We stopped at the Grand Soleil—a hostel of the ancient time, with an immense kitchen that would have delighted Jan Steen, with beams black with the smoke of a thousand fires, hung with smoked hams, and gourds, and strings of onions, and bright copper kettles—the very place for roistering villagers such as he loved to paint. It looked ancient enough to have been frequented by King Henry’s soldiers. It had a very cavern for a fireplace, with seats at the yawning sides beneath the crook, with which M. Michelet says the sanctity of the fireside was identified in the middle ages far more than with the hearth, and curious old andirons, such as are to be seen at Paris in the Hôtel de Cluny, with a succession of hooks for the spits to rest on, and circular tops for braziers and chafing-dishes. Stairs led from the kitchen to the story above, well enough to mount, but perilous in descent, owing to their steepness. Everything is rather in the perpendicular style at Roc Amadour. An invocation to Marie conçue sans péché was pasted on the door of our chamber, and a statuette of the Blessed Virgin stood on the mantel. The windows looked out on a little terrace dignified with the name of Square, where children were playing around the great stone cross. At table we found the sacrifice of Abraham and other sacred subjects depicted on our plates, and a cross on the salt-cellar. Roast kid and goat’s milk were set before us with various adjuncts, after which patriarchal fare we issued forth to visit the celebrated chapel of Our Lady of Roc Amadour. We found we had done well in fortifying the outer man for such an ascent, particularly as the day was far advanced, and the morning supplies at Albi had been of the most unsubstantial nature. We passed several houses with old archways of the thirteenth century, but the most imposing house in the place is a seigneurial mansion of the sixteenth century, now occupied by the Brothers of the Christian Doctrine. We soon came to the foot of the staircase leading up the side of the cliff to the sanctuaries. It consists of about two hundred and forty steps, partly hewn out of the rock, and is generally ascended by the devout pilgrim on his knees and with prayer—an enterprise of no trifling nature, as we are prepared to vouch. On great festivals this sacred ladder is crowded with people ascending and descending. Their murmured prayer is a gradual Psalm indeed. The first flight of one hundred and forty steps leads to a platform around which stood formerly the dwellings of the fourteen canons consecrated to the service of Mary. A Gothic portal, with a stout oaken door covered with fine old scroll-work of iron, leads by another flight of seventy-six steps to the collegiate church of Saint-Sauveur, one of the six remaining sanctuaries. Formerly there were twelve chapels built among the rocks in honor of the twelve apostles, but these all disappeared in the time of the unsparing Huguenots. Twenty-five steps more, at the left, bring you to a terrace with the miraculous chapel of Our Lady on one side and that of St. Michael on the other. Between them, directly before you, is the cave-like recess in which Zaccheus is said to have ended his days, and where he still lies in effigy on his stone coffin. Rupis amator he was called—the lover of the rock—whence St. Amateur, and St. Amadour, the name given him by the people. Amadour quasi amator solitudinis, say the old chronicles. His body remained here from the time of his death, in the year of our Lord 70 (we adhere to the delightful old legend), till 1166, when, according to Robert de Monte, who wrote in 1180, his tomb was opened at the request of a neighboring lord who was extremely ill and felt an inward assurance he should be healed by the sacred relics. His faith was rewarded. The body was found entire, and, on being exposed to public veneration, so numerous and extraordinary were the miracles wrought that Henry II. of England, who was at Castelnau de Bretenoux, came here to pay his devotions. It was now enshrined in the subterranean church of St. Amadour, where it remained several ages so incorrupt as to give rise to a common proverb among the people: Il est en chair et os, comme St. Amadour. But when the country was overrun by the Huguenots, his châsse was stripped of its silver mountings, his body broken to pieces with a hammer and cast into the fire. Only a small part of these venerable remains were snatched from the flames.
The terrace between the chapel of Our Lady and that of St. Michael is called in ancient documents the Platea S. Michaelis. Here all official acts relating to the abbey were formerly drawn up. The overhanging cliff, that rises above it to the height of two hundred and twenty feet, gives it the appearance of a cavern. Built into it, on the left, is the chapel of St. Michael, on the outer wall of which, suspended by an iron chain, is a long, rusty weapon popularly known as the sword of Roland. Not that it is the very blade with which the Pyrenees were once cleft asunder and so many kingdoms won. That shone as the sun in its golden hilt, the day the mighty Paladin came, on his way to Spain, to consecrate it to the Virgin of Roc Amadour and then redeem it with its weight in silver; whereas this is as dim and uncouth as the veriest spit that ever issued from a country forge. The wondrous Durandel, to be sure, was brought back after Roland’s death and hung up before the altar of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour, to whom it had been vowed, where it remained till carried off by Henry Court-Mantel, who, adding sacrilege to hypocrisy, came here in 1183 on the pretext of a pilgrimage, and, in order to pay the soldiers who served him in his rebellion against his father, pillaged the holy chapel so revered by King Henry. But his crime did not remain unpunished. He was soon after seized with a fatal illness, and died, but not unabsolved, in the arms of Gerard III., Bishop of Cahors.
Over Roland’s sword hang the fetters of several Christians delivered from a terrible slavery on the coast of Barbary by Our Lady’s might. Among these was Guillaume Fulcheri of Montpellier, whose mother came to Roc Amadour on the eve of the Assumption to offer a cake of wax to burn before the image of Mary for the redemption of her son. That same night, while she was keeping vigil with prayers and tears before the altar of the Virgin, his fetters were loosened in a mysterious manner, and he made his escape. One of his first acts on his arrival in France was to come to Roc Amadour with an offering of gratitude.
