Rocamadour

French commune
nomcommune=Rocamadour
General view of Rocamadour
région=Midi-Pyrénées
département=Lot
arrondissement=Gourdon
canton=Gramat
intercomm=
insee=46240 |cp=46500 |maire=
mandat= | longitude=1.618612| latitude=44.800278
alt moy= 279 m |alt mini=110 m|alt maxi=364 m
hectares=4,942
km²=49.42
sans= 631|date-sans=1999
dens= 13 |date-dens=1999

Rocamadour ("Rocamador" in Occitan) is a commune of southwestern France. It is in the canton of Gramat, arrondissement of Gourdon, Lot "département", in the diocese of Cahors and the former province of Quercy.

Rocamadour [The "roc or "rocca" of Amadour".] has attracted visitors for its beautiful setting in a gorge above a tributary of the River Dordogne, and especially for its historical monuments and its sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which for centuries has attracted pilgrims from every country, among them kings, bishops, and nobles. [The modern account is J. Rocacher, "Rocamadour et son pèlerinage: étude historique et archéologique", 2 vols. (Toulouse) 1979.]

The town below the complex of monastic buildings and pilgrimage churches, traditionally dependent on the pilgrimage site and now on the tourist trade, lies near the river on the lowest slopes; it gives its name to Rocamadour, a small goat's milk cheese that was awarded AOC status in 1996.

Geography

Rocamadour is located 36 m. N.N.E. of Cahors by road. It is located on the right bank of the Alzou.

ights

Rocamadour was a dependency of the abbey of Tulle to the north in the Bas Limousin. The buildings of Rocamadour (from "ròca", cliff, and "sant Amador") rise in stages up the side of a cliff on the right bank of the Alzou, which here runs between rocky walls 400 ft. in height. Flights of steps ascend from the lower town to the churches, a group of massive buildings half-way up the cliff. The chief of them is the pilgrimage church of Notre Dame (rebuilt in its present configuration from 1479), containing the cult image at the center of the site's draw, a wooden Black Madonna reputed to have been carved by Saint Amator (Amadour) himself. The small Benedictine community continued to reserve the use of the small twelfth-century church of Saint-Michel, above and to the side. Below, the pilgrimage church opens on to a terrace where pilgrims could assemble, called the Plateau of St Michel, where there is a broken sword said to be a fragment of Durandal, once wielded by the hero Roland. The interior walls of the church of St Sauveur are covered, with paintings and inscriptions recalling the pilgrimages of celebrated persons. The subterranean church of St Amadour (1166) extends beneath St Sauveur and contains relics of the saint. On the summit of the cliff stands the château built in the Middle Ages to defend the sanctuaries.

=Pilgr

A curious legend supposed to explain the origin of this pilgrimage has given rise to controversies between critical and traditional schools, especially in recent times. A vehicle by which the legend was disseminated and pilgrims drawn to the site was "The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour", written ca. 1172, [Marcus Graham Bull, "The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour: Analysis and Translation" (1999) justifies his dating of 1172 and 1173 (for book III), an uncharacteristically rapid assemply of miracle accounts, which were commonly assembled over decades (p. 27); the collection contains 126 miracles in three books.] an example of the "miracula", or books of collected miracles, which had such a wide audience in the Middle Ages. According to the founding legend, Rocamadour is named after the founder of the ancient sanctuary, Saint Amator, identified with the Biblical Zacheus, the tax collector of Jericho mentioned in Luke 19:1-10 , and the husband of St. Veronica, who wiped Jesus' face on the way to Calvary. Driven out of Palestine by persecution, St. Amadour and Veronica embarked in a frail skiff and, guided by an angel, landed on the coast of Aquitaine, where they met Bishop St. Martial, another disciple of Christ who was preaching the Gospel in the south-west of Gaul. After journeying to Rome, where he witnessed the martyrdoms of St. Peter and St. Paul, Amadour, having returned to France, on the death of his spouse, withdrew to a wild spot in Quercy where he built a chapel in honour of the Blessed Virgin, near which he died a little later.

This account, like most other similar legends, does not make its first appearance till long after the age in which the chief actors are deemed to have lived. The name of Amadour occurs in no document previous to the compilation of his Acts, which on careful examination and on an application of the rules of the "cursus" to the text cannot be judged older than the 12th century. It is now well established that Saint Martial, Amadour's contemporary in the legend, lived in the 3rd not the 1st century, and Rome has never included him among the members of the Apostolic College. The mention, therefore, of St. Martial in the Acts of St. Amadour would alone suffice, even if other proof were wanting, to prove them doubtful. The untrustworthiness of the legend has led some recent authors to suggest that Amadour was an unknown hermit or possibly St. Amator, Bishop of Auxerre, but this is mere hypothesis, without any historical basis. The origin of the sanctuary of Rocamadour, lost in antiquity, is thus set down along with fabulous traditions which cannot bear up to sound criticism. After the religious manifestations of the Middle Ages, Rocamadour, as a result of war and the French Revolution, had become almost deserted. In the mid-nineteenth century, owing to the zeal and activity of the bishops of Cahors, it seems to have revived, and pilgrims and tourists are beginning to crowd there again.

In the St. Lawrence Valley (in present-day Quebec province) in February 1536 the explorer Jacques Cartier prayed to the Blessed Virgin under the title of Our Lady of Rocamadour that he would make a pilgrimage to her shrine "if he should obtain the grace to return to France safely."

Notes

External link and references

* [http://www.rocamadour.com/ Tourist office website]
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* Notre Dame De Rocamadour (French only) http://www.notre-dame-de-rocamadour.com