The Legend of Gabre
Michel Begon June 1998
The current department of Ariege is full of legendary sites, Niaux St. Lizier or Montsegur, which has often been described and we visit many because they are clearly circumscribed in space and time. We would like to mention here a continuous tradition and remarkable mainly for its long continuance, born of the time of the counts of Foix, but continues today, and more fertile than ever.
It Gabre, eastern canton of Mas d'Azil, she took it and retains its roots. Families living in places are almost the same since the 15th century, their names are recognizable despite changes in spelling. Both cousin everyone there with everyone, local endogamy had not failed to interfere and Remele lineages over generations.
common Gabre This is large area, although it was amputated in 1790 terroirs of Aigues-juntas, Aron and Suzan. It contains the entire basin upstream the Lèze. Its location is at the northern foothills of karst Gariné Pouch, will balloon to 650 meters, west of Forest Baulou, who lost his wolves, but keeps his teeth decayed stone, south of the ridge of endless Plantaurel, we think the spine of a fossil reptile finally block east of where the cavernous Arize pierced his famous cave. It is a closed basin in geology, where the oaks grow green and turn blue lakes or Mondely Filheït. Its natural inviolability probably contributes to explain the continuity of its history over eight centuries.
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Already his name is mysterious. At the end of last century, Elisha Robert Garils of establishing that the place name was not Gabre-born Latin hardly hesitate to assign a Hebrew origin. At that time, scholars Gabris practiced three biblical languages: Hebrew, Greek and Latin. They fired their happy references from the Old Testament. What epic historian glimpses he?
The son of the Chosen People, fleeing the massacres in the 1st century of Titus in Palestine and the destruction Temple of Jerusalem, refugees would they in the new Promised Land, one of the hamlets called Aron, and there would have founded the New Israel, and the 16th century called himself the people Huguenot? In fact, the myth of the Temple, destroyed and rebuilt by the wicked, God willing, epitomizes the whole legend gabraise.
The analogy struck minds. In 1625, Marshal Thémines the orders of Louis XIII and Richelieu laid siege in the Mas d'Azil and renewed the massacre of the Elect, men, women and children. In 1668, Louis XIV had destroyed the Temple Gabre of the expense of Protestants. Yet the etymology of Hebrew GABR not proven; one would nowadays rather a place name to Iberian.
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an old story and how unusual!
What was there to Gabre the 10th century, except of forests and forestry? The Benedictine Abbey of Le Mas d'Asile (old spelling) existed since Charlemagne, but held his possessions in the lower valley of Arize. It seems that 12th-century Count of Foix has encouraged the establishment of the Order of the Temple in Gabre, since we found this place in the archives of 1181 made a donation to the Knights of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. After the excommunication and punishment of the Templars, the order in 1312 became one of the hospital, whose name still appears in place names, including the "Wood Hospital" under Montauriol. Suzan farm still bears the cross of Malta. These congregations of monks, soldiers guarded the roads to Jerusalem and pilgrims. A Gabre, they built a defensive tower, later demolished by order of Cardinal Richelieu because the Huguenots had made their camp. The spiritual connection to the Holy Land and the Temple of Solomon is not disputed here.
But in 1283, the Commandery of the Knights of St. John in paréage gave himself the king of France, Philip the Bold, against the wishes of the Count of Foix. It was the time of renewal Cathar in the valley of Ariege, 40 years after the fall of Montsegur, and perhaps our knights prefer they take a cons-insurance from the barons of the north. Through this deliberate act of independence, broke away Gabre County of Foix, formed an enclave in the Languedoc fuxéenne in the principality, and above all directly lifted from the King of France. She summoned Gabre-en-France.
Attracted by the impressive natural forest, a strain of gentlemen glassmakers of Revel (Haute Garonne), and Robert, took root in the soil of Gabre the late 15th century, under Louis XI or Charles VIII. This surname is most prevalent Robert today Gabre and even in the western part of the Ariege, but all holders seem to descend from the same Robert Amiel, attested to 1485. Such cohesion at the same place for generations and across centuries seems to embody what many sociologists, since Frederic Le Play, called "family strain".
The Robert allied to other gentlemen glassmakers, the Verbizier Grenier and enjoying them as the noble privilege of exercising the art of glass that they were recognized by the Charter of Sommières (1475) . Together, the three founding families formed a clan endogamous, like the "consorteria" Italian, and which still exists, at least in legend, memory and attitudes. When they met in August, people form a family clan of mass 80 people, who go on the block in a mountain race, inhabiting a theater or are in themselves a cult meeting.