So, too, Guillaume Rémond of Albi, being unjustly confined in prison, with no other hope of liberty but his trust in the power of the glorious Virgin of Roc Amadour, while he was persevering in prayer during the night-watches his chains suddenly fell off about the ninth hour, to the utter amazement of the jailer, who became too powerless to hinder his escape. He took his fetters with him to hang up before the altar of his potent protectress.
On the pavement beneath these and other trophies of divine grace is an old chest with iron bands, fastened with a double lock of singular mechanism, in which pilgrims centuries ago deposited their offerings. Just beyond is a doorway over which is painted St. Michael holding the balance of justice in which we must all be weighed. This door leads by a winding stone staircase up to St. Michael’s chapel, the oldest of the existing edifices of Roc Amadour. This singular chapel is built against the rough cliff which constitutes one side of it, as well as the vault. It is chilly, and cave-like, and dripping with moisture. A niche at one end, like an arcosolium in the catacombs, is lined with faded old frescos of Christ and the evangelists. The windows are low and narrow, like the fissures of a cave, being barely wide enough for an angel in each—Michael with his avenging sword, Gabriel and his Ave, and Raphael looking protectingly down on Tobias with his fish. On one side is a spiral ascent to a balcony over the Platea S. Michaelis, from which the abbot of Roc Amadour used to bestow his solemn benediction on the crowd on the great days of pardon.
Descending to the Platea, we stop before the entrance to Our Lady’s chapel to examine the half-effaced mural paintings of the great mysteries of her life around the door. Near these can be traced the outlines of a knight pursued by several spectres, popularly believed to be the ex-voto of a man who sought to be delivered from the ghosts of those whose graves he had profaned. But the learned say this fresco refers to the famous old Lai des trois Morts et des trois Vifs of the thirteenth century, in which three young knights, gaily riding to the chase, with no thought but of love and pleasure, meet three phantoms, who solemnly address them on the vanity of all earthly joys. This painting was a perpetual sermon to the pilgrims, enforced, moreover, by the numerous tombs that surrounded the sanctuaries of Roc Amadour. For many noble families of the province, as well as pilgrims from afar, wished to be buried near the altar where their souls had gotten grace. So great was the number buried here in the middle ages that the monks became alarmed, and refused to allow any more to be brought from a distance. But Pope Alexander III. issued a bull declaring this place of burial free to all except those under the ban of the church.
It is, then, with these thoughts of death and the great mysteries of religion we enter the miraculous chapel around which we have so long lingered with awe. The season of pilgrimages has not yet fairly opened, and we find it quiet and unoccupied except by a stray peasant or two, and a few Sisters of Calvary with sweet, gentle faces. We hasten to drop our feeble round of prayer into the deep well fed by the devotion of centuries. Over the altar is the famous statue of Our Lady of Roc Amadour in a golden niche—black as ebony, perhaps from the smoke of the candles and the incense of centuries, and dressed in a white muslin robe spangled with gold. It is by no means a work of high art. Perhaps it is as ancient as this place of pilgrimage. Tradition says it was executed by the pious hands of St. Amadour himself, who was doubtless incapable of expressing the devout sentiments that animated him. It is carved out of a single piece of wood, and is now greatly decayed. The Virgin is stiff in attitude. Her hair floats on her shoulders. Her hands rest on the arms of the chair in which she is sitting, leaving the divine Child, enthroned on her knee, with no support but that of his inherent nature. A silver lamp, shaped like a fortress, with towers for the lights, hangs before her, and beneath is a blazing stand of candles. The profusion of lights in the chapels of popular devotion throughout France is truly remarkable. It was the same in the middle ages. The old chronicles tell us how the mother who sought the cure of a beloved child sometimes sent his weight in wax to be burned before the powerful Virgin of Roc Amadour. Others brought candles of the size of the limb they wished to be healed. And those who had already obtained some supernatural favor generally sent a candle once a year in token of gratitude. So numerous were the lights formerly given to this chapel that there was scarcely room for them. Poets even celebrated this profusion. Gauthier de Coinsy, one of the most celebrated cantadours of the thirteenth century, among other poems has left one entitled Du cierge que Notre Dame de Roc Amadour envoya sur la vièle du ménestrel qui vièlait et chantait devant sy image, relating how our benign Lady accorded one of these votive candles to a pious minstrel as he was singing her praises: Pierre de Sygeland was in the habit of entering every church he passed to offer a prayer and sing a song of praise to the sound of his viol. One day, as he was prolonging his pious exercises before the altar of Notre Dame de Roc Amadour, drawing every one in the church around him, both “clerc et lai,” by the melody of his voice, he raised his eyes to the sacred image of Mary and thus sang: “O sovereign Lady, Dame de toute courtoisie, if my hymn and the sound of my viol be acceptable to thee, be not offended at the guerdon I venture to implore: bestow on me, O peerless Lady! one of the many tapers that burn at thy sacred feet.”
His prayer is heard. The candle descends in the presence of five hundred persons and rests upon his viol. Friar Gerard, the sacristan, accuses him of using incantations, and, seizing the candle irefully, restores it to its place, taking good care to fasten it firmly down. Pierre continues to play. The candle descends anew. The good brother, suspecting him of magic, is more vexed than before and replaces the candle. The enraptured minstrel—
“En vièlant soupire et pleure,
La bouche chante et li cuers pleure”