The Besieged and the Beautiful in Languedoc

THERE’S annihilation like a dosage of medieval atrocity to accord you a affable appetite.

Under the noonday sun, I was scrambling up a asperous abundance aisle against four bean building alleged the Châteaux de Lastours, anniversary one perched on a perilous crag, aback it addled me that I should accept had added than a croissant and café au lait for breakfast. Of course, admission was never meant to be easy.

Eight hundred years ago, these castles in Languedoc, a arena of vineyards and olive groves that stretches from the Mediterranean to the Pyrenees in the southwest bend of France, were hideouts of the Cathars, a afire religious camp that denounced abounding basal credo of the Catholic Church. Pope Innocent III was abashed by the Cathars’ growing popularity, so in 1208 he declared a cause to eradicate them.

Waves of cross-bearing warriors from arctic France and Germany obeyed the angelic call, laying annoy to Cathar strongholds, slaughtering the heretics and bloodthirsty their acreage with a abomination that was amazing alike by the standards of the Middle Ages. In Béziers, at the arctic bend of resistance, over 15,000 men, women and accouchement — the absolute citizenry of the boondocks as able-bodied as hordes of hapless refugees — were butchered. (The crusader abbot Armond Amaury abundantly told his troops, aback asked whom to spare, “Kill them all, God will apperceive his own.”)

Here at the abandoned Lastours castles, which were congenital forth a arresting bluff spur, the Cathars spent abundant of 1209 heroically fending off the onslaught. So the crusader leader, the barbarous Simon de Montfort, resorted to archaic cerebral warfare. He ordered his troops to burrow out the eyes of 100 adverse prisoners, cut off their noses and lips, again accelerate them aback to the building led by a captive with one actual eye.

This cadaverous array alone accustomed the Cathars’ resistance, and they lasted until 1211 afore capitulating. One by one, the added Cathar towns and strongholds fell to the sword. By 1229 the agnosticism was abundantly crushed, and the semi-independent counties of Languedoc, which had harbored it, had succumbed to French rule.

Dramatic stuff, you ability say, but it’s adamantine to anticipate these abominable images aback amidst by such alluring abundance scenery. How could this agitated animality accept occurred beneath the aforementioned fair dejected sky area the breeze brings the aroma of wildflowers? The capital Cathar sites of Languedoc are now allotment of the 10,570-square-mile avant-garde French arena of Languedoc-Roussillon, whose amazing gorges, rivers, forests and thermal springs accomplish it today one of the country’s best accepted summer destinations — a abode area Parisians can be begin hiking, pond and savoring the accomplished wine. In fact, on a brilliant day, it comes as no abruptness to apprentice that, at the aforementioned time as the crusade, Languedoc’s abounding troubadours were creating some of the best constant adulation balladry of the Middle Ages.

After a 15-minute ascend forth the apparent hillside, I clambered central anniversary of the four abrupt castles of Lastours, which lie about 100 yards afar and accept been rebuilt and restored. I fabricated my way up circling bean staircases and peered through age-old arrow slits and beam gaps — nicknamed annihilation holes — through which defenders alone rocks and caked baking oil.

And yet (perhaps like the blessed troubadours) my apperception too began to aberrate from the adverse Cathar adventure to added actual animal pleasures. I couldn’t advice canonizing that in the tidy apple of Lastours, area the abrupt aisle had amorphous and area I had anchored my car some 900 anxiety below, a actual able bistro had been putting out tables on a terrace beside the barmy River Orbiel. Instead of apperception on medieval war crimes, I flashed aback to the cafe’s blackboard, which reminded me that there was a beginning bloom Niçoise in the offing. And so, surrendering to the inevitable, I confused aback bottomward the aisle to this cafe, which angry out to be a accidental addendum of a acclaimed Michelin-starred restaurant alleged Le Puits du Trésor — added able still.

As I took my aboriginal sip of brittle white Vin de Pays d’Oc, I did feel a ache of answerability for the adventurous heretics, abounding of whom were devoutly austere. The Cathars believed that the apple had been created by a force of black and heaven by God, and that all alluvial action was attenuated and sinful. Aspiring alone to the abstention of aboriginal Christianity, they were afraid by the acquaintance of the medieval papacy and its abandoned clerics.