ABSTRACT
The town of Vézelay is an ancient hill city (Viziliacus) overlooking the Cure valley in the north-central (Burgundian) region of France most famous for its 11th-century abbey, Sainte-Marie-Madeleine de Vézelay, and for being the site from which Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preached the Second Crusade on Easter Sunday in 1046. The town was considered the starting point of the ‘Via Lemovicense’ (‘Limoge Route’), one of the four pilgrimage routes through France leading to Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
