On the way to the Loire valley, we stopped along the A36 after Dole where we could go for a swim and spend the night for 5,- Euros at a great natural lake which we had to ourselves as soon as the day visitors had left (47.053501, 5.23822).
The next morning, we decided to do one cultural stop on the way. The choice fell on Vézelay with its abbey.
The Benedictine abbey church was constructed between 1120 and 1150, and is now the Basilica of Saint Mary Magdalene, a great masterpiece of Burgundian Romanesque architecture.
The Benedictine abbey of Vézelay was founded, as many abbeys were, on land that had been a late Roman villa. The villa had passed into the hands of the Carolingians. Two convents, which they founded there, were looted by Moorish raiding parties in the 8th century, and a hilltop convent was burnt by Norman raiders. In the 9th century, the abbey was refounded under the guidance of Badilo, who became an affiliate of the reformed Benedictine order of Cluny. Vézelay stood at the beginning of one of the four major routes through France for pilgrims going to Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
About 1050 the monks of Vézelay began to claim to hold the relics of Mary Magdalene, brought, they said, from the Holy Land by their 9th-century founder-saint, Badilo.
To accommodate the influx of pilgrims, a new abbey church was begun, dedicated on April 21, 1104. The crush of pilgrims was such that an enclosed porch was built, inaugurated by Pope Innocent II in 1132, to help accommodate the pilgrim throng.
Vézelay has remained an important place of pilgrimage for the Catholic faithful, though the actual claimed relics were torched by Huguenots in the 16th century.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preached at Vézelay in favour of a second crusade at Easter 1146, in front of King Louis VII. Richard I of England and Philip II of France met there and spent three months at the Abbey in 1190 before leaving for the Third Crusade. Thomas Becket, in exile, chose Vézelay for his Whit Sunday sermon in 1166, announcing the excommunication of the main supporters of his English King, Henry II, and threatening the King with excommunication too. We found it most fascinating to stand in a church where all these important events took place.
From Vézelay we made our way through endless forests until we reached the Loire, where we spent the night near Bonny-sur-Loire. (47,550751, 2,837216)
