Our Lady of the Marsh

Thus speaks the tradition of the land; and this tradition agrees in every point with history; for history teaches us that, from the first years of the 11th century, there existed a church, under the invocation of Mary, within the very walls of the castle of Fougè château de Fougères Medieval fortress where the statue was initially located. res, precisely opposite, and at a distance of fifty meters from, the place where tradition places the discovery of the statue.

History teaches us, in the second place, that the castle of Fougères was razed to the ground in 1166; consequently, the church enclosed within its walls must necessarily have been caught up in its ruin; the stone statue honored in this church must have rolled with the rubble into the castle moats, where it was found three centuries later, when the ground was excavated for the construction of this part of the church of Saint-Sulpice; and without resorting to the miraculous character that some have attached to the discovery of the statue, these simple facts clearly highlight the antiquity of the cult of Mary in Fougères; they demonstrate that, from the 10th century, the holy Virgin was honored as patroness of the city and protectress of the region.

The statue thus found in the ruins of the castle is eighty centimeters high, and represents the Virgin seated, her head encircled by a crown with three entirely smooth fleurons, holding in her left hand the Child Jesus standing on her knees, while with her right hand she offers him her breast. The divine Master seems to smile at his Mother, and has his hand raised as if to bless. This image is of a single block of granite, of an extremely fine grain.

An unfortunate artist from the middle of the last century wanted to remake it according to what he called the forms of beauty; fortunately he only half succeeded, and left it, in spite of himself, its primitive character; so that, notwithstanding the layers of gilding and whitewash with which he covered it, the stamp of high antiquity that tradition attributes to it emerges from the purity of the expression and the naivety of the poses, as well as from the simple arrangement of the draperies.

During the time that this venerated statue remained buried, the cult of Mary did not suffer any decline: it was honored with a very special devotion in a chapel of the church of Saint-Sulpice; a confraternity in her honor flourished there under the name of the Great Confraternity of Our La la grande confrérie de Notre-Dame Religious organization dedicated to the veneration of the statue at Saint-Sulpice. dy, served by seven chaplains; and God testified several times to the inhabitants of Fougères how pleasing to Him were the homages they rendered in this place to His holy Mother.

We read in the account of the parish treasurers for the years 1494 and 1495 that frequent and striking miracles occurred there, in consideration of which the bishop granted forty days of indulgence for every day of the week. We read there that, on September 19, 1495, a large candle lit itself there, and remained lit for twenty-four hours, that the whole city was a witness to the prodigy, and that two sermons were given to highlight the wonder.

These various favors and wonders, through which God glorified the image of Mary, inspired in the inhabitants of Fougères a boundless attachment to her; and whenever, in times of civil war, the enemy approached the ramparts, the first care of the inhabitants was to transfer the statue to a safe and well-hidden place. It was not that they doubted the protection of Mary, to whom they had entrusted the guardianship of their city by placing her image on each of the four gates that defended its entrance: a remarkable fact, the proof of which can still be seen, not only in the one of these gates that exists today, and which presents this same image to the gaze, but also in the statues placed near the old demolished gates, and in the one that was transported to the church of Saint-Léonard, where the Marquis du Bois-Fév rier founded a lamp that w le marquis du Bois-Février Founder of a perpetual lamp before a copy of the statue. as to burn perpetually before it. But although Mary had protected them so well that no Protestant army had ever been able to penetrate the city, they believed it more prudent not to neglect any precaution.

Towards the middle of the 16th century, devotion to Our Lady of the Marshes took on an extraordinary development, and spread with an expansion that seemed to border on the miraculous: it was no longer isolated individuals who came to claim her protection, but entire parishes that went there, every year, on pilgrimage, and parishes foreign to the diocese, such as Montaudin, Larchamps, and Landivy, all thr Landivy Parish faithful to the annual pilgrimage to Fougères. ee then of the diocese of Le Mans, today of the diocese of Laval.

These pious pilgrimages continued until '93; and even today the inhabitants of Landivy, religiously preserving the traditions of their fathers, come, every year, on the first day of July, to prostrate themselves at the feet of Our Lady of the Marshes, and attend the holy sacrifice there, celebrated by their parish priest, who still leads this holy journey.

To facilitate the recollection of prayer for pilgrims, by separating them from the comings and goings and the disturbance caused by the parish office, a pilgrimage chapel was built, where the venerated statue was placed under a sort of baldachin, above the bay through which it communicates with the church. It is there that Mary appears, in her humble sanctuary, as formerly in her modest home in Nazareth, stripped of all worldly glory and all splendor, but always full of graces, and spreading them without reserve upon those who invoke her. It is there that a devotion remains deeply rooted in the heart of the pilgrim, a devotion that has resisted the test of centuries, and which, far from diminishing amidst the failings of faith, seems to strengthen more every day; a fact which would be a miracle in itself, if the distinguished graces obtained in this sanctuary did not provide the explanation.

Before the Revolution, one could see suspended at the feet of Our Lady two iron chains with which the condemned were bound, and which had been offered to her by two accused persons who had obtained, through her intercession, the recognition of their innocence. M. Paumier, who died as parish priest of Saint-Sulpice in 1715, recounts in a notice that is still preserved, the sudden healing of a young blind girl from the parish of Saint-Sauveur des Landes, who had herself led to the feet of the one who is never in voked in vain. Finally, Admiral Cou l'amiral comte du Boueis de Guichen French admiral who made a vow to Our Lady of the Marsh during a storm. nt du Boueis de Guichen, a native of Fougères, caught in one of his maritime excursions by the most horrible storm, made a vow that if he escaped the danger, he would come as a pilgrim to thank Our Lady of the Marsh; and no sooner had he made this vow than the sea calmed. When he returned to France, he hastened to come to Fougères, and went barefoot to the sanctuary of Mary, proclaiming to the face of the world the favor he had received from her.

Notre-Dame de France, by the parish priest of Saint-Sulpice.