Peter Stanford’s cover feature about the death of Judas (“Pilgrimage to nowhere”, 28 March) carried me back to Vézelay in southern France.Atop of the nave column in the ninth-century Basilica of Mary Magdalen in Vézelay is a carved stone relief of a very graphic death by hanging of Judas Iscariot. Beside it is a beautiful carving clearly depicting the Risen Christ, tenderly carrying the corpse of Judas to Paradise. A thousand years ago, pilgrims from all over Europe would have converged on Vézelay on their way to Compostela. Many of them, being illiterate, would have learned the rudiments of their faith via such examples of religious art. It is enlightening, to say the least, to realise what was being taught and learned at a time in history half way