To come down to recent times: It was at the feet of the Virgin of Roc Amadour that M. Borie made his final choice of a missionary life that won for him the glorious crown of martyrdom in Farther India at the age of thirty.
The mill where M. Borie was born stands solitary on the border of a stream, surrounded by chestnut-trees, in a deep, narrow, gloomy valley of La Corrèze, near Roc Amadour—a humble abode, but the sanctuary of peace, industry, and piety. When the news of his martyrdom came to this sequestered spot, his heroic mother was filled with joy, in spite of her anguish, and his youngest brother cried: “I am going! God calls me to the land where my brother died. Mother, give me your blessing. I am going to open heaven to my brother’s murderers!” He went; and we remember hearing a holy Jesuit Father relate how, like the knights of the olden time, he made his vigil before the altar of Our Lady of Roc Amadour the night before he joined the sacred militia of the great Loyola.
Beneath the church of Saint-Sauveur is the subterranean church of St. Amadour, with low, ponderous arches and massive columns to sustain the large edifice above. You go down into it as into a cellar. At each side as you enter are elaborate carvings in the wood, one representing Zaccheus in the sycamore-tree, eager to behold our Saviour as he passed; the other shows him standing in the door of his house to welcome the divine Guest. On the arches is painted the whole legend of St. Amadour. Then there is Roland before the altar of the Virgin redeeming his sword with its weight in silver, and beyond is a band of knights bringing it back from the fatal battle-field. In another place you see St. Martial of Limoges and St. Saturnin of Toulouse, coming together to visit St. Amadour in his cave. And yonder is St. Dominic, who, with Bertrand de Garrigue, one of his earliest disciples, passed the night in prayer before the altar of Our Lady in the year 1219.
All that remains of the body of St. Amadour is enshrined in this church behind the high altar.
A service for the dead was going on when we entered this crypt, with only the priest and the beadle to sing it. Black candlesticks stood on the altar, and yellow wax-lights around the bier. The church was full of peasants with grave, devout faces and lighted candles in their hands. The funeral chant, the black pall, the motionless peasants with their lights, and this chill, tomb-like church of the eleventh century, all seemed in harmony.