page_title: Le Puy-en-Velay
section_title: Our Lady of Le Puy
hierarchical_section_title: Le Puy-en-Velay / History / Our Lady of Le Puy
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Le Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire - France), la ville, le rocher corneille et la cathédrale Notre-Dame (XIIe siècle). Deutsch: Le Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire - Frankreich), die stadt, die Rocher Corneille und die Kathedrale Notre Dame (12. Jahrhundert). English: Le Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire - France), the city, the Rocher Corneille and the cathedrale of Notre-Dame (XIIth century). Español: Le Puy-en-Velay (Alto Loira - Francia), la villa, la agija de Anis (Rocher Corneille) y la catedrale Notre-Dame (siglo XII).
context_page_description: Le Puy-en-Velay is the prefecture of the Haute-Loire department in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of south-central France.
  Located near the Loire River, the city is famous for its cathedral, for a kind of lentil, for its lace-making, as well as for being the origin of the Chemin du Puy, one of the principal origin points of the pilgrimage route of Santiago de Compostela in France. In 2017, the commune had a population of 18,995.
context_section_description: The Christianization legends of Mons Anicius relate that at the request of Bishop Martial of Limoges, Bishop Evodius/Vosy ordered an altar to the Virgin Mary to be erected on the pinnacle that surmounts Mont Anis. Some such beginning of the shrine Christianized the pagan site; it later became the altar site of the cathedral of Le Puy. This marked one starting-point for the pilgrim route to Santiago de Compostela, a walk of some 1600 km, as it still does today. The old town of Le Puy developed around the base of the cathedral.
  Pilgrims were early visitors to Le Puy, and it was the most popular destination in France during the Middle Ages. 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 (chanoines de paupérie), and he chose Le Puy, with Aachen and Saint-Gilles, as a center for the collection of Peter's Pence. Other notable medieval visitors to Le Puy were Charles the Bald in 877, Odo, count of Paris in 892, Robert II in 1029, and Philip Augustus in 1183.
  Louis IX met James I of Aragon here in 1245, and in 1254, when passing through Le Puy on his return from the Holy Land, he gave the cathedral an ebony image of the Blessed Virgin clothed in gold brocade. She is one of the many dozens of venerable "Black Virgins" of France. It was destroyed during the Revolution, but replaced at the Restoration with a copy that continues to be venerated. 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 Isabelle Romée, the mother of Joan of Arc, in 1429. Louis XI made the pilgrimage in 1436 and 1475, and in 1476 halted three leagues from the city and walked barefoot to the cathedral. Charles VIII visited it in 1495, Francis I in 1533.
  The legendary ancient shrine on the summit of Mons Anicius, which drew so many, would seem to predate the founding of an early church of Our Lady of Le Puy at Anicium. It was attributed to Bishop Vosy, who transferred the episcopal see from Ruessium to Anicium. Crowning the hill was a megalithic dolmen. A local tradition rededicated the curative virtue of the sacred site to Mary, who healed ailments when a person touched the standing stone. When the founding bishop Vosy climbed the hill, he found that it was snow-covered in July; in the snowfall the tracks of a deer around the dolmen outlined the foundations of the future church. The Bishop was apprised in a vision that the angels themselves had dedicated the future cathedral to the Blessed Virgin, whence the epithet "Angelic" given to the cathedral of Le Puy. The great dolmen was left standing in the center of the Christian sanctuary, which was constructed around it; the stone was re-consecrated as the Throne of Mary. By the 8th century, however, the stone, popularly known as the "stone of visions", was taken down and broken up. Its pieces were incorporated into the floor of a particular section of the church that came to be called the Chambre Angélique, or the "angels' chamber."
  It is impossible to say whether this St. Evodius is the same person who signed the decrees of the Council of Valence in 374. Neither can it be affirmed that St. Benignus, who in the 7th century founded a hospital at the gates of the basilica, and St. Agrevius, the 7th-century martyr from whom the town of Saint-Agrève Chiniacum 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 10th century, only six individuals are known of whom it can be said with certainty that they were bishops of Le Puy. The first of these, Scutarius, the legendary architect of the first cathedral, dates from the end of the 4th century according to an inscription that notes his name..
  Adhemar, bishop of Le Puy was a central figure in the First Crusade. Pope Clement IV was also bishop of Le Puy.
  Though the ancient diocese was suppressed by the Concordat of 1801, it was re-erected in 1823.
caption: The Rocher Corneille, the Cathédrale Notre-Dame du Puy and the city.
exif: {}