Pilgrimmage to Sainte Baume

On January 31st, Caitlin and I went on a pilgrimage with the local Catholic students group. We were headed to a place called Sainte-Baume. Caitlin and I were both thinking that Sainte Baume was just some French saint that we had never heard of. But... we were wrong. We set off at 8:15 on a bus to the starting point for the pilgrimage.

Here we are after about 2 hours of hiking. We had just climbed up to the top of a little mountain, and there was a spectacular view. Unfortunately, French students seem to be a little more used to climbing up mountains that we are, so we got behind the big block of the group. There were still people behind us in our group also. Unfortunately, we ended up getting almost to the rendezvous for lunch before losing our way. At this point we wandered up and down this road with a nun and a couple of other people who only spoke French. Caitlin got a little bit stressed. Luckily, we managed to find everyone else after about twenty minutes or so. We sat and had lunch and got ready to climb yet another mountain.


After about thirty minutes of walking up steep switchbacks, we finally made it to our destination. This was the view.

That little cluster of buildings is where we had lunch. When we got up there, we were greeted by an ancient monastery, established in the 400s.

It was incredible. It turns out that there is no Saint Baume, though... "baume" is French for "cave." The legend is that St. Mary Magdalene came to Marseilles after Christ's death and resurrection. She eventually found her way to this cave, where she stayed for the rest of her life. I say legend, but I have heard that there is some archaeological evidence for this too. Who knows?

The conclusion of the pilgrimage was attending Mass in that cave. It was beautiful and ancient. It was also very cold. I can't imagine how monks have lived here, so isolated from the rest of civilization, for over a thousand years. And they are still there! Although, the monastery has not been continually inhabited since its founding. There have been a few breaks of one or two hundred years, but still. Monks in a cave on a mountain for over a thousand years!

This picture might look like we took it during Mass, but that's not actually the case. We had about twenty minutes or so beforehand while we were all just sitting inside the cave.

This is a view of the (2nd) mountain that we climbed. We didn't actually go all the way to the top. If you look closely at the center of the picture you will see a tiny monastery. At the very top there is another building. I think the monks use that, too, but we didn't go there. That was probably a good thing, because that would have been a looong hike. Afterwards, we came back to Aix and together ate an entire pizza in ten minutes.