Two shepherd children - Maximin Giraud and Mélanie Calvat - reported a vision of the Virgin Mary on a mountaintop near La Salette, France, on September 19, 1846 around 3.00 p.m. during their cowherding. They were eleven and fourteen years old at the time and had received only a very limited education.
The apparition consisted of three different stages. Firstly, the children beheld in a resplendent light a beautiful lady clad in a strange costume. She was seated on a rock and in tears, with her face resting in her hands. This took place at the ravine called ravin de la Sezia
Secondly, she stood upright and talked to the children, speaking alternately in French and in the regional patois. She charged them with a message which they were to deliver to all her people. This also took place in the ravin de la Sezia. After complaining of the impiety and sinfulness of men, and threatening them with dreadful chastisements in case they should persevere in evil, she promised them the Divine mercy if they would amend. Finally, she communicated to each of the children a special secret, before disappearing into the sky. This happened on the plateau called Mont-sous-les-Baisses.
They told of their experience to their employers, Baptiste Pra and Pierre Selme. These wrote the account down September 20, 1846, the day after the apparition, in a letter.
Maximin Giraud was questioned upon his story by the mayor of the village, Pierre Peytard September 21, 1846.
Pra and Selme informed Louis Perrin, the parish priest of La Salette, who himself informed the archpriest of Corps, Pierre Mélin. Impressed by the account, Perrin preached about it at Holy Mass. The bishop of Grenoble, Philibert de Bruillard, was officially informed by Mélin on October 4, 1846.
The news of the apparition spread like wildfire. Maximin's father, Jean-Maximin Giraud, not being religious at all, converted on November 8, 1846. This was the first of many conversions. Soon several miraculous cures took place on the mountain of La Salette, and pilgrimages to the place were begun. The first pilgrimage took place on November 24, 1846, with both children participating. On May 31 about 5,000 pilgrims participated in another pilgrimage, on the occasion of the planting of a crossway up the mountain.
In October 1846 Mélanie and Maximin were questioned by Mathieu Cat, a diocesan priest. In February 1847 both seers were questioned by François Lagier, a French priest who spoke the local patois fluently. On April 16, 1847 both children were interrogated by a city magistrate of Grenoble, the local juge de paix Fréderic-Joseph Long. They were reinterrogated by Pierre Lambert, another diocesan priest on the apparition May 29, 1847.[3]
The first miraculous cure that was recognised as such was that of Claire Pierron S.S.J., known as Sister Saint-Charles, of Avignon on April 16, 1847. The second was that of Mélanie Gamon, of Corps, on August 15, 1847.
On July 22, 1847 Clément Cardinal Villecourt, bishop of La Rochelle made a personal pilgrimage to La Salette. He met both children and questioned them.
One year after the apparition, September 19, 1847, over 50,000 pilgrims came to La Salette to celebrate the anniversary.
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