Ploërmel
À la Memoire Perpetuelle
de la Bataille des Trante
que Mgr le Maréchal de Beau Manoir
a Gaignée dans ce Lieu l’An 1530
Josselin is now chief town of a commune of 2,500 inhabitants; it has a fine mediæval château yet inhabitable, two ecclesiastical monuments of more than unusual excellence, and a rather shaky and ill-situated inn (Hôtel de France), which makes up in the abundance and excellence of its fare for what it lacks in the way of electric lights and modern sanitary arrangements.
The first houses of Josselin were grouped around a miraculous effigy of the Virgin, known as Notre Dame du Roncier, because it was found beneath a blackberry-bush. To-day Notre Dame du Roncier, the church and the chapel and its statue of the Virgin, are venerated highly by the faithful who make the pilgrimage to the shrine on the Monday and Tuesday of Pentecost and on the eighth of September, the birthday of the Virgin, when the remains of her ancient statue are shown. This effigy was broken and burned in the Revolutionary fury of 1793, but a modern replica was crowned, in the Chapel Notre Dame du Roncier, in 1868. The settlement which grew up around the shrine was surrounded by a protecting wall by the Count of Guéthénoc in 1008, and in 1030 it was given the name of Josselin, after his son.
Shrine of St. Etienne, Josselin