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The Life of Bernadette Soubirous

A human story told by us, her descendants

The Birth of Saint Bernadette Soubirous in 1844 at the Moulin de Boly in Lourdes

The Boly Mill, Bernadette's birthplace, photographed in the 19th century
The Boly Mill in the second half of the 19th century.

On 7 January 1844, François and Louise Soubirous, millers, welcome their first child at the Moulin de Boly, in Lourdes: Marie-Bernarde, known as Bernadette.

Small and frail, she survives cholera at the age of two but is left with chronic asthma; she can neither read nor write, and speaks only Bigourdan, the local dialect.

Louise, burned on the breast, can no longer nurse: Marie Laguës, a customer of the mill who has just suffered a miscarriage, feeds Bernadette in Bartrès, almost two years away from her parents.

The Life of Saint Bernadette Soubirous's Family: From the Moulin de Boly to the Cachot in Lourdes

The Cachot in Lourdes, the single room where the Soubirous family lived in 1858

1849: while dressing a millstone, François puts out his left eye. Steam mills drive the customers away, debts pile up: the mill is sold in 1852. On 24 June 1854, the family leaves the Moulin de Boly for Arcizac-ez-Angles and then, after the drought of 1856, for the Rives house.

Early in 1857, they end up in the Cachot, a former prison cell: 14 m² of damp for six people. Bernadette, aged 13, is undernourished. On 27 March 1857, the baker Maisongrosse accuses François of stealing two sacks of flour: prison, then release eight days later for lack of evidence.

It is this starving, sick, unschooled, despised child who is about to see the Virgin for the first time.

The 18 Apparitions to Saint Bernadette of Lourdes in 1858

The Grotto of Massabielle recreated at the Paternal Home, with Bernadette in prayer

11 February 1858The First Apparition of the Virgin Mary

Bernadette is gathering wood with her sister Toinette and their friend Jeanne Abadie near the rock of Massabielle. A sound like wind; the trees do not move. In the niche of the rock, a golden light: a young girl of 16 or 17, dressed in white with a blue sash and golden roses on her feet, smiles at her.

Bernadette tries to make the sign of the cross; her arm will not move. The lady makes it in her place, slips the beads of her rosary through her fingers, and disappears. Her companions saw nothing; that evening Toinette talks, and Louise slaps her daughter.

"Stop your nonsense. It's your asthma making you delirious." — Louise, her mother

25 February 1858Saint Bernadette Discovers the Miraculous Spring of Lourdes

Before hundreds of horrified onlookers, Bernadette, in ecstasy, scratches at the earth with her bare hands and drinks the mud. A few minutes later, clear water wells up: a spring no one had suspected.

It still flows today: 100,000 litres a day, the water of the baths of Lourdes.

25 March 1858"I Am the Immaculate Conception", the Virgin's Revelation to Saint Bernadette

The lady has never said her name. Bernadette insists, for the fourth time:

"Madam, I beg you, could you at last tell me who you are?"

The lady then opens her arms, raises her eyes to heaven and answers in Bigourdan:

« Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou. » "I am the Immaculate Conception."

Bernadette does not understand these words, but runs to recite them to Father Peyramale, who turns pale: Pope Pius IX proclaimed this dogma only four years earlier, in 1854. A 14-year-old girl, illiterate, speaking nothing but her local dialect, cannot possibly know it. Unless it is true.

16 August 1858The Last Apparition of the Virgin Mary to Saint Bernadette

The authorities have barricaded the grotto. From the other side of the Gave, Bernadette sees the lady one final time. A long gaze, without a word, then the lady fades into the stone, forever.

The Life of Saint Bernadette Soubirous After the Apparitions of Lourdes (1858-1866)

The apparitions stop, and hell begins: pilgrims, onlookers, the sick, relic hunters tearing pieces from her dress besiege the Cachot day and night. At 16, she is taken in at the hospice of the Sisters of Nevers, on one condition: to see her parents twice a week and to return to the grotto.

Even there, hounded relentlessly to tell her story, she repeats tirelessly:

"I am nothing but a broom. The Blessed Virgin made use of me. When the sweeping is done, the broom goes back behind the door."

Saint Bernadette Soubirous's Departure for Nevers in 1866

Bernadette seated among her companions at the Lourdes hospital, before leaving for Nevers

July 1866: Bernadette leaves for the convent in Nevers, more than 700 kilometres away. She will never come back.

Shortly before, Louise, stricken with tuberculosis, has taken to a bed in the kitchen of the Moulin Lacadé. Coming to say goodbye, Bernadette faints in her arms, onto a chair. The family walks her to the station, among them our great-great-great-grandfather Jean-Marie.

Four months later, on 8 December 1866, Louise dies in that bed, in that kitchen. The bed is still there, in the same place. So is the chair.

Saint Bernadette Soubirous in Nevers: The Years of Suffering (1866-1879)

Bernadette arrives at Saint-Gildard on 7 July 1866, aged 22, hoping at last for peace. The mother superior belittles her constantly. Permanently ill, with asthma and tuberculosis of the bone in her knee, she refuses morphine:

"The Virgin told me I would not be happy in this world."

Between attacks, she embroiders: for her brother Pierre, whose godmother she is and who is about to become a father, a christening gown sent from the convent. It still lives in our house; the last baptism was in September 2024.

Jean-Marie receives carefully written letters from her, without a single mistake; we still have them. When François dies in 1871, Bernadette cannot make the journey.

The Death of Saint Bernadette Soubirous on 16 April 1879 in Nevers

16 April 1879, 15:15. In the convent infirmary, after thirteen years of suffering, Bernadette dies at 35, her crucifix clasped to her chest, murmuring with her last breath:

"Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for me, a poor sinner."

She is buried in the Saint-Joseph chapel. Exhumed thirty years later for the beatification process, she is found intact, her skin supple, her features at peace. Since 1925, after two further exhumations, she has rested in a glass reliquary visited by thousands of pilgrims. Even in death, she has not found peace.

The Relics of Saint Bernadette Soubirous at the Maison Paternelle in Lourdes

Nearly 150 years after her death, Bernadette has not gone. Her relics are here, in our house: the christening gown, the letters, the missal, the coal grotto she carved. Authentic objects, kept for six generations, from Jean-Marie down to us.

Bernadette wanted to be forgotten; we have not forgotten. At 14, she said yes to the Virgin who asked her to come back for fifteen days; that yes changed the world.

Come and see her story in the house where she fainted in the arms of her dying mother, and discover François, Louise and Jean-Marie, the family who carried Bernadette.

See these places and objects with your own eyes

The christening gown, the letters, the missal: everything can be seen in the house, presented by the family.

or call us on 05 62 94 22 51

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