Basilique Notre-Dame de l'Épine et la légende de l'aubépine

Évron

Tradition tells that around 620, a pilgrim returning from the Holy Land stopped here and fell asleep in the shade of a hawthorn, having hung on its branches his satchel containing a precious relic: a few drops of the Virgin's milk. When he awoke, a wonder — the shrub had grown enormously during the night, carrying the satchel out of reach. They tried cutting, they tried climbing: nothing worked. Alerted, Hadouin, bishop of Le Mans, came to witness the marvel and promised to raise a sanctuary on the spot; the hawthorn, it is said, then bowed its branch of its own accord to give back the relic. In 642 the bishop founded the Benedictine abbey around which the town of Évron grew up. Ravaged by the Bretons and then the Normans, refounded around 985–989, the abbey has left a church in which a thousand years of architecture can be read: a 10th-century crypt rediscovered in 1985, a powerful 11th-century Romanesque tower-porch, the 12th-century chapel of Saint-Crépin with its Byzantine-inspired frescoes, brought back, it is said, by a lord returning as a pilgrim from Compostela, and a Gothic choir consecrated in 1252, so ambitious that it was never completed. Pillaged by the Protestants in 1562, emptied at the Revolution, the abbey church is today the basilica of Notre-Dame de l'Épine, still a Marian pilgrimage; since 2014 the Communauté Saint-Martin has established its mother house in the classical buildings of the convent, restoring to the sanctuary of the Virgin's milk its original calling.

Getting there : Place de la Basilique, in the centre of Évron; free admission (town heritage service for guided tours, sacred arts festival in July). Town-centre car parks close by.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound