Vézelay Abbey
Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The name Vézelay is thought to descend from Vercellus, a late Roman villa on whose land the abbey was founded.
- Freed captives brought their chains to the abbey as thanks to Mary Magdalene, and the iron was reforged into railings around her altar.
- The heavy taxes levied to build an earlier church, dedicated in 1104, provoked the abbey's peasants into a revolt in which they killed the abbot.
- Pope Innocent II came in person in 1132 to inaugurate an enclosed porch built to hold the throngs of pilgrims.
- Richard the Lionheart and Philip II of France did not just meet here in 1190: they spent about three months at the abbey before setting out.
- Among the strange peoples on the portal lintel, a tiny figure climbs a ladder to mount his horse and another man has ears like an elephant's.
- The portal's lower compartments show nations already converted, including Byzantines, Armenians and Ethiopians, carved as dignified, fully human figures.
- Prosper Mérimée, the inspector who raised the alarm in 1834, is better known today as the author of the novella Carmen.
- The relics claimed as Mary Magdalene's were burned by the Huguenots during the sack of 1569.
- The earliest religious houses on the site were sacked by Moorish raiders, and a hilltop convent was later burned by the Normans.
Why it is worth it
Vézelay Abbey crowns a hill in northern Burgundy, and its basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine is one of the high points of Romanesque art in Europe. From about 1050 the monks claimed to hold relics of Mary Magdalene, and the pilgrims they attracted paid for a church big enough to receive them. The nave that stands today was rebuilt after a fire in 1165, and a vast narthex was added to hold the crowds. Vézelay was also the starting point of one of the four great French routes to Santiago de Compostela, and the church and hill have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
The inner portal of the narthex is the reason many people come. Its tympanum does not show the Last Judgment, as most Romanesque portals do, but is usually read as the Pentecost — Christ sending the apostles out to all the peoples of the world. On the lintel below file the nations still waiting for the Word, carved as not quite human: some with pig snouts, some misshapen, some as tiny figures — a medieval map of the known and imagined world. Inside, the carved capitals of the nave continue the story in dozens of lively scenes.
History passed through this hilltop. Bernard of Clairvaux preached the Second Crusade here at Easter 1146 before King Louis VII; Thomas Becket, in exile, pronounced excommunications here in 1166; and Richard the Lionheart and Philip II of France met here in 1190 before setting off on the Third Crusade. The shrine declined after a rival discovery of Magdalene's body in Provence in 1279, the Huguenots sacked the church in 1569, and by 1834 it was close to collapse. Prosper Mérimée sounded the alarm and a young Eugène Viollet-le-Duc led a restoration from 1840 to 1861, adding the flying buttresses that support the nave today.
Come around the summer solstice if you can. At noon on the longest days, sunlight through the south windows falls as a row of bright pools exactly along the centre of the nave floor, an alignment identified by one of the church's guardians in 1976. The walk up the hill from the village below is part of the pilgrimage.
Getting there
Vézelay is a small village in the Yonne department, about 40 km from Auxerre. The nearest airport, Châlons Vatry (XCR), is about 150 km away and has limited service; most international visitors arrive via Paris and continue by road or rail into Burgundy. Relics of Mary Magdalene are still displayed in the basilica, which remains a place of worship — check visiting times before going.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Vézelay Abbey is a Benedictine and Cluniac monastery in Vézelay in the east-central French department of Yonne. It was constructed between 1120 and 1150. The Benedictine abbey church, now the Basilica of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, with its complex program of imagery in sculpted capitals and portals, is one of the great masterpieces of Burgundian Romanesque art and architecture. Sacked by the Huguenots in 1569, the building suffered neglect in the 17th and the 18th centuries and some further damage during the period of the French Revolution.
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