Cucugnan, good morning, Father

The village of Cucugnan is watched over by the castle of Quéribus, the last Cathar citadel and French sentinel at the gates of Spain until 1659, date of the signature of the Treaty of the Pyrenees.
The church of Saint-Julien and Sainte-Basilisse houses a pregnant Virgin.

At the very top of the village, the seigneurial mill had been preserved following the French Revolution.
The mill is built on the sloping rock.
This windmill, which is mentioned on archive documents in 1692, belonged then to the lords of Cucugnan and remained so until the Revolution. In 1838, it was in ruins.

In 2003, the building and the mechanism are rehabilitated.
Its wings, made of ash and canvas, are oriented thanks to a swivelling roof and the millstones are made of granite.
The Château de Quéribus is perched on a narrow rocky outcrop at an altitude of 728 metres.
It overlooks the Corbières massif, the Fenouillèdes and the Roussillon plain.
It has been classified as a historical monument since 1907.
Cucugnan owes its fame to Alphonse Daudet.
In his Letters from my mill (1886), he tells the story of the sermon of the Curé de Cucugnan..
This good priest, wanting to bring his flock back to the right path, tells them an imaginary journey to heaven, to purgatory and then to hell, where he finds all the ancient Cucugnanese.
This famous sermon has existed: it is the one that Abbot Ruffié pronounced in 1858 in Cucugnan.
Blanchot de Brenas, a poet travelling in the Corbières, discovered it.
Father Ruffié became Father Marti, and Alphonse Daudet will claim to hold this story of Roumanille in his famous collection.

In 1884, Achille Mir undertakes to bring back the sermon in Occitan language.

This is why, today, a structure - called "Théâtre Achille Mir" - presents all year round a storytelling and animated show entitled: The sermon of the priest of Cucugnan.

 

www.cucugnan.fr/

 

 

 


To go further....

Le Curé De Cucugnan

Lettres de mon moulin : Le Curé de Cucugnan

Le Curé de Cucugnan Et Son Véritable Auteu

L'abbe Martin Etait Cure De Cucugnan

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