Saint Maria

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For a very long time, the village of Beaumont has hosted a sanctuary dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This humble chapel became a place to which many pilgrims flocked and was then attached to the Abbey of Cluny.

The famous Benedictine abbey erected a priory next to the church. A religious named Gerard lived in this priory, under the abbey of Abbot Hughes. On his return from a trip to Rome, he was attacked by thieves, stripped of everything and led to the heart of a mountainous region where he was locked in a tower from where, after much suffering, he managed to escape.

Retired in Beaumont, "it was there," says Abbot Peter the Venerable in his Book of Miracles, "and around Christmas time, that our venerable Gerard applied himself to study. On the day of the feast of the Lord's Circumcision, after having devoutly celebrated the service of the night, he intended to celebrate that of the day with more fervor. Still clothed in priestly garments, and with his soul filled with love and faith, he walked down the aisle to offer the august sacrifice. After completing the Canon prayer, uttering the divine words and changing the substance of the wine and bread to the blood and body of Jesus Christ, he turned his eyes a little before Sunday prayer to the Holy Species. Then he no longer saw the formula of the bread he had placed on the altar, but instead a little child reaching out to him. Scared and troubled by this vision, Gerard admired this extraordinary and celestial spectacle by trembling.... As he considered this prodigy, looking at one side of the altar, he saw a woman of perfect beauty. It was the Blessed Virgin, mother of this divine child whom she looked at with regret and at the same time with the tender solicitude of a mother. Next to her was an angel, attending with Mary to the august sacrifice. I cannot repeat, and Gerard himself could not express what joy, what confusion, what holy fright he felt then, nor what transports his heart and flesh trembled with in the presence of the living God, but often he reminded me of the words addressed to him by this angel: "Why be surprised, he told him. This child you see governs Heaven and Earth!" Then the vision disappeared. Gerard only saw the holy species on the altar and he finished the sacrifice by feeding on the same body that he had deserved to see with his own eyes.