Vézelay
Avallon
Asquins
Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay

Like all medieval churches, Vézelay's basilica was conceived as the visible expression of the invisible church, of a heavenly Jerusalem.  It is a church of light.  Its very architecture is a sort of initiation, reminding us that we are pilgrims and strangers on this earth.  There is no denying its didactic purpose of starting us off on our holy journey.  Itself set in time, this basilica leads us beyond time.

Shortly after its foundation in the 9th century, the Benedictine monastery acquired the relics of Saint Mary Magdalene and thereby became a major place of pilgrimage.  It was here that Saint Bernard preached to launch the Second Crusade in 1146.  Richard the Lionheart and Philippe Auguste met here to set off on the Third Crusade in 1190.  The Basilica of Saint Mary Magdalene, a monastery church built in the 12th century, is a masterpiece of the Burgundian Romanesque style, both in its architectural  conception and in its sculpted porch and capitals.  In 1979 the Basilica was included in UNESCO's World Heritage listing.

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Avallon
The Collegiate Church of Lazarus

The principal attraction of this collegiate church of the 11th to 12th centuries can be seen even by visitors too busy to enter the building.  The astounding porches are decorated with a profusion of sculptures:  from signs of the zodiac to vine-leaves, it is as it were a petrified fireworks display testifying to the skill of Romanesque stone-carvers.

The fantastic forms of the columns shake off all previous stylistic constraints, whilst in their midst a column carved in the image of a prophet announces, in the manner of a biblical message, the arrival of that new artistic style which would later be called Gothic.

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It is an architectural composite:  the nave and choir are Romanesque (12th/13th century);  the bell-tower is Neo-Classical (18th century).  Its interior - huge for a parish church - reflects its original function as the place where pilgrims were first received.  The church was reworked in the 18th century, as shown by the Baroque decorations in the choir and Louis XVI-style wood-carving in the nave and side-aisles.

The church also has some frescoes of Saint Sebastian and Saint Eloi from the 12th and 14th centuries.  A 17th century reliquary bust of the village's patron Saint James in polychrome wood serves as a reminder that in 1998 UNESCO classified the church as the point of departure for the medieval Pilgrimage from Vézelay to Santiago de Compostella.

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An absolute jewel of Burgundian  Gothic, Saint-Père church is well worth a close look.  Some call it a miniature cathedral.

It seems probable that at times there were too many pilgrims for Vézelay itself to accommodate.  The large numbers of people therefore staying in Saint-Père justified the building of a place of worship for them to attend divine service.

The church was built between the 13th and 15th centuries and dedicated to the Virgin Mary.  In the 16th century it replaced as parish church and old church of St Peter which had given the village its name.

Fifty metres high, the 18th century bell-tower has an angel at each corner sounding the trump for all men to come to the Last Judgement.  In the porch, or narthex, is a sculpture in the round of the couple considered to be the church's founders, and a woman's tomb dated 1258.  The church's façade is a vast depiction of the Day of Judgement.

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