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Key figures

Origin and history

The Notre-Dame de Corbiac chapel, founded in 1062 by the Chevalier Béranger de Corbiac, derives its name from the Latin corvus (corbeau), linked to a Christian legend. The adjacent monastery, built in the 11th–13th centuries, housed a religious community under the name Ecclesia Sanctae Mariae de Corbiaco from 1334. In 1549, Baron Gérard de Cruilles erected a family mausoleum there before giving way to the Trinitarians in 1575, who founded a priory there under the direction of Pierre d'Oriola, the first prior.

In the 17th century, the Augustins replaced the Trinitaries, and in 1679, the Perpignanese sculptor Louis Générés made a altarpiece for the chapel. Declining in the 18th century, the site was abandoned at the Revolution and fell into ruins. Today, private owners restore the building, revealing unique Renaissance frescoes in Roussillon. The chapel, classified in 2000, preserves a vaulted Romanesque nave in a broken cradle and a semicircular apse adorned with 16th-17th century paintings.

Several furniture elements, such as a founding wooden Virgin and a bell of 1702, were transferred to the church of Mosset or to the cathedral of Lodève. The bell tower-wall with double arch, typical of Catalan architecture, and the remains of the Trinitarian cloister testify to its turbulent monastic history, marked by changes in religious order and phases of decline.

The legend of the crow, symbolized in the arms of the monastery, evokes a divine intervention to guide the foundation of the site. Recent excavations have revealed 16th-century murals, reinforcing its heritage interest as a rare example of art reborn in Conflict. The site, now privately owned, remains a major testimony of the religious and artistic history of the Eastern Pyrenees.

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