Saint-Félix-Lauragais is a bastide located 40 kilometres from Toulouse.
The village is perched on a ridge that dominates the Revel plain and faces the western end of the Montagne Noire.
This exceptional situation, set on a promontory has certainly been inhabited since the dawn of time: Roman camp, then Visigoth fort, seigneury and bastide.
The castle built in the Middle Ages was witness to the 1st Cathar Council in 1167.
St. Felix is on the Via Tolosana route of the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
Known, for a time, as Saint-Félix de Caraman, in 1921, the municipality changed its name to Saint-Félix-Lauragais.
Although there are no vestiges of it, the village is indeed in the Cathar land.
In Saint-Félix, everything deserves attention:
- The castle (tower and rampart from the time of the Cathar Council),
- The Collegiate Church from the 14th century with Rabiny organs from 1782,
- The "Logis Collégial" Commandery,
- On the hill of the three mills, the cemetery of the English of 1814 (English troops of the Duke of Wellington),
- The birth house of the famous French musician and composer 1872-1921 Déodat de Séverac, honoured each year by a festival.
Saint-Félix has been, through the centuries, the witness of important historical facts :
- The Cathar Council of 1167 which took place in the village,
- In the 16th century, pastel and the Renaissance, when dressmakers made sumptuous toilets to dress these ladies and the Capitouls of Toulouse,
- The arrival of the English from Wellington in 1814, bivouacking on the hills of Les Fourches,
- The memory of Déodat-de-Séverac, child of Saint Félix.
The Land of Cocagne
Since 1972, the village of Saint-Félix has hosted the Fête de la Cocagne.
Cocagne is the name of the shell from which the pastel blue dye is extracted.
This pastel which made the fortune of the region.
Traditionally, the festival takes place during the Easter weekend.
Saint Félix revisits its history and makes visitors relive a village in the way of yesteryear.
Many ladies and beautiful damsels parade through the streets and, south-west obliges, we feast for three days.
Jean Luc Petitrenaud came to share the bread, salt and cassoulet.
The feast is prepared by a team of volunteers who rejoice when the streets of Saint-Félix are filled with all the visitors of the Easter weekend.
There is another way to rejoice during a detour through Saint Félix: Claude Tafarello's Auberge du Poids Public.
The local cuisine is refined and the welcome is just as warm.
Cocagne : Christian Fabre
fabrechis@hotmail.fr
Auberge du Poids public
Tel: 05 62 18 85 00
www.auberge-du-poidspublic.com
