Exploring the Pyrenees, Part II:In the Languedoc

By James T. Carney

On my way to the Pyrenees last September, I flew to Marseilles (the most crime-ridden city in Europe) to visit my first cousin, Bruce, who is an expatriate and has lived abroad all of his adult life – first as a petroleum engineer, second as an executive for a company running a worldwide chain of shoe-repair shops, and finally as an auditor for a hotel in Nîmes, in the Languedoc, to which he commuted by train from his wife’s ancestral home in Alès.
    I spent three days exploring the northern and eastern part of the Languedoc, which is very fertile country. I have never seen as many vineyards in my life. I could not believe that there would be a market for that much wine, but obviously I was wrong. The Languedoc is reasonably hilly country, very hot in the summer and quite hot even in September when I was there. Nîmes was a major Roman city on one of the chief Roman roads from Italy to Spain. I visited the Roman arena there, which is still in use today for concerts – and bull fights, another remnant of the days when one society dominated both sides of the Pyrenees.

    Outside Nîmes is the famous Pont du Gard, a tremendous Roman aqueduct spanning the Garonne River and bringing water to Nîmes itself. I had seen the Pont Du Gard on French postage stamps for years but did not comprehend the immensity of the aqueduct until I saw it in person.
    The Languedoc is also the site of the infamous Papal Palace in Avignon, built and first inhabited by Clement V, who, in alliance with Philip the Fair of France, destroyed the Knights Templar – a crusading order that had acquired much wealth and whose members were falsely accused of heresy by their two fellow Christians in a successful effort to seize their riches. For almost a century, during what many call the “Babylonish Captivity,” the Popes (all of whom were French) resided in their magnificent palace in Avignon. It was not until the era of “the three popes,” or the Papal Schism, that the papacy returned to Rome.
    There is much to see in the Languedoc, but unfortunately I had only two full days to explore, because the first day was consumed with travel to Marseilles and on to Alès, and the fourth day with travel by train from Nîmes to Foix, where my Pyrenees trip began and I started to follow the route of the “bon hommes” (good men) – Cathar refugees who fled from France to Spain in the 14th Century to escape persecution by the Church and a crusade against them headed by Simon de Montfort, later de facto ruler of England during the minority of Edward III. Cathars were frequently called Albigensians.
    Cathars were apparently a sect following the Gnostic concept of the world as being divided into a realm of the spirit (which was good) and a realm of material things (which were bad). Since little of their writings has survived, we have to rely on the allegations of their opponents – a questionable source – to understand what they believed. Their movement may have had its beginnings in the 10th Century, during the reign of Tsar Peter I in the First Bulgarian Empire, in what is today the region of Macedonia, as a response led by the priest Bogomil to the social stratification that occurred with the introduction of feudalism, and as a form of political opposition to the Bulgarian state and the church. The Cathars dominated the Languedoc for decades before being persecuted. Foix may have been the last center for the Cathars, since it was in the foothills of the Pyrenees, an ideal starting point for fleeing to Spain.

In all events, the hiking trip started at Foix, where I arrived at about 5 o’clock on Saturday and rendezvoused with my best friend from high school, Detmar, who had arrived the day before and been exploring the city:

That’s Detmar on the far right

    That evening we joined the five other valiant hikers for dinner. They were a delightful English couple (husband named David), an 85-year-old retiree from British Columbia (Peter) and his 45-year-old girlfriend (Julie), and a retired Dutch accountant. Four of them and Detmar and I are shown in the photo to the right, which was taken by Julie a couple of days into the hike.
    The five individuals were all very enjoyable, although Detmar had his problems dealing with Julie, who failed to recognize that certitude is different from certainty and was declaiming how the average price for an apartment in California was $3,000 per month. The fact that my son and daughter-in-law rented a duplex in a nice area of Los Angeles for $2,300 per month was disregarded on the grounds that the example was an exception taken care of in the averages.

Peter or Julie’s photo of a bakery in Foix

    The English couple were extremely nice, and David was careful to take care of me on the hikes and made sure that I didn’t fall behind. He and his wife were both very pro-Brexit and gave me deep insight into those who voted in favor of Brexit. They said that EU membership had been sold on the basis that it was a trading relationship and when it became much more than that, they joined the 52% of British voters who revolted. In some ways, their views reflected the views of many Trump supporters – and some Trump opponents, including myself – who are not eager for globalization that does nothing for most of us but makes the rich richer and changes the country in which we were raised.
Our expedition began the next morning. From Foix, we drove to Montségur, the site of one of the last Cathar castles to be captured by the French. It is on a rock 600 feet above the road, and the hike to it seemed almost straight up, as I found out. The castle fell to the French in 1244. The mercenaries who were defending it were released, but the 220 Cathars sheltered inside were all burned at the stake. At the start of the trail, there is a monument to the martyred Cathars. On the site the French built another castle, whose ruins one sees there today, although tour books often refer to them as the remnants of a Cathar castle.

Copyright © 2019 by James T. Carney