Hill were added to the UNESCO's list of World Heritage Sites in 1979.