Olivier Poisson, Association culturelle de Cuxa
In the Romanesque portal of the Augustinian priory known as lo Monestir del Camp, in Passà (Pyrénées-Orientales), a capital represents a fantastic creature, an acephalous, a kind of headless man whose face opens at the top of the trunk. This portal is generally attributed to the work of the “Cabestany Master”, a sculptor or workshop from the end of the XIIth century, mainly active between the Languedoc-Audois and the Ampourdan region, where the bulk of the works attributed to him are located. Another representation of acephalous figures is found in Saint-Papoul, on a capital supporting the cornice of the apse, where two other narrative capitals are also attributed to the same sculptor. This identification is an opportunity to recall the cultural tradition that speaks of these mythical races of men since Antiquity and to question their integration, rather rare, in the Christian iconography of the Middle Ages.