Le Puy-en-Velay - History

History

Le Puy-en-Velay was a major bishopric in medieval France, founded early, though its early history is legendary. According to a martyrology compiled by Ado of Vienne and published in many copies in 858, which was supplemented in the mid-10th century by Gauzbert of Limoges, a certain priest named George accompanied a certain Front, the first Bishop of Périgueux, when they were sent to proselytize in Gaul. Front was added to the list of the apostles to Gaul, traditionally sent out to reorganize Christians after the persecutions that are associated with Decius, circa 250. As with others of the group, notably Saint Martial of Limoges, later mythology pushed Saint Front and the priest George back in time, and tells how George had been restored to life with a touch of Saint Peter's staff. The expanding legend of this St. George, which, according to the Church historian Duchesne is not earlier than the eleventh century, then makes that saint one of the Seventy Apostles of the Gospel of Luke, and tells how he founded the church of the que dicitur Vetula in pago Vellavorum— as Ruessium began to be called during the fourth century: the city "called Vetula in the pays of the Vellavi" a document of 1004 termed it. Vetula means "the old woman": pagans were still making small images of her as late as the sixth century in Flanders, according to the vita of Saint Eligius. This was the first cathedral at Le Puy.

Following St. George the founder, later medieval local traditions evoke a legendary list of bishops at this chief town of the pays of Le Velay: Macarius, Marcellinus, Roricius, Eusebius, Paulianus, and Vosy (Evodius), all of them canonized by local veneration. It will have been from Bishop Paulianus that the Gaulish settlement of Ruessium/Vellavorum received its Christianizing name, Saint-Paulien. A bishop Evodius attended the Council of Valence in 374.

In the early 1180s peasants of Le Puy, lead by a carpenter named Durandus, formed a conspiratio (sworn association) called the Capucciati (because of the white hoods they wore as a sign of their conspiratio), they challenged seigneurial dominance in a short lived attempt at reformation.