These three families of glassmakers exploited until the 18th or even 19th centuries the rich forests of the Montagne Noire, the Grésigne Plantaurel and they began to clear cutting to heat their ovens. The Commandery of the Hospital do not live probably a good move to look Gabre, especially being noble, they acquitted him no manorial rights.
However, political influence of Albret, king of Navarre and the counts of Foix, convinced them, around 1570, to embrace the Reformation preached by Calvin Nerac or Geneva. The spirit of independence Gabre aroused among the Gabra independence of mind that does all the rest of the story.
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Wars of Religion were so marked that local attitudes are still present in the minds, hearts and deeds. Smaller, the phenomenon is found in the Cevennes Plantaurel. Archives and oral tradition kept piously the cult of heroes who defended over the centuries and freedoms gabraises primarily the freedom of conscience.
Wars of Religion 16th century have left little trace, however painful Gabre. One type is all tilted block in the Reformation, which left little enemy. The Catholic religion was no longer assured, the Roman church fell into disrepair, Protestants occupied the cemetery. The disorder came from the Edict of Nantes, which in 1598 restored on site rights and customs of the Catholic Church along with the causes of dispute. The confrontation began.
Among offended tradition reveres especially Pierre Bayle, philosopher of the Enlightenment. Child in the 1650s, little Peter accompanied his father, pastor of Carla, in worship at the temple of Gabre, who did not serve. Exiled in Rotterdam by repression, this man was astonished Europe and its century of his freedom of thought, his frankness of expression and modest heroism.
Others are veterans. For Gabre was for centuries a fortress surrounded on all sides. Of west side, there was the seat of the glorious city of the Mas d'Azil, which the gentlemen glassmakers kept the cave against the king's men, by hiding behind the iron gates which then locks. On the north side, on the narrow plateau that truncates the Plantaurel between two limestone walls, gathered nightly for a century, from 1685 to 1787, the Assemblies of the Desert, protected by the younger guns. Thus in 1759, took a guard in an ambush on the Marquis de Gudanes Pas del Roc, which now give the main road 131.
Towards the east, the Gabra were unable to prevent the fire in 1621 the glassworks Serredecor by the nobility of the county and the Catholic Séronais. But the south side, they avenged that same year 1621, by a strong hook murderer, on the soil of Suzan, just up the Bastide de Sérou. The Séronais it lost 22 killed, including the consul John Icard, their leader.
The most famous captain of the Gabra was probably the Garils François Robert, a tall gentleman glassmaker, said it Garils-fat or Garils Gros, who drew the sword or pistol as person and emptied at the end arm includes a wine. It was he who in 1625 commanded the Tower of Gabre against the soldiers of Marshal Thémines. He disappeared in 1645, but his saga has spanned the centuries. "Tell us about Him, Grandma, tell us about him ... "Begging the kids to the wake at night, when the old had hidden the Bible in the slot of a wall.
legendary These facts have been so resilient to forgetting they provide, in the summer of 1998, the subject of an audiovisual presentation to the City of LANOUX between the rivers and Lèze Arize.
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Gabre the 18th century was not without asking the steward of the king a formidable problem for police. So the Commandery of an order, certainly shows, but dying for lack of crusades and crusaders, which indeed we never see the commander on the spot and, by the lack of seigneurial authority, is no longer required in hand. Here are facing dozens of gentlemen glassmakers and their workers, we can not enlist as soldiers or as officers of the king in the army, they are Protestants recant and do not want, but you can not send all the galleys of Toulon, to perish soon fevers, because they are armed, fight like wolves and hide in the woods. These shameless beggar mock the authority of Her Majesty or the bishop of Rieux, ensuring the bodyguards of ministers in Geneva and sent clandestine service order of worship prohibited. What to do? Examples!
There were mass roundups, such as glassware from 1697 to the Baden, Gabre, dispatching a number of reforms in prison. At the Desert Museum, near the farmhouse Soubeyran in the Cevennes, the list of martyrs mentions an impressive list of Gabri died for their faith in the galleys, and their names are easy to recognize, they are nicknamed by the localities of the Commandery: Montauriol, Rieutailhol, Coumebère, or Soulambel Magnou.
again February 17, 1762, the three brothers Grenier, born in La Lèze sources, were beheaded at Toulouse instead of Salin (just beside the hotel of the Knights of Malta), for having defended sword in hand, Pastor Rochette, sentenced to death. Long, for all the south-west, we sang the lament of the shepherd Rochette, a few know today.
