The Carolingian era was treated with an apparition of the Virgin Mary. It took place in 850. Then, three Spanish, or Portuguese sailors -the brothers Olivarès- were caught inside a life-threatening tempest near the mouth of the Var river, near present days Nice, southern France, as they make the vow to built an oratory to the Virgin, should they be saved. According to varied traditions, either the Virgin Mary appeared to them and showed to them, in the far away landscapes behind Nice, a mountain bathed with light, and high above the other ones, with this serene sky expending down to the sea and putting an end to the tempest; or the three sailors saw, unto that mountain, a light which guided them and allowed them to came safely to the shore. Respecting their vow, they went to the mountain and they built a small sanctuary there. The three sailors, on the other hand, just settled in the vicinity, one in the village of Utelle, one in La Tour and the third in Le Figaret. Important pilgrimages were organized to the Virgin of Utelle during the Middle Ages. A deaf-mute girl was cured in 1510 and, later, the count of Tende. Devastated during the French Revolution, the sanctuary was re-built, mostly by the people, in 1806, who gave the materials and their work. A polychrome statue of the Virgin Mary, likely dating to the 18th century, is found in the church. At last, on June 27th, 1938, the papal nuncio, in the name of Pope Pius XI, came and coronated the statue of 'Our Lady of the Miracles'. The village of Utelle was rattached to the county of Provence, or to the one of Nice. The Virgin in Utelle is still honored today, one the Easter Monday, the Pentecost, the Assumption, and September 8th. The sanctuary of 'Our Lady of the Miracles' is located at 3,900 ft of altitude, overlooking all the neighbouring valleys down to the bay of Nice. Amusingly, near the church, are to be found small, star-shaped fossils of ancient corals
Utelle, further, is today linked to the natural park of the Mercantour, France, to the Valley of the Wonders, a mountaneous valley with ancient carved inscriptions on rocks, and too, to the valley of the Vesubie river. Remains of Homo Sapiens, dating as far back as to 390,000 years have been found in the region, in Terra-Amata. The ancient population, in the region of Utelle, was the tribe of the 'Oratelli', part of the Ligurians as it was progressively assimilated by the Celts and then romanized, like the whole of southern France was
 | click to a view of the Var valley, Byzantium and the neighbourhood of Jerusalem |
A most interesting remark to be made further about that apparition is that, based on views with Google Earth -this computer, free software which allows for comprehensive, detailed and varied views of the Earth- the aspect of the lower valley of the Var river, as seen from space, is accurately ressembling a snake. The snake, as it is well known, is a usual figure of the Evil as the tempest of 850 further might well have occurred just in the extension of the mouth of the river! Building upon that, the idea came to us to look for some more. We looked for locations neatly related to, or in opposition to, the Roman Catholicism, and we amazingly found that such those symbols were extant! All main cities, like Paris, or Rome, linked to the catholicism, are showing with a river, which has a form of snake too, or such other main cities linked to Byzantium, the Arab world -or the Reform- have such scheme also. In the case of the catholic cities, such a presence have been accurately checked, of course, through Christian landmarks, like, in Paris, the Notre-Dame cathedral, which is not the case elsewhere. Should that amount to more than a mere coincidence, one likely would have there a much fine illustration of that history of men is mostly a fight between the Good and the Evil and that, further, science, as it allows men with views which were until then the realm of God, is clearly supporting that simple, if not simplistic view. Roman catholicism, then, printed its mark upon those evil locations, as the Evil, albeit definitively root-won over, is still at work in the world, until the Last Day Judgment
pictures: the Var valley courtesy DigitalGlobe, NASA; Byzantium courtesy NASA, neighbourhood of Jerusalem courtesy DigitalGlobe. all pictures with Google Earth
