Many of France’s most beautiful cities were founded in the Gallo-Roman era—including Limoges, the historical capital of the Limousin region in southwestern France, which may have been founded by Roman emperor Augustus himself. Long before the development of its famous porcelain in the eighteenth century, Limoges was a prosperous religious and cultural center (when it wasn’t being ravaged by wars, despots, and pestilence, of course). Today, the winding streets of its charming medieval quarter conceal an important clue to the history of Limoges, and to France itself: La Vierge au rognon, the Virgin of the Kidney. Tucked away in the small chapel known as Notre-Dame-des-Petits-Ventres, this statue of Mary holding the infant Jesus as he solemnly gorges himself on a kidney raises a score of unsettling questions. Why a kidney? Should that baby really be eating solids already? Is this some kind of sacrilegious joke? To answer these questions—well, except the second one, which is a blindingly obvious No—let’s return to our journey in the Gallo-Roman era.
A polytheistic Celtic religion had been common among the Gallic tribes, but after the Roman conquest many of the Celtic deities merged with the Roman gods and formed a new Gallo-Roman religion. For example, the Celtic deity Grannus and the Roman god Apollo were both associated with healing and the sun, and so some Gallo-Romans eventually honored a kind of hybrid deity named Apollo Grannus. Romanized gods were often paired with Celtic goddesses, a symbolic manifestation of the broader cultural merging that was occurring. The nondogmatic nature of polytheism meant that the Gallo-Roman pantheon could be fluid and adaptive.
But everything has its limits, and this Gallo-Roman bonhomie finally met its match in Christianity. Christians, after all, believe that there is only one god, so there was never any hope of incorporating the new Christian deity into the polytheistic posse. When the first Christian missionaries appeared, condemning the false idols of the locals, they did not receive a very friendly Gallo-Roman welcome. From the first to the fourth century C.E., they were usually either ignored or persecuted, and sometimes even martyred.
Perhaps the most famous Gallic martyr is Saint Blandina, who died in 177. She and some of her Christian companions were fed to the lions in Lyon (then known as Lugdunum), Gaul’s capital city. But Blandina was rejected by the lions, either because she was very weak and did not seem much of a meal, or because God protected her (take your pick according to your beliefs). She was then tortured to make her recant her beliefs, but she never did, and she was eventually executed. She is now the patron saint of Lyon (but not its lions).
Martyrdom was always rather gruesome, but it was a very effective means of becoming a patron saint. Saint Lawrence, for example, was a deacon in Rome in the third century, known for distributing money and food to the poor. This attracted the attention of Valerian, the Roman emperor, who commanded Lawrence to bring to him the riches of his church. Lawrence brought him beggars, cripples, and orphans and said, “These are the greatest treasures of the church.” The emperor was not amused and ordered that Lawrence be burned to death slowly over hot charcoal. After hanging over the charcoal for a while, Lawrence remarked to his tormentors: “This side is nicely grilled—you can turn me over now.” This witty remark makes him the patron saint of cooks and broilers.
In fact, most food-related trades in France have patron saints, although not all of them met such grisly ends. Saint Martin of Tours, one of the best-known early Christian saints, died of natural causes in the fourth century. He is the patron saint of vintners (and, appropriately perhaps, of alcoholics) and is said to have introduced the pruning of vines in the region of Touraine. According to legend, his donkey chewed up some vines, and the next year the peasants noticed that on these vines there were fewer grapes, but they were bigger and tastier. Thus, thanks to Saint Martin, the wines of Touraine had the reputation of being the best in France. Another legend has it that after his death, the vintners of Touraine cried so much that their tears altered the taste of their wines, and this is how Touraine lost its spot as the best wine region of France to Burgundy and Bordeaux.
And so we come back to Limoges and the Virgin of the Kidney. Eventually, most of the food trades in France developed their own guilds, a form of cooperative association that set strict standards for participating in a trade and promoted its members’ mutual interests. Guilds became very important political and social groups in the medieval era, and in France most of them adopted a patron saint to watch over them. In Limoges, the powerful butchers’ guild chose Saint Aurélien as its patron saint. Aurélien was a third-century pagan priest who was originally sent to Limoges to kill its bishop, Martial, who had successfully converted many local inhabitants to Christianity. Martial asked God to protect him, and the very obliging deity struck Aurélien dead with a bolt of lightning. Martial then felt a bit bad about the whole thing and asked God to restore Aurélien to life. God, showing rather a lot of patience with his bishop, made it so. Aurélien, now convinced that there was something to this Christianity idea after all, converted and became the bishop of Limoges following Martial’s death. Martial himself later became the patron saint of Limoges.
The butchers of Limoges plied their trade around the rue de la Boucherie and frequented its fifteenth-century chapel, Notre-Dame-des-Petits-Ventres (Our Lady of the Little Bellies), which became known as the “butchers’ chapel.” While their shops and abattoirs have long since departed the quarter, it remains a charming street of timbered houses and sunny squares. The chapel itself makes for an interesting visit, with its altar flanked somewhat conventionally by statues of Saint Aurélien and Saint Martial—and with its bizarre Virgin of the Kidney statue, whose origins are now hopefully a bit more clear. It reflects not only the old local custom of butchers giving kidneys, rich in iron, to young children and new mothers, but the marriage of commerce and religion in the medieval cities of France.1
The French are famously willing to eat animal parts not often seen in American supermarkets, and this tradition is particularly celebrated in Limoges, where butchers have played an important social role for centuries. You can get a good sense of the outer limits of offal gastronomy at the annual food festival sponsored by the Frairie des Petits Ventres (Brotherhood of the Little Bellies), an organization established in the 1970s to combat city plans to demolish the medieval butchers’ quarter. Thankfully they succeeded, and now every October the Quartier de la Boucherie resumes its historic character with dozens of stalls offering a fascinating range of meat dishes. You might start with the relatively accessible girot sausage, made with lamb’s blood, or try the popular sheep’s testicles, sautéed in garlic and parsley. The truly brave might sample the fair’s namesake dish, the petits ventres, which turns out to be a bit like haggis: sheep stomachs stuffed with parts of the animal you’d rather not think about. For the squeamish, there is no shame in merely sampling the more mainstream marvel of a burger made from Limousin beef, one of the best beef varieties in Europe and the region’s best-known gastronomic contribution today.
La Vierge au rognon (the Virgin of the Kidney), in the old butchers’ chapel, Notre-Dame-des-Petits-Ventres (Our Lady of the Little Bellies), Limoges. © Karine Hénaut, 2017.
The heyday of the early Christian martyrs came to a close in the fourth century, when the Roman emperor Constantine converted to Christianity; a few decades later, Christianity became the official religion of the empire. The Gallo-Romans abandoned their pagan ways in greater and greater numbers, and thus the earliest foundations of French Catholicism were laid. No doubt these early Christians foresaw a glorious future for their new religion in Gaul. Little could they know that the imperial edifice upon which it perched was already beginning to crumble.