Conches

Conches (in Occitan Concas ), is a common French, located in the department of the Aveyron and the area the Midday-Pyrenees.

The inhabitants are Conquois.

Major stage on the way of Saint-Jacques-with-Compostelle ( Via Podiensis ) thanks to its Abbey and with the Relic S of cranium of holy Foy, it is also a very pretty village classified by association the most beautiful villages of France.

Geography

The village coils with the Confluent Dourdou and Ouche, which forms at this place a kind of shell ( Latin Concha in , Concas in Occitan) which would have given its name to the village.

In the north of Rodez, at the bottom of a Cirque the medieval village of Conches packed around the Holy-Foy abbey appears, with semi-slope on the sunny slope. The houses laid out out of rib stall turn their principal frontages about midday. The schist reigns here as a Master and provides not only the stone to be built but also the paving stone of the streets and the Lauze S of the roofs. It yields the place to the stone of size and the sandstone pink or gray, more rarely with the Granite, for the framings of the doors and the windows.

Heraldic

Mouths, with a pairle reamed money, accompanied by three of the same shells, two as a chief and one at a peak| Malta-Brown |illustrated France (1882)

Two old layouts of pilgrimage towards Compostelle converge here: that of the Puy-en-Velay and that of Rodez. The current blazon of Conches evokes them by Y and three scallops.

The Pilgrimage of Compostelle

On the Via Podiensis of the Pilgrimage of Saint-Jacques-to-Compostelle .
Roch.

Some jacquets could take a alternative which made it possible to join Toulouse to honor the body with Sernin saint, and carry on their way by the Via Tolosane. Spanning the Dourdou by the bridge of the “romieus”, they left Conques to gain Aubin, and passed by Villefranche-with-Rouergue and Gaillac.

In the Guide of the Pilgrim , Aimery Picaud note:

“the Burgundian ones and Teutons which go to Saint-Jacob by the road of Puy must venerate the relics of holy Foy, virgin and martyrdom, whose very holy heart, after the torturers had sliced the head to him on the mountain of the town of Agen, was carried with the Sky by the choruses of the angels in the shape of a dove and was crowned bay-trees of immortality. When happy Caprais, bishop of the town of Agen, which, to flee violences of persecution, hid in a cave, had seen that, finding courage to support martyrdom, it went to join the place where the virgin had suffered and gaining in a courageous combat the crown of martyrdom, it went until reproaching its torturers their slowness.

Finally the very invaluable body of happy Foy, virgin and martyrdom, was buried with honor by the Christians in a valley called vulgarly Conques; one builds above a beautiful basilica in which, for the glory of God, until today the rule of Benoît saint is observed with the greatest care; many graces are granted to quite bearing people and to the patients; in front of the doors of the basilica runs an excellent source whose virtues are more admirable still than one cannot say it. ”

History

It is thought that, as of the 5th century, at this place a small agglomeration around an oratory devoted to the Saint-Saver would have existed. This oratory, after the passage of the Buckwheat S, would have been rebuilt towards 730 by the care of Pépin the Brief, then by Charlemagne.
About the same time, the Dadon abbot founded there a monastery which adopted in 819 the rule of holy Benoît. This abbey, to the well structured social organization, gradually will join together important land fields and will constitute a small island of prosperity in the economic distress of the 9th siècle.
At this time, between 864 and 875, capital event, a monk of Conches, Ariviscus, manages to withdraw the relics of holy Foy in a church, located around Agen, where holy Foy had undergone martyrdom at the twelve years age in 303. This pious flight immediately will start miracles and waves of pèlerins.
At the same time, the tomb of the apostle holy Jacques, with Compostelle, started to supplant the other great pilgrimages of the Christian world. The notoriety of the miracles of holy Foy was then sufficient so that Conques is selected like stage city. Towards 955 - 960, the count of Rouergue is one of the first pilgrims who go in Galicia on the tomb of the apostle. Thirty years later, his/her Raimond son is victorious Moslems, around Barcelona; as a sign of recognition, it makes gift with Conques of splendid spoils of war, a saddle furnished with engraved money facings, with which the monks manufacture large a croix.
Throughout the 11th century, holy Foy, with the reference symbol, the crusade of the Spanish Reconquista sponsors. This one supports in return the expansion of the abbey, so much so that two monks of Conches become bishops in Navarre and Aragon: Pierre d' Andoque, with Pampelune, towards 1077, and, in 1100, certain Pons, in the town of Barbastro, where, the following year, the king Pierre Ier d' Aragon founds a monastery dedicated to holy Foy.
At the beginning of Conches, two routes were offered to the pilgrims to join the Quercy and the abbey of Moissac. Shortest the Dourdou crossed on the old bridge towards Aubin. But more attended under the Door of Vinzelle passed to move on Large-Vabre and Figeac to the North-West.

At the 13th century, the abbey is reinforced and reached the apogee of its economic power, but it declines with the XIV {{E}} and 15th centuries, and will be finally secularized the December 22nd 1424.

