Saved by Love

Author’s Note‘Burgundy has a centre, but no frontiers.’ This is a classic description of one of the most attractive and elusive areas of Provincial France. When I visited Burgundy last summer, I found that in a way it was different from all the other parts of France that I know so well. But it was certainly the same in that the food was delicious and no one but the French really understands haute cuisine. Nevertheless the ghosts of the great Dukes of the West, their power and influence in war, in art and how it made them a bridge between the Medieval world and the Renaissance can still be felt in every town, in every Church and in the very air of Burgundy. Witchcraft is one of the most ancient superstitions and the persecution of so-called ‘witches’ has been a feature of the history of mankind in every country. Witchcraft was perhaps begun in the darkness of caves, where the earliest men and women were born. In France, as in England, there was a great upsurge of witchcraft in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and, although witches were persecuted, tortured and killed, magic never dies. It remains in the world of sorcerers, in the Temples of the magician Priests, permeates the great religions and invades the ancient philosophies. Joan of Arc’s ‘voices’ earned her the reputation for using witchcraft and yet today there is not a Church in Burgundy that does not have her statue with many candles lit in front of it. There are still witches to be found in quiet country hamlets, but they are usually white witches, who only bring good luck and love to those who seek it. Perhaps in Burgundy, more than anywhere else in France, one is aware of some strange magic that seems to hover in the air and work even in the long stretches of the vineyards. It was when I was motoring through the valley with the grapes just beginning to form that I looked up and saw a Castle on a hill in the distance with the spire of a Chapel beside it that the story of this book came to my mind.