Chapelle Notre-Dame-du-Chêne

Enjoy this place, its history and its peaceful surroundings.
A place of legend, memory and spirituality, the chapel is a picturesque and soothing heritage site.

The legend of Saint Benoît Labre and the young shepherd Fougerard led to the construction of the chapel.
Tradition has it that this building is linked to the life of Benoît-Joseph Labre (1748-1783), a French mendicant pilgrim who travelled the roads of Europe. Nicknamed "God's Wanderer" and canonised in 1881, he passed through Cousance around 1774 on his way to Rome. In the small Jura town, he met a young shepherd named Fougerard who accompanied him to Rome, where Benoît-Labre, before dying there, presented the young man with a statuette of the Virgin Mary. On his return to Cousance, Fougerard placed it in the hollow of an oak tree in the Bois Brûlé forest. The statuette soon became an object of devotion and many local people came to pray to her. In 1867, the Notre-Dame du Chêne chapel was built on this site.

Restoration work supported by the State and the Département has been carried out in recent years (2022 to 2024). And thanks to the Fondation du Patrimoine, an appeal for donations was launched. As a result, the site has been restored and redeveloped. You can find out more about the restoration and development work that has been undertaken around the site.