LS PUT
186
US PITT
The Martjnrology of Ado and the first legend of St.
Front of P^rigueux (written perhaps in the middle of
the tenth century, by Gauzbert, chorepiscopus of
Limoges) speak of a certain priest named George who
was brought to life by the touch of St. Peter's staff,
and who accompanied St. Front, St. Peter's mission-
ary and first Bishop of P^rigueux. A legend of St.
George, the origin of which, according to Duchesne^ is
not earlier than the eleventh century, makes that samt
one of the seventy-two disciples, and tells how he
founded the Church of Civitas Vetula in the County of
Le Velay, and how, at the request of St. Martial, he
caused an altar to the Blessed Virgin to be erected on
Mont Anis (Mons Anicius). After St. George, certain
local traditions of very late origin point to Sts. Maca-
rius, Marcellinus, Roncius, Eusebius, Paulianus, and
Vosy (Evodius) as bishops of Le Puy. It must have
been from St. Paulianus that the town of Ruessium,
now St. Paulien, received its name; and it was prob-
ably St. Vosy who completed the church of Our Lady
of Le Puy at Anicium and transferred the episcopal
see from Ruessium to Anicium. St. Vosy was ap-
prised in a vision that the angels themselves had dedi-
cated the cathedral to the Blessed Virgin, whence the
epithet Angelic given to the cathedral of Le Puy. It
is impossible to say whether this St. Evodius is the
same who signed the decrees of the Council of Valence
in 374. Neither can it be affirmed that St. Benignus,
who in the seventh century founded a hospital at the
gates of the basilica, and St. Agrevius, the seventh-cen-
tury martyr from whom the town of Saint-Aercve Chi-
niacum took its name, were really bishops. Duchesne
thinks that the chronology of these early bishops rests
on very little evidence and that very ill supported by
documents; before the tenth century only six indivicf-
uals appear of whom it can be saiil with certainty that
they were bishops of Le Puy. The first of these, Scu-
tarius, the legendary architect of the first cathedral,
dates, if we may trust the inscription which bears his
name, from the end of the fourth century.
Among the bishops of Le Puy are mentioned: Adh6mar of Monteil (1087-1100), author of the an- cient antiphon, "Salve Regina", whom Urban II, coming to Le Puy in 1095 to preach the Crusade, ap- pointed his legate, and who died under the walls of Antioch; Bertrand of Chalencon (1200-13), who him- self led the soldiers of his province against the Albi- genses under the walls of Beziers; Guy III Foulques (1257-59), who became pope as Clement IV; the theo- logian Durandus of Samt-Pour^ain (1318-26); Le- franc de Pompignan (1733-74), the great antagonist of the philosopfies; De Bonald (1823-39), afterwards Archbishop ot Lyons.
Legend traces the origin of the pil^mage of Le Puy to an apparition of the Blessea Virgin to a sick widow whom St. Martial had converted. No French pilgrimage was more frequented in the Middle A^es. Charlemagne came twice, in 772 and 800; there is a legend that in 772 he established a foundation at the cathedral for ten poor canons (dianoines de paupirie), and he chose Le Puv, with Aachen and Saint-Gillcs, as a centre for the collection of Peter's Pence. Charles the Bald visited I^ Puy in 877, Eudes in 892, Robert in 1029, Philip Aucustiis in 1183. Louis IX met the King of Aragon there in 1245; and in 1254 passing through Le Puy on his return from the Holy Land, he gave to the cathedral an ebony image of the Blessed Virgin clothed in pold brocade. After him, Le Puy was visited by Philip the Bold in 1282, by Philip the Fair in 1285, by Charles VI in 1394, by Charles VII in 1420, and by the mother of Blessed Joan of Arc in 1429. Louis XI made the pilgrimage in 1436 and 1475, and in 1476 halted three leagues from the city and went to the cathedral barefooted. Charles VIII visited it in 1495, Francis I in 1533. Theodulph, Bishop of Orleans, brought to Our Lady of I^ Puy, as an ex-voto for his deliverance, a magnificent Bible, the
letters of which were made of plates of gold and silver,
which he had himself put together, about 820, while in
prison at Angers. St. Mayeul, St. Odilon, St. Robert,
St. Hugh of Grenoble, St. Anthony of Padua, St.
Dominic, St. Vincent Ferrer, St. John Francis Regis
were pilgrims to Le Puy.
The Church of Le Puy received, on account of its great dignity and fame, innumerable temporal and spiritual favours. Concessions made in 9 19 by William the Young, Count of Auvergne and Le Velay, and in 923 by King Raoul, gave it sovereignty over the whole population of the town (bourg) of Ams, a population which soon amounted to 30,000 souls. In 999, Syl- vester II consecrated his friend Th^odard, a monk of Aurillac, Bishop of Le Puy, to replace Stephen of Gevaudan, whom his imcle Guy, Bishop of Le Puy, had in his lifetime, designated to be his successor, and whom a Roman council had excommunicated. Syl- vester II exempted Thdodard from all metropolitan jurisdiction, a privilege which Leo IX confirmed to the Bishops of Le Puy, also granting them the right, imtil then reserved to archbishops exclusively, of wearing the palUum. "Nowhere , he said in his Bull, " does the Blessed Virgin receive a more special afld more filial worship." It was from Le Puy that Urban II dated (15 August, 1095) the Letters Apos- tolic convoking the Council of Clermont, and it was a canon of Le Puy, Raymond d' Aiguilles, chaplain to the Count of Toulouse, who wrote the history of the crusade. Gelasius II, Callistus II, Innocent II, and Alexander III visited Le Puy to pray, and witn the visit of one of these popes must be connected the origin of the great jubilee wnich is granted to Our Lady of Le Puy whenever Good Friday falls on 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation. It is supposed that this jubilee was instituted by Callistus II, who passed through Le Puy, in April, 1119, or by Alexander III, who was there in August, 1162^ and June, 1165, or by Clement IV, who had been Bishop of he Puy. The first jubilee historically known took place m 1407, and in 1418 the chroniclers mention a Bull of Martin V prolonging the duration of the jubilee. It todk place three times in the nineteenth century — in 1842, 1853, and 1864 — and will take place agam in 1910. Lastly, during the Middle Ages, everyone who had made the pilgrimage to Le Puy had the privilege of making a will in extremis with only two witnesses in- stead of seven.
Honoured with such prerogatives as these, the Church of Le Puy assumed a sort of primacy in respect to most of the Churches of France, and even of Christ- endom. This primacy manifested itself practically in a right to beg^ estabhshed with the authorization of the Holy See, in virtue of which the chapter of Le Puy levied a veritable tax upon almost all the Chris- tian countries to support its hospital of Notre-Dame. In Catalonia this droit de qwte, recognized by the Spanish Crown, was so thoroughly established that the chapter had its collectors permanently installed in that country. A famous "fraternity" existed be- tween the chapter of Le Puy and that of Gerona in Catalonia. The efforts of M. Rochet to establish his contention, that this "fraternity" dated from the time of Charlemagne, have been fruitless; M. Coulet has proved that the earliest document in which it is mentioned dates only from 1470, and he supposes that at this date the chapter of Gerona, in order to escape
with the Church of Le Puy. In 1479 and in 1481
Pierre Bou\ner, a canon of Le Puy^ came to Gerona,
when the canons invoked against him certain legends
according to which Charlemagne had taken Gerona,
rebuilt its cathedral, given it a canon of Le Puy for
a bishop, and established a fraternity between the
chapters of Gerona and Le Puy. In support of tbcise
