Monaco’s most important annual feast day, Saint Devote, started on Friday, January 26, with the annual burning of the boat outside the church bearing the name of the Principality’s patron saint following the religious service attended by Prince Albert and Princess Charlene.
A large crowd watched the Prince set fire to the boat representing the small craft on which the body of the 19-year-old virgin saint arrived in Monaco in the very early fourteenth century, during a period in which the Christian church was being persecuted by the Romans in Corsica under the local governor, Diocletian.
The young Christian had died a martyr in her homeland, according to local legend, and fellow Christians had put her body into a small boat hoping that she might receive a Christian burial in North Africa. However, a storm brought the craft to Monaco, to be welcomed by a small community of Christians.
Prince Louis II is credited with having started the modern tradition of the burning of the boat by setting it alight with his own hands in 1924.
Celebrations continued on Saturday, January 27, with a pontifical mass and the ceremonial welcoming of the saint’s relics at Monaco’s Cathedral.
