History 2

The charter 572 in the Conques chartulary puts forward the donation in 1060 to the abbey of a monastery named "Perse" by the lord Hugues de Calmont. The list of various gifts which are with that donation mentions dependences in the old town (vetulo burgo) of Perse what shows that town was several centuries old. Perse was named like this in contrast with the Calmont new village set at the bottom of the castle. The Perse town might be founded in VIIth or VIIIth century and was built near a pre-existing rural monastery even older. It's not impossible that the Perse monastery could be contemporary with St Amans monastery in Rodez, or that Perse could be the first monastery in Christian Rouergue.







Perse vers 1900
If it's very difficult to date the arrival of Calmont's lords in the valley, we can think they came during the Carolingian administrative reform at the beginning of the IXth century. Calmont's lord was in that case an officer of the Rouergue's count with assignment to watch over the northern border of the county. That valley was no doubt under the authority of Perse abbey and the Calmont's lord can be sent to the initiative of the bishop of Rodez to bring to heel a monastery too much independent. The building of the Calmont castle and subsequently of the village would be situated in a margin from the VIIth to the IXth centuries.




The only really question about history of that monastery, whoever is the date of its foundation, is its appearance in the Rouergue history only in 1060 without it would be possible to explain the reasons of the missing not only of documents but also of any historical mention to its existence before that date. All documents were destroyed along centuries, by accident or by intention, because the Calmont's lords didn't want it were know how they became the owners of the monastery. Indeed if these lords had created that building, they would mention it in the donation in 1060. In the St Hilarian's legend, which the Conques monks were surely the authors, there is only of Levinhac and Perse, but nowhere of Calmont's lords when Conques owe the possession of that monastery to the generosity of these donors.
Perse in the beginning of XXth century

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