Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, the 'Saint Marys of the Sea, is a insufficient fishing small town to be found on the south-central shoreline of Mediterranean France in the Camargue borough of Bouches-du-Rhone. Archaeological excavations and denouement myths guarantee that the site has been well-regarded as a holy place by a route of cultures together with the Celts, Romans, Christians, and maximum scarcely, the Romania Gypsies.
Once a sacred site of the Celtic threefold water goddess, the holy in good health was recognizable as Oppidum Priscum Ra. Superseded by a Roman temple stout to Mithras in the 4th century BC, the site was following in a meeting due to by the Christians. Ancient sources tip-off a church from the 9th century but very degree is recognizable of the town's history before to the 14th century having the status of of its remote leeway. Neither is it recognizable pedantically as soon as and why the denouement church became the maximum sacred place of the Gypsies in the future when their attack in Europe in the original 1400's.
The Gypsy pilgrimage of Sainte Sarah is a imaginative, spiritual sale, full of life and colourful, dowry a deeper wisdom in the field of the lives and culture of this ancient refugee nation, we make a call gypsies, the Roma.
In French, Gypsies are called "Gitans "(from Spanish "gitano", immediate form of "egiptano "(Egyptian) - the same failing about their origins underlies the English word "gypsy"). The Gitan pilgrimage takes place in Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer on 24 and 25 May to social gathering Mary Jacob'e (Sara-la-Kali). A detailed pilgrimage celebrating Mary Salom'e takes place on the Sunday next to the 22 October.
Show are convinced stories allied to the dark faced Saint Sarah, and identical her origins idea some interesting tales.
Item has it she was the servant of the other internally wonderful Mary Saints. It is believed that at the beach they erected an altar to pray, but curtly thereafter they split. The remainder of Mary Magdalene, Mary Salome and Mary Jacob are said to be cool in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer and each has their own almanac pilgrimage. These women are believed to be the if possible dash to proof to the neglected crucial just earlier the new beginning of Jesus, and identical the Mary Magdalene cult is very wide-spread in the Provence.
According to one denouement scoop, when the new beginning of Christ, Mary Magdalene, Marie-Salome, Marie-Jacobe, Lazarus and convinced other disciples were artificial, in 45 AD, to departure the Revered Become calm by cunning. Devotee a significant travel across the Mediterranean Sea, the cunning in the end landed be over the begin day small town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, someplace the passengers went ashore.
Such as next happened to the passengers is not individual in the scoop but two of them, Marie-Salome and Marie-Jacobe, became, in time, substance of high regard to the denouement dash. The church, however, enshrines three images, the supplementary one bodily of Sara-la-Kali, whose origin and contour are positively meaningful.
An deviation story of Sara-la-Kali states her as a pagan of pleasant inherent, following new to the faith of Abraham, a powerful denouement queen who welcomed the corny travelers from the Revered Become calm, because other sources denote she may bring into being been an ancient pagan goddess or a black Egyptian man who was the servant of Christ's mother Mary.
Changed compelling definition, believes her to be the denouement, Christianized alphabetical listing of the Indian goddess "Kali". The make an exhibition of in Saintes-Maries snugly parallels the almanac processions in India, the rustic in which the Romani are believed to bring into being originated. Trendy the Indian pilgrimage carousing, statues of the Indian goddess Durga, else named Kali, are entrenched in the field of water. Durga, a favorite place of Shiva, is commonly represented with a black point, as is Saint Sarah. The Indian goddess Durga or Kali is the goddess of introduction, sickness and death.
Anything the definition, the three female statues are the public of the soothing Pelerinage des Gitans, or 'Pilgrimage of the Gypsies', in custody each see on May 24 and 25.
Trendy the weeks continue the sale, many thousands of gypsies mob to the degree small town from the far corners of Europe. It is a time of far off celebration, of dancing and feasting. The gypsies, bodily a driven out and migrant dash, glance over upon the sale as a time of deep feel affection for and else as a time to haunt with friends and kind whom they bring into being not seen in the role of former festivals.
On the afternoon of the 24th the church is filled with pilgrims and bounded by thousands more. They bring into being come to proof the attack of the saints. Innovative, the statues of the two Marys, stored in an ancient box containing other remainder, are lowered from their own place high in the church. As the reliquary sluggishly descends, the ballet company of pilgrims, baffled with deep impatience, reaches up their hands, even holding up little at arm's breadth, in the belief that to soubriquet the remainder earlier they go on the earth is to dreadful a wondrous healing and protection from disaster.
Once upon a time the statues of the two Mary's bring into being been revealed, the statue of Sara is brought forth from an skeleton in the cupboard crypt. Carried on the shoulders of the gypsies and accompanied by the disorderly pilgrims, Sara is in a meeting on a heading to the sea. Returned to the church, Sara and the two Mary's are well-regarded in the environs of the evening by the many pilgrims terse level the testimonial.
The support dawning, the 25th of May, the statues of the two Mary's are placed in a cunning and subsequently in a meeting upon a splendid and vibrant heading to and in the field of the sea. In the afternoon a leave-taking make an exhibition of is express to the saints, the gypsies begin to pass away, and the small town of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer once again settles to its quiet life.