Chapelle Notre-Dame des Conches

First mentioned in the 16th century, but a sarcophagus of uncertain origin was discovered in the foundations (Musée de Brou). The present building was rebuilt in 1839. View of the Bresse region. Access by vehicle.
Interpretation panels.

Our distant ancestors, probably from the Sequan people, already inhabited this place, living from breeding, cultivation and trade with their neighbours the Eduans and the Romans on the other side of the Rhône.
Around 50 A.D., after the conquest of Gaul, the Romans quickly noticed the strategic advantages of this first part of the Jura; they brought their gods with them, built temples*, and probably planted vines.

*The temples of Bacchus (Dionysus in Greek mythology, god of wine and drunkenness) and Jovis (Jupiter, god of heaven and earth)

Our ancestors, the Celts, had developed a polytheistic religious system (which admits the existence of more than one god), under the authority of the druids. We can therefore think that these new Roman cults came, either in addition to the existing gods, or in juxtaposition, and gradually assimilated the local cults from the 1st century BC onwards.
from the 1st century BC onwards. The Celtic fanums thus naturally gave way to Roman, or rather Gallo-Roman, temples.

Coming directly from Asia Minor, the first evangelist arrived in Revermont around the year 150. The Roman persecutions of the first centuries forced believers to be cautious and not to practice their faith in broad daylight so as not to attract attention.

He is said to have dug a crypt in a cemetery (in a remote place far enough from Jovis and Bacchus on the eastern slope:
- the "Conche" (from the Gaulish: a very flat-bottomed and fairly deep shell / basin with raised edges and covered with copse).
St Thyrse (disciple of St Polycarp, himself a disciple of St John, the apostle to whom Christ on the cross had entrusted his mother) organised meetings of the first Christians of the Revermont, to whom he inculcated the cult of Mary (the name "Notre-Dame des Conches" shows that the chapel was dedicated to the Virgin Mary).
This underground oratory of the first Christians seems to have been built around 180 B.C. and probably destroyed around 305.
walls of the chapel)
The building was rebuilt further north, on the ruins of the temple to Bacchus (during the establishment of religious peace by the emperor Constantine, after 313). Still dedicated to Our Lady of the "Conches", this chapel was the baptistery (found in 1950 by Abbot Gringoz while digging a cistern) of the region and attracted large crowds; the Virgin is represented there with a bunch of grapes. It was the Saracen invasion, around 730, that must have caused the destruction of this building. The Franks chased the Saracens out of Burgundy, and the baptistery was rebuilt a little further west (where it is today, to be seen from Bresse) as a small fortress.
The monks who built it added a building to house them: the priory of Tassona (whose foundations can still be seen today).

This time, it was the soldiers of the Hundred Years' War who looted and burned it down around 1360. It was not until 1402 and the Dukes of Savoy that prosperity returned. The sanctuary was rebuilt in the same place
. . and burnt down around 1536, during the conquest of Bresse and Bugey by the troops of François I.
In December 1794, at the height of the Revolution, the administrators of the commune of Ramasse were forced to raze it to the ground. But another sanctuary was rebuilt on the same spot in 1839 by the inhabitants of Ramasse and
the inhabitants of Ramasse and Combes: the one we know today.