Typical pastries of the Provence region, navettes are particularly associated with the culinary heritage of Marseille. They are served all over the year, especially at the Feast of the Purification of Mary. On February 2, after a march from the Vieux-Port to the Abbey of Saint Victor, a catholic high ground in the south of France, the residents of Marseilles traditionally enjoy the navettes blessed by the Archbishops. Additionally, they celebrate in this occasion the black carved wooden Virgin Mary, which the Abbey has preserved since the middle-age.

 

The symbolism of navettes is the subject of many interpretations. The official version of the story recounts that the navettes portray the bark that brought Saint Marys to the shores of Provence, marking therefore the beginning of the Christianization of Gaul. Other interpretations evoke the female sex organs. The Purification of Mary and the presentation of Jesus in the Temple recall in fact the Roman Lupercalia, annual celebrations of purification and fertility, during which Romans ate cereal biscuits that promise abundant harvest. Pancakes, traditionally associated with the Feast of the Purification of Mary, recall and extend the function of the biscuits of Lupercalia. In fact, numerous pagan rituals were Christianized by the Church.

 

Navettes do not have the round form of pancakes; the symbolic of fertility stems from its form and its composition that mainly comprises wheat, a fundamental ingredient of the Mediterranean culture. The navette, associated here with Virgin Mary, has therefore a symbolic function comparable to that of bread in the Mediterranean. “We understand why bread depicts, ever since antiquity, explicit sexual forms and why it is necessary to the different cults that came to light in this region,” wrote Jean-Robert Pitte (2007).

-Martin-Villevieille Simone, History of Provence recipes, 10 centuries of gourmet tradition « Histoire des recettes de Provence. 10 siècles de tradition gourmande », Jeanne Laffitte, 2000.

-PITTE Jean-Robert, At the table of gods « À la table des dieux », Fayard, 2009.

-PITTE Jean-Robert, Aliments and beverages that are linked to the divine « Ces aliments et ces breuvages qui relient au divin », dans POULAIN Jean-Pierre (dir.), Man, the eater and the animal : who eats the other ? « L'homme, le mangeur et l'animal. Qui nourrit l'autre ? », Les cahiers de l'OCHA n° 12, 2007.

-TOUSSAINT-SAMAT Maguelonne, Ethno-cuisine of Provence « Ethnocuisine de Provence », Alain Schrotter Editeur, 1982.