Fig. 300.—Charles VI. fulfilling his vow to Our Lady of Hope (1389).—The king, who was at that time but twenty years of age, having lost his way one night in a forest near Toulouse, made a vow that if he recovered his road he would offer the value of his horse to Our Lady of Hope. In the painting he is represented in the act of carrying out his vow, bareheaded and on horseback, accompanied by his brother, the Constable of Clisson, and other nobles. Above are seen angels with streamers, on which are written the word “Hope.”—After an ancient Fresco in the Cloister of the Carmelite Monastery at Toulon.
The worship of Our Lady of Rocamadour is very possibly contemporaneous with that of Our Lady of Chartres—dating back to the first age of Christianity in Gaul. Nothing is known as to the origin of this devotion, which is supposed to have replaced that of some local divinity. The Virgin of Rocamadour was famous as early as the eighth century, for, if tradition is to be believed, Charlemagne and his brave followers came to pay it homage on their return from an expedition against the Gascons; and the sword of Roland, deposited as an offering upon the altar of the chapel of St. Michael, is still to be seen. Around this sanctuary, dedicated to the Virgin, were seventeen chapels hewn in the rock; they were dedicated to Jesus Christ, to the Twelve Apostles, to St. John the Baptist, to St. Anne, to St. Michael, and to St. Amadour, whose hermitage was here, and who had no doubt brought from the East the black Virgin who has been venerated there for twelve or fifteen centuries.
Fig. 301.—Miraculous Image of Our Lady of Grace, at Cambrai, brought to that city by Canon Furcy de Bruille in 1450: this is one of the painted images attributed by a pious tradition to St. Luke.—The inhabitants of Cambrai, having fervently prayed for protection to their patroness when the English besieged their city, attributed the impotence of the enemy’s attack to her interposition. Hence is derived the poetical representation of the Virgin gathering up the cannon-balls in a lace veil. To the right is the ancient metropolitan church of Cambrai, a remarkable monument of Gothic architecture, destroyed at the beginning of the present century.—Reduced Fac-simile of a Drawing of the Seventeenth Century, lent by M. Delattre, of Cambrai.
The pilgrimage of St. Baume, near Maximin, in Provence, was not in honour of the Virgin Mary, but of the saintly women Mary Magdalene (Fig. 299) and her sister Martha, Mary the mother of James, and Salome, who were witnesses of our Saviour’s life, of his miracles, and of his resurrection. Whatever may be the truth of the alleged mission of St. Lazarus and his two sisters Mary Magdalene and Martha, in southern Gaul, the devotion paid to them amongst a people who believed in the legend was almost as marked as the worship which was rendered to the Virgin. The pilgrims never left St. Baume without making a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Lazarus at Autun, after having visited the relics of the Marys in the Island of Camargue, at St. Maximin, Arles, and at Tarascon. The grotto of St. Baume, in which Mary Magdalene lived for thirty years in fellowship with the angels who raised her into the air during her periods of ecstasy, who brought her food and took every care of her, was, from the fifth or sixth century, a rendezvous for the faithful who came to visit the dread abode which had been sanctified by the long penitence of the Magdalene. Popes, emperors, kings, and the most illustrious personages considered it an honour to be numbered amongst these pilgrims, and those whose age or infirmities prevented them from being personally present deputed others to bear thither their vows and their offerings.
Fig. 302.—Our Lady of Boulogne.—“One day,” so the legend goes, “the Virgin appeared to the burghers and inhabitants of the town of Boulogne in a hull floating upon the sea, without mast, sail, rigging, or oars, having on board neither seaman nor any other living man, only a young virgin, full of grace and modesty, eloquent of speech, reserved in her manner, gracious of carriage, and more beautiful than all earthly women.”—After a Miniature in a Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library of the Arsenal, Paris.
Fig. 303.—“Au juste poids véritable balance.”—Picture by Antoine Picquet, Master-Painter in the Brotherhood of Our Lady of Amiens, presented to the church of that city on the 25th of December, 1518. This painting, now in the Cluny Museum, is but the symbolic development of the above motto. The Virgin is in a standing posture beneath a canopy; the Infant Jesus is drawing towards him one of the scales of the balance in which God the Father, surrounded by his angels, is about to weigh the crowns of earthly sovereigns. In the background, amidst beautiful scenery, on one side peasants are gathering in the harvest and the vintage, and on the other is seen Queen Claude, mounted, and followed by a brilliant suite. In the foreground are two groups: to the right Francis I., with Triboulet his jester, and knights; to the left, the emperor, the pope, a cardinal, the Bishop of Amiens, and several abbots.—From an Engraving in the “Arts au Moyen Age,” by Dusommerard.
The mere list of the pilgrimages of Our Lady in France, in that kingdom of the lilies which has always been under the immediate protection of the Virgin Mary, would fill several pages, and it would take whole volumes to relate their origin and history. We will therefore only mention the most famous and the most ancient: Our Lady of Alet, near Toulouse (Fig. 300); Our Lady of the Fountain of the Ardilliers, near Saumur; Our Lady of the Virtues, at Aubervilliers, near Paris; Our Lady of the Haven, at Clermont, in Auvergne; Our Lady of Fourvières, at Lyons; Our Lady of the Osier, near Grenoble; Our Lady of Bonne-Garde, at Longpont; Our Lady of Bethlehem, at Ferrières, Gâtinais; Our Lady of Good Hope, at Valenciennes; Our Lady of Grace, at Cambrai (Fig. 301); Our Lady of Boulogne-sur-Mer (Fig. 302), &c. Most of these are represented by painted images—some brought from the East at the time of the Crusades; others, the origin of which is only spoken to by the miracles which marked them out for the veneration of the faithful. There are also statuettes in wood and stone, nearly all of which belong to the Coptic group of black Virgins, which throughout Europe are associated with miracles of an early age.