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The Marian apparitions of France, from Le Puy to L'Île-Bouchard
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The Marian apparitions of France, from Le Puy to L'Île-Bouchard

19 min read

1519–1947; older tradition at Le Puy; episcopal recognitions of La Salette (1851), Lourdes (1862), Pontmain (1872) and Le Laus (2008); public worship authorised at L'Île-Bouchard (2001)

Shepherd girls, children, a novice, a servant who say they have seen the Virgin, and bishops who investigate, rule or keep silent: from Le Puy and Cotignac (1519) to the rue du Bac (1830), La Salette (1846), Lourdes (1858), Pontmain (1871) and Pellevoisin (1876), then Tilly (1896), Campitello (1899) and L'Île-Bouchard (1947). The route separates what tradition says, what the Church has recognised or merely permitted and what historians have made of it, in the age of the Immaculate Conception, of the medal and of the pilgrim trains.

What an apparition is, and who judges it

A Marian apparition, in the sense in which the Church uses the word, is not an article of faith: it is an event reported by a witness — almost always a shepherd girl, a child, a servant or a novice who cannot read — which the local bishop examines, authorises or sets aside. The Council of Trent, in 1563, reserved to bishops the judgement of “new miracles”; the practice became fixed in the 19th century: a commission of theologians and physicians, repeated questioning of the visionary, examination of the cures, then a pastoral letter read from the pulpit declaring the apparition “certain” or refraining from doing so. Rome intervenes only from a distance, through indirect gestures: indulgences, a feast in the calendar, the coronation of a statue.

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