Saint Bertrand de Comminges

The cathedral, at the same time powerful and hurled, is built on a hill which makes site a true “mount holy Michel of the grounds”. Not far from the hill of saint Bertrand, one discovered the caves of Gourdan and Gargas. Temple cave with the temple cathedral, one notes that the place was at all times chosen by the spirit. The cathedral has also the term of Holy Marie. http://www.cathedrale-saint-bertrand.org/

Before being called Saint-Bertrand-of-Comminges, the city initially bore the name of Lugdunum Convenarum (Lyon of Convènes). To translate “convenae” by brigands would amount forgetting that the text of Jerome saint, in his work “against vigilance”, where it is mentioned name, adopts a polemical tone for marking well the difference between Christianity and heresy. Actually, the convenae are adventurers, nomads. They are installerent on the high place whereas the pastores, occupied the plain where saint-Just of Valcabrère draws up itself.

Lugdunum means “hill of Lug”. Lug was the Celtic god who gave to the kings wisdom and conferred magic capacities to them. He is also the god of the intelligence which clarifies the human heart…

After a long boom that attest research archaeological contemporary, the city was striped political of Gaule mérovingienne and franque chart. But the life started again under the crook of saint Bertrand, bishop of Comminges (1083-1123).

I knew before arriving that I was held in a high place. Already, on the square, energies start to make go thoroughly all will chakras them…

The message of the Romance gate

In the center, it is a marble column which is used as pier. The capital which surmounts it offer the topic of four squatted men supporting the building. (4 pillars of the world, 4 directions of space forming the screen of the universe) Ainsi these characters invite us to exceed the border of our égo to support in ourselves the divine piece.

The tympanum, of antiquated aspect shows us the worship of the magi in front of a virgin with the child and a bishop holding the stick and raising the right hand as a sign of blessing. It is about Bertrand, engraved in the stone before 1179, date of its canonization, proof that the commingeois recognized it like saint before the church. Qaund with the king-magi, they bring gold, the incense and the myrrh, respectively symbol of the light which opens the conscience of the man to the life of the spirit, of what divinise and with the passage of the mortal existence to the immortal life. The three king-magi evoke at the same time the three stages of the passage of the man on ground and three qualities necessary for an interior achievement.

With the lintel, the 12 apostles affirm the importance of the community and recall that Bertrand had ressucity a college sacerdotal and offered a cloitre to the monks.

The cloitre

only the gallery of the west is Romance, the two others dating from the XIII ème century. With the center of this gallery the pillar is held of the 4 evangelists: the apostles, charged to transmit to the world the message, all are connected to the single axis of the column, with the vertical which connects the divine universe to the human universe. It appears that the pillar of the evangelists is cut in an old dolmen… What is rare, but not non-existent. (see Arles enter others)

Two subjects exeptionnels were engraved on both sides square: a bat and an owl. In the negative aspect, the bat is the image of hypocrisy and duplicity. It is it which leads the evil geniuses which haunt the nights. But it is also the symbol of the contemplative spirit which studies the texts crowned in order to discover the hidden direction of them. It is the evocation of the heart to the research of the light. When with the owl, it represents wisdom and science.

Other subjects are present in the cloitre, with the repeated presence of plants with 3 sheets. The idea is illustrated by a human head with which the face of it is decorated. It is the wise man whose thought became a plant of life, outgoing will chakra frontal.

It will be necessary to await a forthcoming voyage to discover together the symbols of the stalls of jubé, chorus of the cathedral.