Circuit de Dame Hélène

In 1232, Dame Hélène, who had the right to dispense justice, had a hospital and oratory built to take care of poor passers-by. According to legend, one day some time between 1095 and the middle of the 13th C., Lady Hélène of Castelnau and her maidservant became trapped in boggy ground in a valley bottom. Lady Hélène vowed that, if she managed to get out, she would devote the rest of her life to looking after pilgrims and the poor. Having succeeded in regaining dry ground, she founded a "hospital" : a place where people who were travelling the roads could be lodged and given medical care. It took in pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land, Santiago de Compostela and Rocamadour.

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