Roger wrote:
Well! This shows once again you should never count a good man down! Once you get past the appallingly despicable English (I guess Coppens wasn't around to assist his SP boss, for some reason or other), there's an enormous amount of new information there for "armchair researchers" such as myself.
You give Andre far too much credit, Roger. Though clearly not written by a native speaker of English, it was still far beyond Andre's capacity.
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For one thing, I had absolutely no idea that, in addition to ministering to the needs of his Seigneuresse, Mme d'Hautpoul, as well as caring for the souls of his Rennes le Chateau parishioners, Bigou was also responsible for shepherding the parishioners of Perillos towards their heavenly salvation.
In two different dioceses, no less.
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I can see the dear man now, the words ite missa est barely out of his mouth, barreling through the pews still filled with his adoring congregation, and bursting out the doors of Ste Marie-Madeleine of RLC, to vault on his trusty mule, still clad in his celebrant's vestments, to take off at a scorching gallop for St Michel de Perillos, where his other congregation was waiting patiently for his inspirational sermon...
Probably delivered the following day!
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I also have to admire this unsung bureaucrat who, with a Cassandra-like eye on the future, took on the task of collecting land ownership information, persuasively obtaining the cooperation of everyone outside his jurisdiction, so that over 25 years later another unsung (and un-named) notary could present the King with a full accounting for all the newly acquired lands. Gotta love that Courtade and offer him up as an example to today's listless bureaucrats!
Ah, but then Monsieur Douzet contradicts himself with this small admission:
The “Courtade document” lists all the ground directly attached to this stronghold and the owners of the rights to which the belongings are registered. The work of Courtade did not concern judicial rights, nor tax or administrative affairs. It is furthermore evident that the essential documents concerning property or family acts were of no concern to this census, but were solely focused on what we today would call “cadastral acts”.Cadastral records
not concerning jurisprudence, administration or taxation? What does he think they're for, decoration? How many maps are drawn in Courtade's register?
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But then again, as so duly noted by Monsieur Douzet, the Spanish do have a great ability and efficiency with archives and their preservation. So perhaps "armchair researchers" might take advantage of this and discover what the notarial activities were on the Spanish side of the border back in those pre-treaty years. Similarly, they might be able to find a lot of Perillos "last wills and testaments". One will await with great eagerness the presentation of the pictured documents at the promised conference, because they certainly will say the very same things that the Spanish archives do, surely.
Ah, but again, Mr. Douzet says not to bother with archives, because:
Nowadays, it is very difficult to get copies of original peerage books, heraldic and family documents of the families that made their history in the old country of the Catalan Roussillon. These originals did not so much get lost, as they were put in safety in Spanish Catalonia before the annexation to France. Many still remain there and can be consulted. The bits of family archives of the old Catalan sectors of Opoul, Perillos, Vingrau and Rivesaltes (to quote only those) are in the hands of their descendants living in the area of Sabadell (province of Barcelona)… the sector where the last priest of Perillos before the French Revolution went into exile: Bigou.
So don't bother with consulting French or Spanish archives if you're looking for peerage books, heraldic, or family records for the grandeza in and around Perillos, because their descendants in Sabadell have all
those records. Funny, he used to claim his old neighbors in Durban had all
those records - have they relocated? So I guess we should simply discount the hordes of archival material in both France and Spain that is publically accessible to any researcher, because it all must be erroneous and exists for no other reason than to purposely obscure Mr. Douzet's "truth" - as only
he knows who has
those records...
He'd have to know where members of the Perillos family were domiciled in order to find their archived testaments - and as far as he's concerned, they all must have lived in that tiny little tower keep in Perillos itself. He hasn't a clue who they were or where they lived, and what's more has never shown the slightest interest in finding out. In fact, when his associate Coppens tried to hook me up with him years ago, Douzet was horrified that I had actual genealogical information and refused to have anything to do with me. It didn't take me long to understand that verifiable information was harmful to Douzet's purpose.
He just keeps digging that hole deeper and deeper.
TCP