Avignon, France

In which I visit the famous Pont d'Avignon, and learn the miraculous story of its construction, and then decide that Avignon is my kind of town.

{Avignon, France}

Miracles just don’t seem to happen as much as they used to, do they?

Or maybe we’re just a little more skeptical these days. If an uneducated, twelve-year-old shepherd told authorities in this day and age that he was going to build a bridge - by himself - over a particularly rough stretch of river because Jesus instructed him to in a vision…would they let him? Probably not. I mean, I hope not. But, according to legend, that is how the famous bridge at Avignon was built.

The bridge is now named for that shepherd: Pont Saint-Bénézet. In 1177 there was an eclipse, and during that eclipse the young shepherd Bénézet had a vision in which Jesus instructed him to build a bridge across the Rhône River. Up until this point, the river current at Avignon was thought to be too strong to stand a bridge. The closest (and only) bridge across the Rhône was about 15 miles upstream, just north of Orange. He approached the local authorities, who were at first unsurprisingly hesitant. But that didn’t stop Bénézet. He started to build the bridge on his own. And this is where it becomes obvious that things were different in 1177 than they are in 2023, because - instead of having him arrested - the Bishop of Avignon decided to give Bénézet the go-ahead to continue work on his bridge. And so he did, carrying stones that were much too heavy for a normal human being to carry from quarries nearby to the river.

That young Bénézet could carry these stones was viewed as a miracle by locals. They began to help him…and soon enough, miracles began to happen all over Avignon. Eighteen miraculous healings in total were attributed to Saint-Bénézet and his divine bridge building. The bridge was finished in 1185, just eight years after it was started. Bénézet died in 1184, and didn’t see the completion of the bridge - but his body was interred in a chapel built between the arches of the bridge, and shortly afterward he was sainted: Saint-Bénézet, patron saint of bachelors and bridge-builders.