Monday, September 6, the Catholic community of Garrigues and the surrounding area was in turmoil. Seven priests from various horizons (Nîmes, Alès, Calvisson but also Perpignan, Toulon and even Belgium), united by their attachment to the Dominican order, although not having pronounced monastic vows, in fact , meet that evening to honor with a mass a great local figure of the Christian faith: Bertrand de Garrigues.
Born at the end of the 12th century, in the village castle which still adjoins the very pretty Romanesque church where the ceremony took place, the young nobleman decides to join Dominique de Guzman (future Saint-Dominique), this Spaniard who had given himself the mission of bringing back to the right path the lost sheep attracted in increasing numbers by the Cathar heresy.
Bertrand thus became one of Dominique’s first disciples and, along with a few other priests, formed the initial nucleus of the Order of Preachers. His missions will take him to Bologna but also to Paris (where he founded the convent of Saint-Jacques), Toulouse and Montpellier.
First Provincial of Provence
In 1221, exactly 800 years ago, he became First Provincial of Provence for the Order that Dominic had just subdivided into eight provinces. As such, he runs a region that covered all the Oc-speaking countries (roughly present-day Provence and Occitania) up to Lyon. After having worked for 10 years to organize and promote the new Dominican religious community in his region, he died in 1230 in the monastery of the Cistercian sisters of Bouchet, in the Drôme, where his tomb quickly became a place of pilgrimage. His body (it seems intact) was removed two centuries later by the preaching brothers of Orange who buried him in their convent.
150 years later his body was exhumed again, this time by Protestants who threw it into the fire. His memory continued to be honored no less and in 1870 his worship was approved by the bishop of Valence, before he was declared “Blessed” by Pope Leo XIII in 1881, who authorized the celebration of offices. in his honor in the dioceses of Nîmes and Valence. Indeed the “Blessed” can, unlike the Saints, be honored only on a limited territory.
And so September 6 was chosen as the commemorative date.
Free Midi Correspondent: 06 89 19 54 01
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