The mystery of the luminous crosses on the facade of a Toulouse church

Fronton and entrance to the Church of Dalbade -

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• In Toulouse, several cases of paranormal phenomena have been identified over the centuries, including that of the apparitions of luminous crosses on the facade of the Church of La Daurade, in the 13th century.

• For the specialist in these subjects, Yves Lignon, science can explain many of these phenomena, but this one remains a mystery.

Stories of haunted houses, Toulouse has known.

One of the most recent was certainly that of the private mansion, at number 1 of allées Paul-Feuga, a few steps from the Garonne.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, rumors swirled throughout the Pink City that the occupants were none other than the ghosts of the damned souls who had been executed there centuries before.

“At the time it was circulating, the house was abandoned, next to it was a vacant lot where there were often homeless people.

When the building was transformed into apartments and these constructions appeared next door, the rumor disappeared.

There are no myths, or only those produced by the imagination, ”assures Yves Lignon, author of the

.

For this specialist in paranormal phenomena, who is preparing a book on haunted houses in Occitania, more than that of the Saint-Michel district, it is a whole different story which keeps for him a part of mystery, much less known.

That of the luminous appearances of the cross on the facade of Notre-Dame de la Dalbade.

They do not date from yesterday but from a more troubled period in Toulouse history.

In 1210, the crusade against the Albigenses raged in the region.

The Count of Toulouse, Raymond VI, joined it, without real conviction.

In a time when questions of belief play a major role in politics, the mystic can be a means of manipulating crowds.

And it is in one of the chronicles of Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay, a monk devoted to the cause of Simon de Montfort, executioner of the Cathars that we discover that of La Dalbade.

Extract from the chronicles of Pierre des Vaux de Cernay.

13th century.

- Google Books

“Near the palace of the Count of Toulouse stands a church, the exterior walls of which have recently been whitewashed.

One evening we saw an infinity of silver crosses of all sizes and in motion appear over their entire surface.

They appeared and disappeared.

Many people saw them but the time to raise a finger and the cross that we wanted to show had disappeared.

For a fortnight, the people of Toulouse came to see them, ”says the religious.

No scientific explanation

This chronicle refers to the old church of Dalbade, built in 541 and destroyed in 1442 during a fire.

The current one, made of bricks, has kept the reference to its color and its former name: Santa Maria dealbata, namely Sainte-Marie the white.

The phenomenon of apparition lasted a fortnight, stopped as it had started, but became a real phenomenon for the inhabitants of the Pink City.

With the mind of a man of the twenty-first century, we say to ourselves that the string is coarse, that it suffices to project images on a white wall from the window of a nearby apartment for the trick to be played.

“We can think of a plot by the Bishop of Toulouse against the Count of Toulouse, while the Crusaders are at the gates of the city.

Especially since the church had just been whitewashed, as if someone was preparing a screen, ”notes the specialist.

Especially when we know that the bishop of the time, known under the name of Foulquet of Toulouse, great troubadour and celebrated by Dante in his

, is one of the only supporters of the Pope in the sector.

But Yves Lignon, a Cartesian who uses science to explain a large part of so-called paranormal phenomena, this case is one of those that remains like a question mark.

“That there was a stake in making believe that it is about a miracle, in manipulating the crowds by playing on doubt and the marvelous, that would not have been new.

But how could one make this image appear at a time when the projection apparatus did not exist and was not invented until later?

For me, this remains a mystery that science cannot explain, ”he concludes.

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