Roman Catholic Diocese of Le Puy-en-Velay - Pilgrimage and Medieval Status

Pilgrimage and Medieval Status

Legend traces the origin of the pilgrimage of Le Puy to an apparition of the Blessed Virgin to a sick widow whom St. Martial had converted. No French pilgrimage was more frequented in the Middle Ages. Charlemagne came twice, in 772 and 800; there is a legend that in 772 he established a foundation at the cathedral for ten poor canons (chanoines de paupérie), and he chose Le Puy, with Aachen and Saint-Gilles, as a centre for the collection of Peter's Pence.

Charles the Bald visited Le Puy in 877, Eudes of France in 892, Robert I of France in 1029, Philip Augustus in 1183. Louis IX met the King of Aragon there in 1245; and in 1254 passing through Le Puy on his return from Palestine, he gave to the cathedral an ebony image of the Blessed Virgin clothed in gold brocade. After him, Le Puy was visited by Philip the Bold in 1282, by Philip the Fair in 1285, by Charles VI of France in 1394, by Charles VII of France in 1420, and by the mother of Joan of Arc in 1429. Louis XI made the pilgrimage in 1436 and 1475, and in 1476 halted three leagues from the city and went to the cathedral barefooted. Charles VIII visited it in 1495, Francis I of France in 1533.

Theodulph, Bishop of Orléans, brought to Our Lady of Le Puy, as an ex-voto for his deliverance, a magnificent Bible, the letters of which were made of plates of gold and silver, which he had himself put together, about 820, while in prison at Angers. St. Mayeul, St. Odilon, St. Robert, St. Hugh of Grenoble, St. Anthony of Padua, St. Dominic, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. John Francis Regis were pilgrims to Le Puy.

The Church of Le Puy received, on account of its dignity and fame, temporal and spiritual favours. Concessions made in 919 by William the Young, Count of Auvergne and Le Velay, and in 923 by King Raoul, gave it sovereignty over the whole population of the town (bourg) of Anis, a population which soon amounted to 30,000 souls. In 999, Pope Sylvester II consecrated his friend Théodard, a monk of Aurillac, Bishop of Le Puy, to replace Stephen of Gévaudan, whom his uncle Guy, Bishop of Le Puy, had in his lifetime, designated to be his successor, and whom a Roman council had excommunicated. Sylvester II exempted Théodard from all metropolitan jurisdiction, a privilege which Pope Leo IX confirmed to the Bishops of Le Puy, also granting them the right, until then reserved to archbishops exclusively of wearing the pallium. "Nowhere", he said in his Bull, "does the Blessed Virgin receive a more special and more filial worship."

It was from Le Puy that Pope Urban II dated (15 August 1095) the Letters Apostolic convoking the Council of Clermont, and it was a canon of Le Puy, Raymond d'Aiguilles, chaplain to the Count of Toulouse, who wrote the history of the crusade. Pope Gelasius II, Pope Callistus II, Pope Innocent II and Pope Alexander III visited Le Puy to pray, and with the visit of one of these popes must be connected the origin of the great Jubilee which is granted to Our Lady of Le Puy whenever Good Friday falls on 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation. It is supposed that this jubilee was instituted by Callistus II, who passed through Le Puy, in April, 1119, or by Alexander III, who was there in August, 1162, and June, 1165, or by Pope Clement IV, who had been Bishop of Le Puy. The first jubilee historically known took place in 1407, and in 1418 the chronicles mention a Bull of Pope Martin V prolonging the duration of the jubilee. During the Middle Ages, everyone who had made the pilgrimage to Le Puy had the privilege of making a will in extremis with only two witnesses instead of seven.

Honoured with such prerogatives, the Church of Le Puy assumed a sort of primacy in respect to most of the Churches of France, and even of Christendom. This primacy manifested itself practically in a right to beg, established with the authorization of the Holy See, in virtue of which the chapter of Le Puy levied a veritable tax upon almost all the Christian countries to support its hospital of Notre-Dame.