Given up since the Revolution, Conques was redécouvert in 1837 by Prosper Mérimée, then inspector of the Historic buildings. The treasure and the large gate had been preserved intact by the inhabitants, but the church had to undergo consolidations.

In 1832, Conques absorbs Montignac and part of Saint-Marcel (the other being joined together with Sénergues).

In 1873, Mgr Bourret, bishop of Rodez, was addressed near the father Edmond Boulbon, restorer of the canonic order of Prémontré in France with Saint-Michel-of-Frigolet, in Provence, for the revival of the worship of holy Foy and the pilgrimage. Thus the June 21st 1873, a small colony of six Canon S regular, vêtus of the white dress of the order, was installed solemnly in the antique abbey by the bishop of Rodez. The inhabitants of Conches, in this spring of the young person Third Republic, saw refleurir one time of which they had lost until the memory: the bells of abbey were going to sound again crossbred, laudes, vespers and complies,…

In 1911, a museum was built by the Historic buildings to shelter the most famous treasure of the Moyen-âge which arrived to us. The relics of holy Foy, found in 1875, were recognized, and, since 1878, the pilgrimage was given in honor.

Conches, a monastic borough

Initially, the monastery Saint-Saver rested by the Dadon hermit does not appear to have gathered around him a many population. At the beginning of the 9th century, the place chief of the viguery, territorial division of the Carolingian empire, was with Montignac, heir to a great field of Antiquity, today modest hamlet of the voisinage.
Two centuries later, shortly after the year Millet, Bernard of Angers in his “ Livre of the miracles of holy Foy ” reveals the existence of a “ important city, sitting on the hill which is prolonged above the monastery. ”

the economic advancement of the Middle Ages.
In Conques, the economic activities and the trade flow born from the pilgrimage, with its unceasingly renewed customers, could only encourage the settlement. Thus the Book of the miracles is made the echo of the remunerative trade of wax and the candles which was practiced with the doors of the church. It quotes even one of these “merchants of the temple”, covetous Auvergnat installed with Conques.
Paying hospitality in the private individual or the landlord becomes another source of profit, because the monks cannot ensure the food and the lodging of all the pilgrims. At the time Romance, the opening of the large building sites: abbey, cloister, buildings conventual, ramparts, cause a call of considerable labor. Even if the specialized tasks, as the size of the stones or the sculpture, are generally assured by teams come from outside, it is necessary well to on the spot recruit the army of the operations, the diggers or the bouviers.
One is unaware of the number of inhabitants at the 12th century. But, in 1341, Conques counted 730 “fires”, that is to say 3 000 inhabitants approximately, and placed themselves at the seventh rank among the cities of the Rouergue. It thus is not of a simple village like today, but about an agglomeration in urban matter, with its ramparts, its four consuls renewable every year, its market and its public weight.

Administration

Demography

Until 1800, the population of the part of Saint-Marcel attached to Conques is not included in the table.

Monuments

The Holy-Foy abbey church

This splendid Romance building was built at the 11th century and the 12th century; the 2 turns of frontage date from the 19th century. The part which makes the celebrity of the place is the tympanum. The Abbatiale also preserves a treasure including/understanding of the single parts of art of the time Carolingien. The interior is decorated by stained glasses of Pierre Soulages.

See detailed article: Abbey Holy-Foy of Conches

Castle of Humières

It is a masonry of the 16th century with carved consoles, and a high tower of escalier.
One will notice a curious mullioned window which marries the round-off of the angle of the wall, in the North-West.

The Arts center

At the entry is village. Its buildings where the traditional materials were put at the service of a modern architecture, are integrated perfectly in the site (Library, Information center on the Romanesque art and history of Conches, various cultural Events.)

The street Charlemagne

On the abrupt street Charlemagne, the door of Barry (suburb in occitan) to the powerful Romance sandstone arcade rouge.
Still called in 1907 street of Caneyra (linked activities with hemp), this way was borrowed from the Moyen-âge by the pilgrims who left Conques in direction of the Quercy and of Aubin. The street still connects the square of abbey to the “Roman” bridge.

Old “Roman” bridge

With the foot of the village runs the Dourdou, the way of Saint-Jacob crosses it thanks to this bridge, builds in 1410.
In fact, it is about a bad translation of the occitan romieus (“pilgrims”), because contrary to other areas, the word jacquets or jacquaire never appears in Rouergue, neither in toponymy, nor in the textes.
The bridge was classified with the inventory of the historic buildings in 1930. According to the observations made by the civil engineers, bases could be if not Roman at least very former to the 15th century.

Homonymy

In the countries of language of oil, Conques decides " Conches " (two communes in France and a Swiss district in )

Bond external

the treasure of Holy-Foy
Site of the Tourist office
Conches on the site of the national geographical Institute
Conches on the site of INSEE
Conches on the site of Quid
the communes closest to Conches
Conches on Viamichelin
Abbeys, churches and commandery in Aveyron

Random links: