Church of the Saintes Maries de la Mer: A Fortified Romanesque Pilgrimage Church in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical, Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Carolingian, County of Provence, French, Roman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Fortified Church
On this page16 sections
History
The Church of the Saintes Maries de la Mer is a medieval Christian pilgrimage church in France, built in the Provençal Romanesque tradition and shaped by the insecurity of the ninth to twelfth centuries. Its origins reach back to an islet mentioned in the fourth-century poem Ora Maritima as “oppidum priscium Râ.” By the sixth century, the place was known as Sancta Maria de Ratis, meaning Saint Mary of the Raft. It later became Notre-Dame-de-la-Barque as the Christian tradition of the Three Marys landing on the Camargue coast became central to the site.
Before and during Christianization
The location carried religious associations before the church was established. Jean-Paul Clébert connected it with a temple to Artemis that Strabo attributed to the Phocaeans of Massalia. Earlier associations with Mithras and Artemis were subsequently incorporated into the Christian cult. Mithras was the central deity of the Roman mystery religion of Mithraism, while a taurobolic altar was connected with a bull-sacrifice ritual within that cult.
In 547, Caesarius of Arles, a sixth-century bishop and major church leader in southern Gaul, founded a community of nuns on the islet. Their presence formed part of an effort to Christianize an established pilgrimage site. Repeated threats from Saracen and Viking raids eventually forced the nuns to leave.
Medieval rebuilding and fortification
Construction began in the ninth century, during the transition from Carolingian architecture to Romanesque architecture, a medieval style characterized by massive walls, round-headed arches, sturdy proportions, and relatively small openings. The church was rebuilt under Count William I of Provence after he expelled the Saracens in 973, but it had fallen into ruin again by 1061.
The church then passed into the revenues of the metropolitan chapter of Saint-Trophime in Arles. The canons returned it to Montmajour Abbey, which founded a priory there in 1078. After this change, the church was dedicated to Notre-Dame-de-la-Mer. The present fortified building was reconstructed between 1165 and 1170. Major defensive additions followed in the fourteenth century, while the nave was lengthened by two bays in the fifteenth century.
During the fourteenth century, when the papacy was based at Avignon, pilgrimage to the church became especially popular. In 1343, Pope Benedict XII fixed celebrations for the saints on 25 May and 22 October. In 1357, Pierre de Nantes, bishop of Saint-Pol-de-Léon, travelled to the church after attributing his recovery from gout to the intercession of the Three Marys, traditionally Mary Jacobe, Mary Salome, and Mary Magdalene.
That same year, the approach of Arnaud de Cervole and his Anglo-Gascon troops through the Camargue led to the relics being sheltered at Sainte-Baume. The threat also prompted further strengthening of the church’s defenses. The church formed a major part of the defense of Arles, while medieval ramparts around it protected the village until the French Revolution.
Relics, ritual, and continuing devotion
In 1448, during the reign of René of Anjou, an Angevin ruler associated with the excavation, the entire church floor was opened in a search for the relics of the Three Marys. Two bodies were found and identified as Mary Jacobe and Mary Salome. Their bones were washed with white wine, placed in reliquaries, and moved to the upper chapel.
The discoveries established a cycle of veneration three times each year. Mary Jacobe is honored on 25 May, Mary Salome on 22 October, and a further observance takes place on 3 December. In May and October, processions carry the saints in a boat to the sea. Saint Sarah is venerated on 24 May. Since 1936, the Romani community’s immersion of Saint Sarah has taken place one day before the immersion of the Three Marys. Her statue is lowered into the water to approximately waist height. The sea procession joins movement through the countryside with the ritual immersion of the relics and is associated with older agrarian and purification processions.
The church remains a Roman Catholic pilgrimage church dedicated to Notre-Dame and the Saintes Maries within the Archdiocese of Arles. It has been classified as a French historical monument since 1840.
Remains
The church is a fortified Romanesque building whose defensive additions largely conceal the earlier Romanesque fabric. It has a single nave, battlements, alternating machicolations, a watchtower, a protected wall-walk, and a bell-gable. Machicolations are projecting defensive structures with openings through which objects could be dropped onto attackers, while a wall-walk is a protected passage along the top of a fortification. The wall-walk rests on consoles or buttresses and was built with corbelled construction. The building rises about 15 metres above the town and can be seen from roughly 10 kilometres away.
Exterior defenses and upper chapel
Apse and guardhouse
The polygonal apse is the principal exterior part of the Romanesque structure that remains visible. An old guardhouse rises above it, and the apse is decorated with alternating Lombard bands and corbels. Its round-headed window has two colonnettes with capitals dated to the beginning of the thirteenth century.
Bell-gable
The bell-gable stretches across the width of the choir. Machicolations crown it, with openings arranged in four positions in a row and a fifth above. Five bells hang within it: Marie Jacobé-Marie Salomé, cast in 1993 by Paccard of Annecy; Claire, cast in 1837 by Eugène Baudouin of Marseille; Rosa, cast in 1839 by Eugène Baudouin; Réconciliation, cast in 1984 by Paccard; and Fulcranne, cast by Pierre Pierron of Avignon.
High chapel
A high chapel occupies the former guardhouse above the choir. Dedicated to the archangel Saint Michael, it forms part of the defensive system and has the appearance of a keep. It also served as a lookout post. A reliquary containing the saints’ relics is kept there and brought out during the pilgrimage.
Nave, choir, and sculpture
Nave and apse
The interior has a rectangular single nave with four bays and a Romanesque semicircular apse. A broken barrel vault spans the nave, supported laterally by round-headed arcades contained within the thick walls. The apse takes the form of a semi-dome with seven blind arcades, supported by eight marble columns with historiated capitals, meaning capitals carved with figures or narrative scenes.
Six capitals show foliage, masks, human busts, or devil heads. Their style relates them to the north gallery of the Saint-Trophime cloister, and they date to approximately 1160 to 1165. The other two depict the Incarnation and the Passion of Christ and are regarded as major works of Provençal Romanesque sculpture. Their style is related to the frieze of Nîmes Cathedral. The Incarnation capitals show the Visitation on one face and the archangel Gabriel appearing to Zechariah on the other. The Passion is represented through the Sacrifice of Abraham.
Crypt of Saint Sarah
A semi-subterranean crypt beneath the choir is entered from the transept. Dedicated to Saint Sarah, also called Sarah the Black, it contains her clothed statue, an altar, numerous ex-votos, and a smooth marble block known as the “Pillow of the Three Marys.” Three cippi, ancient stone monuments, remain visible in the crypt. The first two are dedicated to Juno, while the third is a taurobolic altar associated with Mithras.
Earlier remains and interior furnishings
Excavated sacred features
The 1448 excavation revealed a well, a freshwater spring, and a small cave in the choir. The cave contained earthen bowls, some intact and others broken, together with ashes and black coals. A wall crossing the choir opened through a small door into an oratory. Inside stood a column that supported a marble altar table.
Earlier rural chapel
The same excavation exposed the remains of an earlier rural chapel built from hard limestone. Its single nave had three bays and led to a choir closed by a semicircular apse. A square tower stood on the north side and was reached by a staircase from the choir. Two side entrances served different purposes. The northern door was reserved for religious personnel and led toward the cloister and garden. The southern door opened into the third bay and was almost certainly decorated with two Arles-type lions. Those lions were later reused on a walled fifteenth-century door.
Devotional objects and furnishings
A niche on the left side of the nave contains Mary Jacobe and Mary Salome in a boat. The statues of Saint Sarah and of the Three Marys in their boat are headless and have removable heads. Beneath a seventeenth-century wooden Christ, a well recalls the church’s use as a refuge for the population during medieval pirate raids.
Part of the original paving survives on the north side of the nave, near the entrance portal. A holy-water font was carved from an earlier capital. The nave also contains a seventeenth-century retable in gilded wood and a sixteenth-century painted altar canopy on a wooden support. The canopy depicts the Apostles and the Nativity. Ex-votos are displayed in a case, and additional paintings hang on the nave walls.
