En contrebas du Vieux Village et à environ 500m vers l’est, la chapelle Saint-Gens s’élève au milieu d’un écrin de verdure. Elle fut construite en 1879. Cette chapelle n’a jamais été à priori un lieu de culte. Elle abrite une exposition permanente consacrée à l’histoire de la pierre, aux outils de carriers et tailleurs de pierre.
Mais qui est Saint-Gens?
La réalité historique
Gens Bornarel ou Bournareau est né à Monteux (Vaucluse) vers l’an 1105 dans une famille de paysans. Il vécut sa jeunesse partagée entre sa famille, ses devoirs et la religion. Scandalisé par les pratiques religieuses teintées de paganisme de ses compatriotes, il se retira, dès l’âge de quinze ans, dans la vallée sauvage qui deviendra plus tard la Valsainte.
Il mourut à vingt trois ans, mais sa courte vie fut édifiante et la tradition lui attribue de nombreux miracles.
Canonisé par la ferveur populaire, il est encore invoqué en période de sécheresse pour faire tomber la pluie.
La légende de Saint-Gens
Elle a son origine dans l’antique culte de l’eau. C’est un « faiseur de pluie »…
Un miracle de saint Gens, parmi les plus connus, est celui que l’on appelle le « miracle du loup ».
Pour se nourrir dans sa thébaïde, le jeune ermite laboure quelques arpents de terre ingrate à l’aide d’une rustique charrue tirée par deux vaches. Un loup affamé descendu de la montagne ayant dévoré l’une d’elles, saint Gens le subjugue et l’attelle à la place de sa victime. La légende raconte que le jeune homme se promenait souvent avec l’animal, devenu docile, et l’amenait boire à une source que l’on appelle depuis lors la « fontaine du loup ». Saint Gens rendit l’âme le 16 mai 1127. La légende dit que le loup revint à Monteux et annonça, par ses hurlements, la mort de son maître et qu’il serait mort de chagrin sur la tombe du jeune Saint.
Texte tiré en partie du fascicule « La fontaine de Vaucluse et la Provence des eaux vives » de J. Granier et M. Guitteny.
CHAPEL OF SAINT-GENS
This chapel, set in its green field, was built around 1822.
Its owner, abbé Charles-Joseph Bernard, who was the parish priest in Les Taillades from 1868 to 1875, donated it to the municipality, as confirmed in a town council meeting on 22 June 1879. A page in the archives tells us that the said Charles-Joseph BERNARD, priest in Villes (sur Auzon), donated to the Fabrique (a charity) « some twenty-eight ares of arable land situated in the Badarel area of Les Taillades, on which the donor has erected a chapel in honour of Saint Gens (…) considering this chapel likely to be very useful as a processional site (…) and an asset on many occasions as a
place where the dead could lie prior to the religious ceremony … « .
After six months of discussion, the Council accepted the gift on condition that the Fabrique did not request any financial assistance.
The Chapel was blessed on 14 September 1879. Various furnishings and equipment were subsequently added, in particular a bell, at the request of the « population which had long wanted to see a bell tower and a bell atop the Chapel of Saint Gens, to confer greater solemnity on the festivities held there in honour of the saint ».
Since the separation of Church and State there has been no resident parish priest. The Chapel is no longer used for services, only the parish church being authorised now for religious ceremonies. The Chapel currently houses a permanent exhibition of quarriers’ and stonemasons’ tools.
Who was Saint Gens?
Gens Bournareau was born in 1104 in Monteux, a small town in the Comtat Venaissin four km from Carpentras, to a modest farming family. Very pious from his childhood on, he wanted to avoid the pagan practices in which the
town’s inhabitants customarily engaged to call for rain.
He is said to have sought solitude in the valley which would later be known as the Valsainte, near Le Beaucet.
His first miracle occurred when he was clearing his land. After one of his draft animals had been killed by a wolf, he hitched the wolf to the same yoke as his cow.
In that same spot, too, he is said to have caused a miraculous spring to surge from the ground, to be used to combat fevers. This second miracle would be followed by many others. He was often begged to call down rain. He died peacefully in that same valley on 16 May 1127 at the age of 23.
Since that date, the inhabitants of Monteux and Le Beaucet enthusiastically hold festivities in his honour on 16 May in Monteux and the first Sunday in September in Le Beaucet. A processional pilgrimage is organised, attended by a crowd of the faithful.