Couserans

Couserans (French pronunciation: [kuz(ə)ʁɑ̃]; Gascon: Coserans [kuzeˈɾas]) is a former county of France located in the Pyrenees mountains.

Today Couserans makes up the western half of the Ariège département, around the towns of Saint-Girons and Saint-Lizier.

Later in the 3rd century BC came the first Indo-Europeans, a Celtic Gallic tribe called the Volcae Tectosages, originally from Belgium or southern Germany, who settled in Toulouse, and may also have penetrated Couserans.

The capital of the civitas was the old oppidum of the Consoranni, which the Romans named Austria, and which in the Middle Ages was renamed Saint-Lizier.

In the Middle Ages, Couserans was not affected by the Cathar heresy, unlike the rest of southern France, and in the 16th century the bishops of Saint-Lizier successfully fought against Protestantism.

Saint-Lizier was the historical capital of Couserans, but it lost its status as seat of a Roman Catholic diocese (bishopric) at the time of the French Revolution, and has now been reduced to a small town, although it preserves some of the best medieval and Romanesque architecture in southern France.

Despite being united inside a single département, the Gascon Couserans and the Languedocian County of Foix have always ignored each other, and still remain quite distinct.

Couserans has suffered tremendously from rural exodus in the 20th century, and is now left with only 21,260 inhabitants, 44.6% of whom live in the urban area of Saint-Girons (which includes Saint-Lizier).