At least three brothers Grenier had they disturbed public order. But for good measure, the authorities made strong thrash a few days later, March 9, 1762, the Protestant merchant Jean Calas, who was accused without proof of having killed his son, desiring to become a Catholic. In this case, it was a suicide and no evidence of murder. He intervened, with all his authority to restore Jean Calas in 1765. Both spouses scandals prevented the repression will continue. Unless the victims of White Terror of 1815, Jean Calas and Gabra three martyrs were the last official among Protestants.
The torture of the Chevalier de La Barre in 1766 did the same act Voltaire against the unfairness of the trial court made without evidence and where the defendants were convicted in advance for example.
The Edict of Toleration in 1787 allowed the Gabra Protestants celebrate their baptisms and marriages. For two years before the revolutionary secularization, the Commandery Civil Gabre had two separate states.
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The Revolution of 1789 led to two opposing effects. First, proclaiming freedom of conscience and abolishing the Order of the Hospital, she went to Gabris freedoms. But by removing the privilege of nobility of art glass, she delivered the glassware Southern competition from Saint Gobain glassworks and coal from the north. At the same time, it annihilated the economic reason for the brotherhood formed by glass, by systematic inbreeding, the families of Robert, Verbizier and Grenier, for them to retain the monopoly craft.
The last glass had extinguished Gabre lack of wood, from the late 17th century, they finally died out in the woods and Couserans Grésigne in the late 19th century, ruined by the competition. Nevertheless the family alliance of the three strains persisted more or less until today and is renewed by various cultural associations.
the early 20th century, the historian Robert Elisha Garils published Gentlemen of glass, a commander, a village, to perpetuate the tradition. This book, written in the style of Napoleon Peyrat, the "Michelet Midi", reprinted in 1973 by Robert and Dora Garils remains Gabris for what might be called a "cult book", as there are "cult movies" for moviegoers. Spark of a sudden awakening of historical consciousness among the distant descendants of the gentlemen of old glass, it was the direct cause of the creation in 1975, their Family Association, currently comprising 450 member households . This association of the 1901 Act was renamed the "Awakened", a technical term referring to the time of autumn when, finished work in the fields and harvest, it rekindled the glass furnace for the winter season. Its spiritual heart and its archives are Gabre, even if its audience extends globally, to the British cousins, Quebec, Brazilian or Japanese. Plenary meetings are held each year throughout the Ariege.
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Moreover, we must be careful to believe that the community has lived or even gabraise now lives in peaceful harmony.
Under the Wars of Religion, the population was divided equally between Protestants and Catholics. Better educated, only Protestants have left written records of their thoughts and actions. Probably illiterate Catholic peasants remained unknown. The meek have no voice that speaks for them! At least we think that the poor fertility of the soil Gabris doomed one and other crafts, the gentlemen on the art of glass, peasants weaving and the timber industry or the horn, and that this common pre-industrial activity created them the minimum consensus to avoid quarrels.
But in the 19th century, craft perishes, only subsisted agriculture, livestock and forestry. With 600 people, the town found itself overcrowded. But the land belonged to the formerly gentlemen, whose farmers were sharecroppers. There followed a socio-political tension is still very sensitive in the 1940s. While the former preferred vote remained moderate, suffrage farmer opted for the decidedly agrarian communism.
The rural exodus, mass here as elsewhere, has changed that. Yet this county, fell to 100 residents and 60 voters, still crossing by an intense competition between the right and left. The amazing thing is that leaders of both camps are the descendants of ancient families windows, have the same names and, having competed in the election campaigns, are found together in the Awakened.
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Gabre is only ever one of the least populated among the rural communities of the Ariege. His story would not be exceptional compared to that of all others, if it still represented a special case, given historians and sociologists, due to its geographical isolation and its historical continuity. It includes combined two salient features by which scientists believe explain the dynamism of Europe and America.
is the first institution of the stem family, comprising at the same place on successive generations in the construction of a lineage in perpetual becoming. Such a structure is typical of southern regions and especially in the Pyrenees. In contrast to the nuclear family, which delivers the individuals fend for itself, the stem family of Frederic Le Play creates an arrow lineage, which, from the more distant past, preparing diligently to keep her offspring in the future. It could refer to the interesting proposals on this theme Emmanuel Todd sociological.
is then the Reformation, instilling in its followers an acute sense that everyone on earth has a mission to fulfill. Sociologist Max Weber believed to explain the rise of Western capitalism to the Protestant ethic. Reformed Gabr are rather devoted to administration and science than finance, but with a zeal that did never wavered.
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