Buthier - Punta Chaligne

The plague epidemic that decimated the populations of Europe in 1630 was terrible and did not even spare the Alpine people. The Aosta Valley paid a very high price in victims, risking being almost completely depopulated; the small surviving groups retreated higher and higher, to almost inaccessible places. It is to this dramatic occasion that the custom of invoking divine help is linked, reaching, after a long and tiring climb, the crosses of Punta Chaligne (2,608 m).
The procession leaves on August 16th from the church of Gignod in the predawn hours: the bell rings at 3.30 am while the departure is set for 4 am. Afterwards the faithful head towards the oratory of Chez Percher, where a prayer for the deceased. Here a family takes turns offering the blessed bread. He continues to Planet, where he stops a second time to receive the blessed bread again offered here, in turn, by a family from Planet-Tercinod. After an hour of steep climb, still in the dark, he stops for the dawn break in Ronc Palmy (or Parmé), where passages from the Bible are read and a hot drink is distributed. At sunrise the procession stops at Pian della Griva before continuing towards Plan du Débat, a plateau dotted with mounds which popular imagination indicates as the tombs of fighters who died in a battle due to the dispute over the direction towards which the cross should have been facing which stands on Punta Chaligne: Gignod or Aosta. Finally, the long line with the cross at the head heads towards the summit where the meeting takes place with the faithful who have climbed from the hamlets of Aosta, Arpuilles and Excenez. Up there, next to the cross and in front of the grandiose scenery of the peaks and glaciers of the Graian and Pennine Alps, mass is celebrated. The ritual of blessing the water is interesting and, collected inside a bell, is partly drunk and then sprinkled on the faithful and the surrounding land, almost as if to recall an ancient propitiatory rite to invoke rain.