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Origin and history

The Notre-Dame-du-Rosaire chapel of Belpech, located in the Aude in Occitanie, was founded in 1344 thanks to Raymond Sirven, a local bourgeois. The latter obtained permission from Pope Clement VI to build a chapel dedicated to St Mary Magdalene, equipped with a bell tower and served by a priest whom he would pay. The site, close to the castle on the slope of Castelas, was chosen to facilitate access to the mass and to house the burial of its founder. The work, entrusted to the workers of the parish church Saint Saturnin, had to stabilize a sloped ground.

In the 17th century, under Dominican influence, the chapel changed its dedication to become Our Lady of the Rosary, also called Our Lady of Beaupy. In 1682 a seminary was founded nearby, transforming sacristy into a refectory and adding a floor. Directed by the Oblates of Mary, he trained young people for religious or intellectual occupations until 1773, when a conflict with the consuls of Belpech ended his activity. The revenues of the chapel came from the obits (rents for annual Masses).

The French Revolution marked a dramatic turning point. On 4 May 1792 his two bells were sent to Castelnaudary to be melted, and his furniture sold as a national good. The statue of Our Lady of the Rosary, an object of intense devotion and considered miraculous, was hidden by the inhabitants to escape destruction. It reappeared on October 7, 1792, after being hidden in the walls of the seminary and then in the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. Pilgrimages, very popular in the 16th–15th centuries, declined in the 20th century, although the statue was still venerated in the church of Saint Saturn.

The present building, inscribed in the historic monuments in 1948, preserves only the remains of the 15th or 16th century: a lateral annex to the choir, a vaulted sacristy with Gothic openings, and a cloister backed by a retaining wall. The ruins reveal traces of painted decoration (brown portraits on yellow background) and a crypt housing the tombs of Raymond Sirven, monks and teachers. A statue of a stone called the pregnant Virgin, attributed to Saint Mary Magdalene by her hair and her hand laid on her belly, bears witness to an ancient healing cult, perhaps prior to the dedication to the Rosary.

The original furniture, partly dispersed, contained remarkable works: a painting by Saint Anthony of the desert (Spanish school, 17th century), a Jansenist crucifix with probably enhanced arms, and a painting of the escape in Egypt. Only the crucifix and the painting of Saint Anthony remain today. The chapel, originally in brick with sandstone capitals, illustrates the local religious architecture, marked by trinitarian symbols (triangular three-niche enclosure).

Not to be confused with the Abbey of Vajal (Benedictine then Cistercian, XII century), located north of Belpech, the chapel of Castelas remains a place full of history, where mingle Marian devotion, religious teaching and popular resistance to political upheavals.

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