The Cross of Migné: a luminous cross over Migné-Auxances

December 1826. Migné, a market town about 10 km from Poitiers, was closing a six-week Advent mission led by Abbé Marsault. It marked the end of the 1826 Jubilee.

Sunday, 17 December. After Vespers, a crowd gathered for the solemn planting of a mission cross in the cemetery. The sun had already set. The sky was cloudless, but starting to darken.

At about 5 pm, they saw it. A luminous cross hung above the small square in front of the church. It was silver-coloured. Its proportions were very regular. It lay horizontally along the line of the church, its foot to the east and its head to the west.

The clergy judged it about 100 feet above the ground and 80 feet long. M. Desplaces-Desessarts, first counsellor of the Prefecture, saw a silver colour "that stood out perfectly against the blue of the sky". Its four ends, he said, seemed to have been finished with a saw.

It did not move. For nearly half an hour it held, unchanged, standing out more as the sky darkened. Then the procession went back into the church. The cross was gone. Later retellings speak of a pinkish-white tint, fading from the bottom up like a veil.

On 22 December, the clergy, the preachers, the mayor and his deputy drew up a sworn procès-verbal. Signatories included Marsault; Bouin-Beaupré, curé of Migné; Landry, a sergeant of the gendarmerie; and Fournier, a former military officer. About 41 others signed with them.

In January 1827, Bishop Jean-Baptiste de Bouillé ordered a canonical inquiry. Its commission included the mayor, M. de Curzon, and Jean-Pierre Boisgiraud, a Protestant physicist, who calculated the cross at about 140 feet long and 200 feet up. Pope Leo XII issued three briefs, reported as favourable. In late November 1827, Bouillé declared the apparition miraculous and ordered a Te Deum sung in every church of the diocese.

The debate began early. In 1829 Abbé Vrindts published La Croix de Migné vengée de l'incrédulité, answering the unbelievers. Wilfrid de Fonvielle suggested a sun pillar, or a magic-lantern projection like Robertson's phantasmagoria shows. Critics reply that the cross appeared after sunset, lay flat rather than upright, and grew clearer as night fell. Abbé de la Neufville proposed an illuminated kite, though no wind was recorded. Others point to a church lamp shining into mist over the Auxance valley, or to the testimony itself: size estimates vary from 20 to 140 pieds, and one sceptic puts the crowd nearer 300 than 2,000. No explanation has won general acceptance.

From 1827 the church was rebuilt to plans by the architect Vétault. It was enlarged into a cross shape and turned to follow the axis of the apparition. Dedicated as Sainte-Croix, it keeps a copper cross on the transept vault where the apparition was reported, with windows and an altarpiece by Jean Gaudin. It became a historic monument in 2014.

Popular prints and hymn sheets spread the pilgrimage, one linking Migné to Constantine's cross in the sky. Today, young Catholics have revived the processions. The church has never withdrawn its finding.