Carcasson

---

Carcassonne.

With all parties back aboard the bus, we set out again in a south-westerly direction for another 250km drive, this time to Carcassonne. Along the way, Cindy gave a brief history of the Cathars, a religious sect that gained considerable political power in the south of France in the twelfth century. Apparently they were Christians, in that they followed the teachings of Christ, but combined elements of animism and other "natural" religious practices.

The Cathars despised the Catholic Church (the feeling was mutual) and referred to it as “The Church of the Devil.” This was probably not a good idea, caught as they were between the strongly catholic north of France, and the equally strong bastions of that faith in Italy and Spain. Eventually this all came to a head when Pope Innocent III ascended the Throne of St. Peter and launched a crusade against the Cathari. They were wiped off the face of the earth by the early 1300's. Innocent must have asked himself "What would Jesus do?"

The city fortress of Carcassonne was one of the strongholds of the Cathars. An interesting architectural feature is its double walls, which resulted, we are told, when Gauls, then Romans then other civilizations built, rebuilt and added to the fortress. Several varieties of wall-building techniques are very evident in the structure. It is a very dramatic building, with high walls and over 50 protective towers. The perfect image of an ancient fortress.

Inside the walls, Carcassonne is very much the medieval town, of which we by now had seen plenty. There was one feature, however, that I received with a sense of physical shock. Wandering down an ancient street we were shown a weathered block of stone embedded in a wall that bore the inscription “Logis de Inquisition, MCCXXX111.” This site, apparently, was the exact location of the beginning of the Inquisition, the reign of terror that the Church launched on those whom it considered to be heretics. Conversion persuasions included hangings, beheadings, torture and immolation at the stake.

I had only a little knowledge of the Inquisition, most of it coming through Monte Python skits. And I thought it had been confined to Spain and Spanish territories. To discover that it actually had its roots in France made a cold chill run through me, because my maternal grandfather came from a line of Huguenots – heretics!




Anyway, Carcassonne was very interesting in its windy, twisty, stony way, but we retreated to our hotel just across the parking lot for a scrumptious meal of cassoulet: beans, duck and sausage swimming in delicious hot gravy. It took the chill out. And we sang golden oldies around the dinner table. My favorite Chinese grandmother, Grace, and I sang a duet.

---