OUR LADY OF FOURVIERE

Feast Day: April 11

In the legends of Lyons, backed by a papal bull of Innocent IV., Saint Pothinus built the first oratory where Our Lady was invoked in Gaul. It is believed that he brought from Asia a small statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which he placed in a solitary and shaded crypt on the banks of the Saone, at the front of the hill of Fourviere. He set up in this wild and secluded spot an altar to the one and only true God, and placed in there the image, which was later transferred to a temple built on the hill itself, where it took the name of Our Lady of Fourviere. 

In this Church, the people of the middle ages always come to do homage as it was a renowned pilgrimage throughout the Lyonnais; but the Calvinists, who were known to destroy and pillage so many rich sanctuaries, showed no favour to that of Lyons; and retained nothing but its four bare walls, which could not be melted down in the crucible, where so many master productions disappeared, which were made of gold or silver. 

The chapter of Saint John could not attend to the renovation of that of Fourviere, till long after the ravages of the Protestants. They worked at it after they had restored the cathedral and the cloister. The altar of Mary, Our Lady of Fourviere, was at last consecrated on the 21st of August, 1586. From that moment the confidence of the inhabitants turned towards that beacon of salvation. “The source of prodigies seemed dried up there,” says an ancient historian; “they began again at the end of the sixteenth century, and all Lyons felt great joy on the occasion.” 

In 1793, during the French Revolution, the church of Fourviere was auctioned; but when peace was restored, the zealous prelate who governed the ancient church of Pothinus and Irenaeus procured the sanctuary of Mary to be restored to the veneration of her as Our Lady of Fourviere. The inauguration of it was performed on the 19th of April, 1805, by the sovereign pontiff Pius VII. In 1832 and 1835, Lyons being threatened with cholera, lifted up her eyes to the holy mountain, and the Blessed Virgin said to the scourge, “Thou shalt go no farther.” The capital of the Lyonnese, respected against every attempt, changed its cries of alarm into canticles of joy, and the prayers of thanksgiving were solemnly and justly offered to Mary in her protecting sanctuary. 

Ever since the happy period when that sanctuary was restored to religious worship, piety seems to have been restored. Ardour for Our Blessed Lady at Fourviere is sharpened and revived. The inhabitants of Lyons, and those of the county adjacent, throng the paths of the hill of Mary; at whatever hour you repair thither, you always find yourself in the midst of a crowd of pious persons of all ranks, ages, and conditions.