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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The church of Sainte-Marie de Coustuges, now parish, was originally the church of a Benedictine monastery. His medieval history began in 936 with an act of sale of the alleu from Coustouges to Ava, widow of Miron II of Cerdagne, and to their son Oliba Cabreta. In 979 Miron, Count of Cerdagne and Bishop of Girona, bequeathed the tithe of Coustouges to the Abbey of Sainte-Marie d'Arles. In 988, after an intermediate donation to Countess Ermengarde, Oliba Cabreta definitively ceded the alleu and her church to the Abbey of Arles, possession confirmed by a papal bubble of 1011.

The present building, built by the abbey of Arles, is consecrated on November 26, 1142 by the bishop of Elne Udalgar of Castellnou, replacing an earlier construction. The abbey established a parish priest in 1291, marking his growing role as a local church. Ranked a historical monument in 1840, it illustrates Catalan Romanesque architecture with its vaulted nave, semicircular apse, and a 12th century sculpted portal. A legend of the nineteenth century, today discredited, attributed its foundation to Pope Damascus I in 370, but no ancient archaeological or textual evidence confirms it.

The church occupies a strategic position in Vallespir, on a medieval road frequented from Catalonia to Spain via the pass of Maçanet. Its bell tower, surmounted by a referenced radioactive lightning rod (type Helita), and its furniture elements — such as a 12th century grid or a 17th century Virgin — bear witness to its rich past. Local excavations revealed only Roman coins, overturning the legendary accounts of successive destructions by the Barbarians, Wisigoths or Arabs.

Medieval sources, including notarial acts and papal bubbles, document his belonging to the Benedictine order until the Revolution. Its early classification in 1840 underlines its heritage importance, while architectural studies (Bructails, Durliat) confirm its mostly Romanesque construction, without trace of the earlier phases mentioned by Mérimée or Taylor. The site, in the centre of the village, remains a marker of the religious and political history of Vallespir.

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