After Notre Dame in Paris, Chartres cathedral is undoubtably France’s most famous medieval cathedral. It’s gothic arches, flying buttresses, magnificent statues, and approximately 170 medieval stained-glass windows attract millions of pilgrims from all over the world. It is a masterpiece of the medieval Gothic style, and the testament to the once-strong Catholic Faith of the French people. The cathedral and its most precious relic – Our Lady’s veil – is wonderfully told in a 2024 book Chartres: arche d’ Alliance et reliquaire du Voile de Marie by Chartres expert Guy Barrey.

Chartres is also France’s oldest Marian shrine and one of the oldest in Europe. According to Catholic oral tradition, in the pre-Christian era the city was an important religious for the pagan Gauls. They worshiped a goddess whom they named Virgini pariturae, or “the virgin who is to give birth.” Even in the darkness of paganism, the Celtic peoples of France were prepared by Divine Providence to accept the light of the Catholic Faith and the mystery of the Divine Maternity of Mary.

Chartres also has a strong link with Clovis, King of the Franks, whose conversion to Catholicism marked the beginning of Catholic France. Clovis was baptized in Reims on Christmas Day, 496, by the bishop of Reims, Saint Remigius. Present at the baptism were two other saint bishops, Saint Vedast the bishop of Arras and Saint Solemnis the bishop of Chartres. After Clovis’s baptism, Saint Solemnis helped Saint Remigius to instruct the Frankish King in the Catholic Faith.

Since the ninth century, the most precious relic of the cathedral – and the main draw for pilgrims – is the relic of the Sancta Camisa, or the Veil of Our Lady. This relic is in fact a “double” relic because it touched the most pure body of the Blessed Virgin Mary as well as the body of Our Lord Jesus Christ, who undoubtedly touched it as an infant in His mother’s arms. At the beginning of the ninth century, the Byzantine Empress Irene gave the relic as a gift to the Emperor Charlemagne. In 876, Charles the Bald, Charlemagne’s grandson and king of West Francia (most of what is today France), donated the precious relic to Chartres, where it has remained ever since.

In the Middle Ages, nobles, kings, and peasants alike came in large numbers to venerate this relic, including at least sixteen kings of France. King Saint Louis IX was present when the cathedral was consecrated in 1260, and also went on a walking pilgrimage to Chartres from Nogent-le-Roi, a distance of 28 kilometers. Saint Louis and his mother Queen Blanche of Castille personally paid for one of the three great rose windows of the cathedral. Even the great King Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” went with his court to pay homage to Our Lady in Chartres.

One notable pilgrim was the pious Madame Elizabeth, sister of the unfortunate King Louis XVI. During the French Revolution, she went on pilgrimage to Chartres to ask Our Lady to intercede for her brother and for France. On September 29, 1790, the feast of the three archangels, she donated two golden hearts as an offering to Our Lady, representing the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus. The golden hearts bore the inscription “For the preservation of religion in France.” Madame Elizabeth, who was tragically guillotined just like her brother the king and Queen Marie Antoinette, has a process of canonization.

The veil itself is a silk cloth in two pieces, the larger one 212 cm by 40 cm and the smaller one 25 cm by 24 cm. In 1712, the bishop of Chartres opened the reliquary and wrote an official declaration: “This fabric was perfectly plain, without any colored decoration. It was evidently the relic venerated for centuries. When the fabric was fully unfolded, it was found to be a kind of seamless veil, frayed at both ends, the width of which the official report does not specify, but which it estimates to be about four and a half ells long.” In 1927, experts from the Museum of Textiles in Lyon studied the cloth and determined that it is made of silk with a weave that matches what was found in first century Judea. It is also of very high quality, revealing Our Lady’s high social status.

Over the centuries, small pieces were cut and distributed as relics to individuals and other churches in France. During the French Revolution, the relic was hidden and then cut into several pieces in an attempt to save it from destruction by the Jacobins. After the Revolution, these pieces were recovered and the relic restored for public veneration in one of the cathedral’s side chapels.

Our Lady’s veil has worked many miracles over the centuries. One of the first recorded miracles was in the early tenth century. During the so-called second barbarian invasion, the pagan Norsemen would sail from Scandinavia and descend on all Europe from England to Sicily where they would burn villages, massacre the inhabitants, steal anything of value and return home.

One of these Norsemen was a chieftain named Rollo. On July 20, 911, after sacking other cities in France, he advanced on Chartres, no doubt to steal its rich treasury donated by pious pilgrims. Chartres’s defenders were little match for Rollo’s more powerful army and feared a repeat of the previous siege of Chartres by the Vikings on June 12, 858 when the pagans murdered the bishop and massacred many clergy and civilians. But in 911, the defenders put their trust in Divine Providence. During the siege, the bishop of Chartres processed with Our Lady’s veil on the city walls, begging Our Lady’s intercession to save the city. At the sight of the relic, the Christian army rallied and launched a ferocious attack, while the pagans inexplicably lost courage and fled in a panic.

This miracle was followed by two more. Later that same year, Rollo agreed to become a vassal of King Charles III, “The Simple,” and to accept Baptism, thereby putting an end to the Viking raids against that part of France. To seal the new alliance, Rollo agreed to marry the king’s daughter Gisela, and King Charles granted to him as a fief the territory which is today Normandy. Rollo was to Normandy what Clovis was to France, all thanks to a miracle performed through the holy veil.

Over the centuries, whole books were written to chronicle the many miracles reported. Thousands of pilgrims were healed of their physical illnesses by visiting the veil. In the Middle Ages, a pious custom began whereby pilgrims would have a shirt touched to the veil. These  “blessed shirts of Chartres” as they were called were then worn as a protection against danger. Knights who wore these shirts in combat reported being miraculously saved from enemy fire. Women would wear them during childbirth to obtain a safe delivery, including Queen Marie Leszczynska, the wife of King Louis XV. In March 1568, the city was miraculously preserved from a siege by the Calvinist Huguenot army. Witnesses reported seeing the Protestant army’s cannonballs arc towards the defenders only to bounce back and fall upon the Huguenots. The stunning miracle caused the Protestants to lose heart, and they ended the siege, saving the inhabitants and their beloved relic.

In the twenty-first century, Our Lady’s veil at Chartres continues to draw many pilgrims. More than one million people visit the cathedral every year. The annual Pentecost pilgrimage of Traditional Catholics reached nearly 20,000 in 2025, all drawn by the beauty of Chartres cathedral and the precious relic of the veil. For twenty centuries, faithful Catholics from every time and place have always had recourse to the Blessed Virgin Mary in both good times and bad.

If the decadent world of the twenty-first century has any hope of “restoring all things in Christ,” as was the motto of Pope Saint Pius X, it will only happen through her intercession. Chartres is the reliquary of the greatest Marian relic in the world, and it is more than reasonable to believe that Chartres will have a prominent role in this great work of conversion prophesied by Our Lady of Fatima and so many other Marian apparitions. As Cardinal Louis-Édouard Pie, bishop of Poitier and one of the great ultramontane cardinals of the nineteenth century, declared in 1854: “I dare to predict that Chartres will become more than ever the center of devotion to Mary in the West and people will go there like in past times from the four corners of the world.”