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National Geographic : 1974 Dec
Contents
that the Basques practiced devil's rites on La Rhune. By torture and bribery, he turned neighbor into informer against neighbor. Before his reign of terror was done, he had burned hundreds of men, women, and children at the stake-thus adding to the large number of victims of the sorcery trials that swept through Europe." On the outskirts of St. Pee sur Nivelle stands the crumbling chateau where Pierre de Lancre stayed dur ing the trials. We wandered through its dank interior, where the very walls seem to shriek of agonies suffered there. A lizard of mottled green and black scurried up a wall and watched us from a ledge, sending a chill up my spine. When we quit that sanctuary of evil, sunshine had seldom been so welcome. Pagan Monuments Survive in the Mountains In some remote mountain villages of the Basque coun try, Catholic masses on certain feast days still are cele brated to the accompaniment of ceremonial dances from pagan times. Pagan monuments have been found through out the region. Our search for one of the pagan ritual sites took us on a tortuous pilgrimage up a hill that rises in the old Basque Province of Soule. Through mist so thick the way was almost invisible, we went to road's end by car, then continued afoot. At the top stood the Chapel of the Madeleine. Recently reconstructed, the chapel enshrines a Christian altar. But it also contains an almost undeci pherable stone marker inscribed in Latin and cloaked in time-dimmed mystery. The most likely explanation: it was dedicated to Heraus, "goddess of the red dust," and was part of a pagan sanctuary maintained by the Ro mans on the hill of Madeleine two thousand years ago. It is strange to find such relics only sixty miles by road from one of Christendom's most venerated shrines. In spring and summer the streets of Lourdes are jammed. Priests, nuns in habits of black, blue, or white, and monks in sandals mingle with tourists from far cor ners of the world. The air is alive with many tongues. It was at the Grotto of Massabielle in 1858 that young Bernadette Soubirous, of an impoverished family, saw visions of the Blessed Virgin. Bernadette said the Virgin had caused a spring to flow from the cave, and wished processions to be made there. Today pilgrims stand patiently in line before fountains whose waters, many testify, have helped to work cures. Old women in black scarves sit on stone benches, clutch ing rosaries. But the most moving spectacle at Lourdes is of hundreds of sick and crippled people on stretchers and in wheelchairs. They look with beseeching eyes at the white-robed statue of the Virgin in her rock niche, and the sound of their prayers is like the rustle of autumn leaves in the wind. From the tower of the Chateau of Lourdes we wit nessed a candlelight procession (upper right). Legend tells that from an earlier tower at this site, Moors looked Rivers of candlelight flow past the basilica at Lourdes as the faithful recall a miracle re ported more than a century ago. In 1858 a French shepherd girl named Bernadette said that visions of the Mother of Christ came to her in a nearby grotto; the resulting religious fervor at tracts three million pilgrims and visitors a year. As the able bodied walk slowly by the church, the infirm lie before the grotto itself (right), murmuring supplications for good health. 812
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