was called into existence by pilgrims; it grew with the growth of pilgrimages, and if it were not for pilgrims at the present day half the houses now occupied would be allowed to fall into ruin.  It is impossible to look at it without wonder, either in the daylight or the moonlight.  It appears to have been wrenched out of the known order of human works—­the result of common motives—­and however often Roc-Amadour may suddenly meet the eye upon turning the gorge, the picture never fails to be surprising.  It has really the air of a holy place, which many others famed for holiness have not.

  [*] Robert du Mont, in his supplement to Sigibert’s Chronicles,
     wrote, more than five hundred years ago, of Roc-Amadour:  ’Est
     locus in Cadurcensi pago montaneis et horribile solitudine
     circumdatus.’

The founder of the sanctuary was a hermit, whose contemplative spirit led him to this savage and uninhabited valley, whose name, in the early Christian ages, was Vallis tenebrosa, but in which Nature had fashioned numerous caverns, more or less tempting to an anchorite.  He is called Amator—­Amator rupis—­by the Latin chroniclers—­a name that, with the spread of the Romance language, would easily have become corrupted to Amadour by the people.  According to the legend, however, which for an uncertain number of centuries has obtained general credence in the Quercy and the Bas-Limousin, and which in these days is much upheld by the clergy, although a learned Jesuit—­the Pere Caillau—­who sifted all the annals relating to Roc-Amadour felt compelled to treat it as a pious invention, the hermit Amator or Amadour was no other than Zaccheus, who climbed into the sycamore.  The legend further says that he was the husband of St. Veronica, and that, after the crucifixion, they left the Holy Land in a vessel which eventually landed them on the western coast of Gaul, not far from the present city of Bordeaux.  They became associated with the mission of St. Martial, the first Bishop of Limoges, and at a later period Zaccheus, hearing of a rocky solitude in Aquitania, a little to the south of the Dordogne, abandoned to wild beasts, proceeded thither, and chose a cavern in the escarped side of a cliff for his hermitage.  Here, meditating upon the merits of the Mother of Christ, he became one of her most devoted servants in that age, and during his life he caused a small chapel to be raised to her upon the rock near his cavern, which was consecrated by St. Martial.  All this is open to controversy, but what is undoubtedly true is that one of the earliest sanctuaries of Europe associated with the name of Mary was at Roc-Amadour.

It is recorded that Roland, passing through the Quercy in the year 778 with his uncle, Charlemagne, made a point of stopping at Roc-Amadour for the purpose of ’offering to the most holy Virgin a gift of silver of the same weight as his bracmar, or sword.’  After his death, if Duplex and local tradition are to be trusted, this sword was brought to Roc-Amadour, and the curved rusty blade of crushing weight which is now to be seen hanging to a wall is said to be a faithful copy of the famous Durandel, which is supposed to have been stolen by the Huguenots when they pillaged the church and burnt the remains of St. Amadour.