Bernac is a small village between Albi and Gaillac, located on a plateau overlooking the Tarn. In the heart of a landscape of valleys and vineyards, it will be a peaceful stopover during your escapades in the landscapes of Gaillac.
Bernac, simple veneration
Between beliefs and traditions, a Christian ritual has lasted for thousands of years in Bernac: babies suffering from the eruption of their first teeth are brought there to follow an ancestral tradition.
Saint Apollonia or (Apolonia according to the translations) lived in Alexandria in Egypt in the 249rd century. Daughter of a pagan magistrate, she was martyred in the year XNUMX among other Christians for denying her faith. The morals of the time having a certain bad taste for macabre scenes, her jaw was broken with stones, her teeth were pulled out and she was burned alive. She became the patron saint of dental surgeons, and is invoked to alleviate suffering during teething.
A relic of the saint (a case containing a tooth and a bone fragment of the jaw), probably brought back from Alexandria by a monk and preserved in the church of Notre-Dame de l'Assomption, is at the origin of the tradition of Bernac: babies, whose cheeks are reddened by the inflammation of their first teeth, are brought on the first Sundays of the month to receive the blessing of the saint to relieve their pain.
Between 35 and 60 babies from all over the region (from Haute-Garonne, Gers, Pyrénées-Atlantiques and even Bordeaux) are brought to Bernac each month, as a register attests, to take part in this veneration.
The Cistercian barn
Completely renovated, the Cistercian Barn is a magnificent testimony to the involvement of the monks in the development and work of the wine industry. A dependency of the Abbey of Bonnecombe (between Rodez and Réquista), the Bernac barn extended its domain well beyond the commune in the Middle Ages, towards Castelnau, Labastide or Cestayrols.
The organization of the granges was very strict: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of prayer and 8 hours of sleep (rule of Saint Benedict). The grange was managed by a brother grangier and the monks regularly rotated between the different granges and the Abbey of Bonnecombe.
Church of Our Lady of the Assumption
The oldest part of the church of Notre-Dame de Bernac dates from the 13th and 14th centuries, that is to say from the early period of the Cistercian barn. You can admire an 18th century Annunciation there.
