Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume

French commune
nomcommune=Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume
, begun 1295.
région=Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur
département=Var
arrondissement=Brignoles
canton=Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume (chief town)
insee=83116
cp=83470
maire=Alain Penal (UMP)
mandat=2008-2014
intercomm=
longitude=5.86141385
latitude=43.45315979
alt moy=520 m
alt mini=261 m
alt maxi=778 m
hectares=6,413
km²=64.13
sans=12,402
date-sans=1999
dens=193
date-dens=1999

Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume is a commune of southeastern France, 40 km east of Aix-en-Provence, in the westernmost point of Var "département". It is located at the foot of the Sainte-Baume mountains: "baume" is the Provençal equivalent of "cave". The town's basilica dedicated to Mary Magdalene was the site where Mary Magdalene was rehabilitated in the 13th century and remade as the sinning figure of perfect penitence and the co-patron, with the Virgin Mary, of the Dominican Order.

Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume is not to be confused with Sainte-Maxime farther east on the Côte d'Azur.

History

The Roman Villa Lata, remains of which have been identified beneath Place Malherbe in the center of the town, was one among numerous agricultural working Roman villas in the plain that was traversed by the via Aurelia. The Abbey of Saint Victor at Marseille had dependencies in the neighborhood: Saint-Maximin, Saint-Jean, Saint-Mitre, Sainte-Marie. The Romanesque parish church dedicated to Saint Maximin of Trier was demolished in the final stages of constructing the basilica. In the 12th century, Berenguer Ramon I, Count of Provence, established Saint-Maximin as a town uniquely under his care. In 1246, following the death of Raymond IV Berenger, Provence passed through his younger daughter to Charles d'Anjou, brother of Louis IX of France and sometime king of Sicily. The tenuous Anjou presence at Saint-Maximin was fiercely contested by the seigneurs of Baux among other local leaders.

The "cultus" of Mary Magdalene

The little town was transformed by the well-published discovery, 12 December 1279, in the crypt of Saint-Maximin, of a sarcophagus that was proclaimed to be the tomb of Mary Magdalene, signalled by miracles [The Dominican Bernard Gui, claimed in his chronicle, written early in the following century, that a sweet spicy fragrance emanated from the sarcophagus' contents, and that a green shoot was found to be growing from the Magdalen's tongue. (Jansen 2000)] and by the ensuing pilgrim-drawing cult of Mary Magdalene and Saint Maximin, that was assiduously cultivated by Charles II of Anjou, King of Naples. He founded the massive Gothic Basilique Ste. Marie-Madeleine in 1295; the basilica had the blessing of Boniface VIII, who placed it under the new teaching order of Dominicans.

The founding tradition held that relics of Mary Magdalene were preserved here, and not at Vézelay, [Other alleged burial places are at Ephesus (now in Turkey) and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, whence, it is said, her remains were later removed to Europe.] and that she, her brother Lazarus, and Maximin, a 3rd-century martyr who was now added to earlier lists of the Seventy Disciples, fled the Holy Land by a miraculous boat with neither rudder nor sail [For the literary topos in hagiography of the miraculous boat, compare the legends of Mac Cuill and the voyages of Hui-Corra and of Mael Duin, and in religious legend Brendan of Clonfert, Saint Tathan who was carried to Britain in a rudderless boat, the three Irishmen carried to King Alfred in an oarless boat (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, year 891), the birth of Saint Kentigern, all instanced by Hares-Stryker, 1993. Celidoine is set adrift in a rudderless boat in the "Estoire de Saint Graal". The translation of Saint James the Great in a rudderless boat to Hispania might be added. See Stith Thompson, "Motif-index of folk-literature; a classification of narrative elements in folktales, ballads, myths, fables, mediaeval romances, exempla, fabliaux, jest-books, and local legends." Rev. ed.. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press) 1955-58] and landed at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, in the Camargue near Arles. She then came to Marseille and converted the local people. Later in life, according to the founding legend, she retired to a cave in the Sainte-Baume mountains. She was buried in Saint-Maximin, which was not a place of pilgrimage in early times, though there is a Gallo-Roman crypt under the basilica. Sarcophagi are shown, of St Maximin, Ste. Marcelle, Ste. Suzanne and St. Sidoine (Sidonius) as well as the reliquary, which is said to hold the remains of Mary Magdalene.

Construction of the basilica, begun in 1295, was complete as to the crypt when it was consecrated in 1316. In it were installed a Gallo-Roman funerary monument—of the 4th century in fact—and four marble sarcophagi, whose bas-reliefs permit a Christian identification. The Black Death in 1348, which carried away half the local population, interrupted the building campaign, which was not taken up again until 1404, but found the sixth bay of the nave complete by 1412. Work continued until 1532, when it was decided to leave the basilica just as it was, without a finished west front or portal or belltowers, features that it lacks to this day. The plan has a main apse flanked by two subsidiary apses. Its great aisled nave is without transept. The nave is flanked by sixteen chapels in the aisles.

Administration

List of mayors of Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume (partial)::2008-2014: Alain Penal (UMP):2001-2008: Gabriel Rinaudo (RPR):1995-2001: Horace Lanfranchi (RPR)

Notes

Further reading

* Katherine Ludwig Jansen, "The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages" (Princeton University Press) 2000.
*Hares-Stryker, Carolyn, 1993. "Adrift on the seven seas: the medieval topos of exile at sea", "Florilegium" 12 ( [http://www.uwo.ca/english/florilegium/vol-xii/hares.pdf on-line text; pdf file] )

External links

* [http://www.st-maximin.fr/ Official website]
* [http://www.uquebec.ca/musique/orgues/france/smaximinp.html Pierre Chéron: history of the basilica with special reference to the organ by Isnard, 1772]