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