While most visitors to the Bouconne forest prefer to walk on the paths around the car park and the Bordette lake, others fleeing the crowds park their vehicles in the forest car park between Léguevin and Mérenvielle for walks in the more pleasant from the south of the forest massif. Randomly during their hikes, some find themselves as if by magic, in front of a cross, on the edge of an alley leading to the forest house of Lasserre-Pradère. This is the Saint Dominic cross. “Born in Spain around 1170, Dominique de Guzman, who became a canon, was sent to France around 1205 by Pope Innocent III to fight the Cathar Heresy. Leading an ascetic life comparable to that of the Perfect Cathars, he tried by preaching , to convert heretics” says a visitor keen on history, met on the site. According to legend, Saint Dominique would have spent several days in meditation in the heart of the Forest of Bouconne at the place where the cross that bears his name is located. In 1210 he founded the Dominican order in Toulouse. Several years following Dominic’s death, the Dominican order became infamous during the Inquisition. Chemin St Dominique, near the cross, is part of the old royal road that linked Lasserre to Toulouse via Brax, Pibrac, Colomiers, crossing, in the heart of Bouconne, the old Salinier path on the site of the mythical cross “St Jean Lère” whose exact location remains to be discovered.
