What remains of this famous abbey bears an aspect of a citadel rather than of a church. It is an extraordinary jumble of parts, and from without looks as if it were wholly planless.
When, and through whom, Christianity was planted in Marseilles, is unknown; for the tradition of the apostleship there of Lazarus, whom Christ raised from the dead, must be dismissed as idle fable. The traditional tale is as follows, but there is no earlier authority for it than a legend of the twelfth century, and this is mere religious romance.
When persecution broke out in Jerusalem, Martha, Mary Magdalen, a Bishop Maximin, and a Deacon Parmenas, and Lazarus, took a boat and sailed merrily over the sea till they came to Provence. Maximin settled at Aix. Mary Magdalen retired to the cave La Sainte Beaume, and Martha killed a dragon at Tarascon, and established herself in its lair. Lazarus remained at Marseilles, and became its first bishop.
The first bishop of Marseilles known to history is Orestius, A.D. 314; and not a particle of evidence worth a rush exists to substantiate the story of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, having ever come to Provence.
The street called Cannebière leads to the Vieux-port. Cannebière means a rope-walk, and here were situated the workshops of those who supplied the vessels with cordage and sails. When the old port was being cleaned out, an ancient galley was found at a depth of fifteen feet, built of cedar wood, with coins earlier, contemporary with, and slightly later than Julius Cæsar.
It is perhaps not to be wondered at that not a scrap of ancient Massilia should remain above ground, not a fragment of city wall, of temple, or of amphitheatre, for the valleys have been choked up to the depth of eighteen to twenty feet, and the summits of the rounded hills have been shorn off. But to obtain some idea of the past, the Archæological Museum at the extremity of the Prado should be visited. One room is devoted to the remains of pagan Massilia, another to the Christian sarcophagi discovered in the catacombs of S. Victor.
The siege of Marseilles by the army of Cæsar was by no means the only trial of that description the city had to undergo. The next most serious investment was that by the Constable de Bourbon, who had transferred his services to Charles V. and fought against his sovereign, Francis I. Pope Leo X. had stirred up the emperor and had effected a coalition of England, Austria, Milan, Venice, Florence, and Genoa, against France. Charles despatched the Constable de Bourbon against Marseilles, and he appeared before it on August 19th, 1524, but met with a stubborn resistance.