Abbaye Saint-Victor de Marseille

Marseille (7e arrondissement)

Around 415 the monk John Cassian, come from the East by way of Bethlehem and Egypt, founded at Marseille, near the necropolis where the martyrs were venerated — among them Victor, a soldier who died around 303 —, one of the first monasteries of the West, two centuries before Benedict of Nursia. There remains of it, in the crypts, an extraordinary deposit: the primitive rock-cut chapel, the "grotto" that legend attributes to Lazarus, chapels of the 6th and 7th centuries, and the richest collection of early Christian sarcophagi in Provence after Arles, put back there in 1968. For Saint-Victor is the great keeper of the legends of the boat: Lazarus, it says, was the first bishop of Marseille, and it was Saint-Victor that, from the 11th century until 1295, owned Saint-Maximin and the grotto of the Sainte-Baume, before Boniface VIII handed them over to the Dominicans of the count of Provence — the monks lost the Magdalene that day. The abbey itself saw a pope pass through, its former abbot Guillaume de Grimoard, who became Urban V in 1362 and had it fortified; its crenellated towers give it that look of a castle. In the crypt, the Black Virgin of Notre-Dame de Confession, a walnut statue dated to the 13th century, receives each 2 February the procession of Candlemas, one of the oldest in France, with its green candles and its navettes in the shape of a boat — the boat of the saints, say the people of Marseille.

Wikipédia — Abbaye Saint-Victor ↗

Getting there : Place Saint-Victor, ten minutes' walk from the Vieux-Port (bus 54 or 60, parking nearby). Church open every day; the crypts are visited for a small contribution. On 2 February, at dawn, the Candlemas procession climbs up from the port with the green candles, and the bakeries of the quarter sell navettes.

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

Ambient sound