Puy-en-Velay, France: a 3rd-century site of Marian apparitions

According to Canon Fayard, historian of Velay (southwestern France), the Virgin Mary appeared to a widow suffering from a high fever, on the dolmen known as " the stone of fevers", on a certain July 11 in the 3rd century. The Mother of God asked the woman to go to Mount Anicius, known as Cornelius Rock, and lie down on a megalithic slab. The widow obeyed and recovered. The Virgin confided to her her wish to see a church built on Mount Anicius, which thus became one of the oldest shrines dedicated to the Mother of God.&

St. George, the evangelizer of the Velay region believed to have been one of the seventy-two original disciples of Jesus, tells how he founded the church of Civitas Vetula in the county of Velay, and how, at the request of St. Martial, built a shrine to the Blessed Virgin Mary on Mount Anicius.

The 7th successor of St. George, St. Vosy, had the first cathedral built in the town of Anicium at the end of the 5th century, after seeking advice from the Pope, who encouraged him. Scutarius, a young Roman senator, was to be the architect of the cathedral.

St. Vosy was apprised in a vision that the angels themselves had dedicated the cathedral to the Blessed Virgin, whence the epithet Angelic given to the cathedral of Le Puy, which became a famous site of pilgrimage, visited by many kings, including Charlemagne, who came to entrust themselves to the famous Black Madonna.  

In 1051, in a bull addressed to Peter of Mercoeur, Pope St. Leo IX noted the reputation of the pilgrimage: "In this sanctuary of Mount Anicius more than in any other, the Blessed Virgin Mary has received an eminently special and filial cult of honor, veneration and love from most of the faithful throughout Gaul."

Adapted and translated from: www.catholique-lepuy.fr and Marian Encyclopedia