Petit résumé en espagnol
Saint Alpais is celebrated on 3rd November. A pilgrimage is organized every year on Trinity Monday (Day of the Holy Spirit).
1211-2011: 800th anniversary of the death of St Alpais.
From the XIIIth century, St Alpais has been venerated by Christians. Around 1150, at the time when the abbey of Pontigny was being built, St Alpais was born in Cudot; her father was a ploughman, and from a very early age Alpais helped in the fields and looked after the flock. She was different from the other children through her fervent piety. When she was still a teenager, she contracted an illness which caused her whole body to exude pus from which came such a fowl stench that she had to be put out from the village as a leper. Then she became paralyzed and could not move from her couch. After a year of trials, she was cured on Easter Sunday 1169 following, as one of her biographers writes, an appearance of the Virgin Mary. But she was left almost totally paralyzed and could swallow no food or drink. From that moment, a life out of the ordinary began for Alpais: she could not eat nor drink, so she lived on the Eucharist alone, and this for forty years, until the end of her life in 1211. This amazing fact is attested by trustworthy witnesses: a monk from the Cistercian abbey of Les Echarlis, near Cudot, who often visited her and wrote a “Life of Alpais”; a premonstrian canon from the abbey of St Marien of Auxerre; Robert Abolant, author of a famous chronicle, who went to see Alpais in 1180 and speaks of her with amazement. Not only was her life mysteriously sustained by the Eucharist, but also she was favoured with visions and moments of ecstasy.
Despite a constant flow of pilgrims and those simply attracted by these unusual phenomena, she remained humble, giving wise and prudent counsels, and helping spiritually those who asked her advice. The Archbishop of Sens, William of the white hands, after a serious enquiry, was convinced of her holiness, and had the church of Notre Dame built for the pilgrims who visited Cudot: the cell where Alpais lived was incorporated into the building and from her bed she could see the priest celebrating at the altar. Eminent figures came to visit her: the Queen, Adèle de Champagne, the mother of Philippe August, came to see her twice, in 1180 and 1200. In the following centuries, the reputation and the veneration of Alpais spread throughout Europe and many were those who came to pray at her grave. Her veneration has never ceased and continues to this day.
SAINT ALPAIS OF CUDOT
English Version
Saint Alpais is celebrated on 3rd November. A pilgrimage is organized every year on Trinity Monday (Day of the Holy Spirit).
1211-2011: 800th anniversary of the death of St Alpais.
From the XIIIth century, St Alpais has been venerated by Christians. Around 1150, at the time when the abbey of Pontigny was being built, St Alpais was born in Cudot; her father was a ploughman, and from a very early age Alpais helped in the fields and looked after the flock. She was different from the other children through her fervent piety. When she was still a teenager, she contracted an illness which caused her whole body to exude pus from which came such a fowl stench that she had to be put out from the village as a leper. Then she became paralyzed and could not move from her couch. After a year of trials, she was cured on Easter Sunday 1169 following, as one of her biographers writes, an appearance of the Virgin Mary. But she was left almost totally paralyzed and could swallow no food or drink. From that moment, a life out of the ordinary began for Alpais: she could not eat nor drink, so she lived on the Eucharist alone, and this for forty years, until the end of her life in 1211. This amazing fact is attested by trustworthy witnesses: a monk from the Cistercian abbey of Les Echarlis, near Cudot, who often visited her and wrote a “Life of Alpais”; a premonstrian canon from the abbey of St Marien of Auxerre; Robert Abolant, author of a famous chronicle, who went to see Alpais in 1180 and speaks of her with amazement. Not only was her life mysteriously sustained by the Eucharist, but also she was favoured with visions and moments of ecstasy.
Despite a constant flow of pilgrims and those simply attracted by these unusual phenomena, she remained humble, giving wise and prudent counsels, and helping spiritually those who asked her advice. The Archbishop of Sens, William of the white hands, after a serious enquiry, was convinced of her holiness, and had the church of Notre Dame built for the pilgrims who visited Cudot: the cell where Alpais lived was incorporated into the building and from her bed she could see the priest celebrating at the altar. Eminent figures came to visit her: the Queen, Adèle de Champagne, the mother of Philippe August, came to see her twice, in 1180 and 1200. In the following centuries, the reputation and the veneration of Alpais spread throughout Europe and many were those who came to pray at her grave. Her veneration has never ceased and continues to this day.
Alpais, a model of faith, is venerated by the Christians of the Sens-Auxerre diocese and by pilgrims coming from every corner of France and abroad. She is venerated by the astronauts of NASA who took her as their patron saint because of her visions of the universe “as a whole having a circular, spherical shape – the sun bigger than the earth – the earth resembling an egg suspended in space and surrounded by a belt of water all around.”
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