Our Spiritual Home is Saintes Maries de la Mer (Saint Marys of the Sea) and more specifically the beautiful fortified and monolithic Church of Three Saints.
Dating from the mid-12th century, the fortified Romanesque church enshrines three wooden statues, themselves of lesser age, that hint at the early Christian sanctity of the site. According to one local legend, after the resurrection of Christ, Mary Magdalene, Marie-Salome, Marie-Jacobe, Lazarus and several other disciples were forced, in 45 AD, to flee the Holy Land by boat. Following a perilous journey across the Mediterranean Sea, the boat eventually landed near the present day village of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, where the passengers went ashore. What next happened to the passengers is not specified in the legend but two of them, Marie-Salome and Marie-Jacobe, became, in time, objects of veneration to the local people. The church, however, enshrines three images, the additional one being of Sara-la-Kali, whose origin and identity are quite mysterious. The gypsies that throng to worship her each May believe Sara to have been a powerful local queen who welcomed the tired travelers from the Holy Land, while other sources suggest she may have been an ancient pagan goddess or a black Egyptian woman who was the servant of Christ’s mother Mary. Whatever the explanation, the three female statues are the subject of the fascinating Pelerinage des Gitans, or ‘Pilgrimage of the Gypsies’, held each year on May 24 and 25.