The middle of the thirteenth century was an era of religious excitement all over the south of Europe. A sudden fit of penitence—‘una subita compunzione,’ as an Italian author calls it—seized all hearts; relics and pilgrimages, and penances and monastic ordinances, filled all minds. About this period, certain remains, supposed to be those of Mary Magdalene and Lazarus, were discovered at a place since called St. Maximin, about twenty miles north of Toulon. The discovery strongly excited the devotion and enthusiasm of the people; and a church was founded on the spot by Charles, Count of Provence (the brother of St. Louis), as early as 1279. A few years afterwards, this prince was vanquished and taken prisoner by the king of Aragon, and when at length set free after a long captivity, he ascribed his deliverance particularly to the intercession of his chosen patroness, Mary Magdalene. This incident greatly extended her fame as a saint of power; and from this time we may date her popularity, and those sculptural and pictorial representations of her, under various aspects, which, from the fourteenth century to the present time, have so multiplied, that scarcely any Catholic place of worship is to be found without her image. In fact, it is difficult for us, in these days, to conceive, far more difficult to sympathise with, the passionate admiration and devotion with which she was regarded by her votaries in the middle ages. The imputed sinfulness of her life only brought her nearer to them. Those who did not dare to lift up their eyes to the more saintly models of purity and holiness,—to the martyrs who had suffered in the cause of chastity,—took courage to invoke her intercession. The extravagant titles bestowed upon her in the middle ages—‘_l’amante de Jésus-Christ_,’ ‘_la bien-aimée du Sauveur_,’ ‘_la très-saincte demoiselle pécheresse_,’—and others which I should hardly dare to transcribe, show the spirit in which she was worshipped, particularly in the south of France, and the kind of chivalrous sentiment which mingled with the devotion of her adorers. I found in an old French sermon a eulogium of Mary Magdalene, which for its eloquence and ingenuity seems to me without a parallel. The preacher, while acknowledging the excesses which brought her a penitent to the feet of Christ, is perfectly scandalised that she should be put on a par with common sinners of the same class, and that on the faith of a passage in St. Luke, ‘on a osé flétrir une des plus belles âmes qui soient jamais sorties des mains du Créateur!’ He rather glorifies her as a kind of Aspasia, to whom, indeed, he in a manner compares her.[297]