Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume, France Tourism

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The town became famous, not only for its church, but also as the place where, it is said, the bones of St Mary Magdalene were discovered.

Mary Magdalene is supposed to have landed by boat at Saintes Maries de la Mer, accompanied by her sister Martha, her brother Lazarus, Maximin, Sidonius, her servant Sara and others, after their expulsion from Palestine. While Maximin and Sidonius went into the country as missionaries, Mary Magdalene, at God's behest, spent 30 years without earthly nourishment as a penitent in a grotto. She was buried, it is said, in a mausoleum, which has been preserved as the crypt of the church. Just as Mary Magdalene represents a synthesis of many Biblical figures (the sinner, Mary of Bethany, Maria of Magdala), so the story of the legend and its sequels is equally strange. In Vézelay in Burgundy Ste Magdalene was worshipped as long ago as the 11th C. It was maintained that her bones had been brought there at the end of the ninth C., from St Maximin. Political quarrels - territorial conflicts, conflicts between Pope and King - caused Charles II of Anjou in 1279 to search for the "real" relics at St Maximin and he was "successful"; four handsome sarcophagi were discovered in the crypt which had apparently been left unprotected by the Saracens. In the controversy over the authenticity of the relics Pope Bonifatius VIII decided in favor of Charles of Anjou; at a stroke Vézelay forfeited its pre-eminence.