 Blessed Thomas Illyricus of Osimo (born about the middle of the fifteenth century), a Franciscan friar who had retired to the forest solitude of Arcachon, is said to have found this statue, much battered by the waves, on the seashore.He immediately constructed a wooden chapel which was replaced, a century later, by a spacious stone sanctuary.This, in turn, was so menaced by the drifting sands of the dunes as to necessitate the erection in 1723 of a new church on a neighbouring hill overlooking the Bay of Arcachon.