Nous sommes arrivées dans notre petit coin de paradis le Samedi 14 Septembre. La majeure partie de la semaine dernière, nous  avons fait le ménage dans toute la maison, nous avons vu nos amis, nous avons fait de grandes promenades autour du village, et nous avons été paresseuses. Nous avons gardé la chienne de notre voisine Marie-Christine. Voici une photo de Lili dans les vignes près du village. C'est un plaisir de s'occcuper d'elle, elle est un grand guide pour nos promenades. Nos terribles chiens Rocky et Poppy nous manquent. Si vous lisez ceci, gros bisous !

For more info and photos - go to La Pierre Plantée Olonzac Page.

Most of the sites I've covered on this blog have been within a half-hour-drive : so a trip of 40 km. to see an oppidum - Le Caylar, near Agel - whose vestiges have all but vanished and about which I could find no archeological information, was a luxury or a delusion. I justified it by adding in a visit to a well-known prehistoric spot: La Grotte de Bize.

Were I simply writing a diary, I could call this cave anything I liked. But since I am also trying to win friends and influence people - particularly that augúst body of savants at the Megalithic Portal - I have to treble-check my facts. 'So where are we off to this time?' she asks. 'Not sure - I think it's the Grotte de Bize. Or the Grotte de Bixe - the IGN website has both. Depends on how close you zoom.' I was trying for Technical but it came out Lame. 'How close are we going to zoom? You do know where it is, I presume?' The tone must be familiar to many. 'Not really - because there's a Grotte de Lasfonds, and a Grotte de Las Fons, or Les Fonts, which are right by a farm called Lasfonds - or les Fontaines on the older map - and they could both be La Grotte des Moulins, or du Moulin - but they are probably all the Grotte de Tournal, since he found it in 1827.' Some silences have tones as well. ' . . . and has anyone found it since then?' 'Well I suppose so - it's really well-known.' We were parked by now in a lay-by at about where I thought it could be. But there was no sign and no path. We headed off anyway since I'm an optimist, and the faintly flattened grass did turn into a track through the trees, which brought us to this.

It was here in 1827 that the 22-year-old chemistry student Paul Tournal of Narbonne found the first ever fossilized human bones. He was a keen and observant amateur geologist who roamed the hills of the Minervois and the Corbières whenever he returned from his studies in Paris. His focus soon shifted from pure geology to archaeology : to the place humans occupied in that ancient landscape. To his enquiring and forward-thinking mind, these fossils were proof that mankind was older than 5000 years, and that the Bible had no place in science. At 28 he was one of the founder-members of la Commission Archéologique et Littéraire de Narbonne, remaining its Secretary his whole life, and establishing museums and repositories in the town. He became a journalist and thinker, based in Paris and strongly influenced by the progressive ideas of the 'Saint-Simeonist' group. Ahead of its time in advocating equality between the sexes, free-love and socialism - this movement took its energy from the industrial revolution - which had fascinated Paul Tournal on a visit to England in 1839. He believed that he was living through a period of enormous advancement and that networks both physical such as the railways and economic through government, would revolutionise the inequalities and restraints that ordinary people suffered.

Perhaps, by simply being French, he has never been accorded the international acclaim he rightly deserved, as one of the founders of the science of prehistory. The French Wikipedia - www.fr.wikipedia.org - doesn't recognize him either, and he merits a mere two paragraphs in the Narbonne-wiki. After all - it's just fossicking about with old bones and old stones.

For more cheery news about the contents of La Grande Grotte de Bize - for that I firmly assert is its real name - at least so called by the team of archaeologists that surveyed it, led by André Tavoso in 1987, to differenciate it from La Petite Grotte de Bize, just a few hundred metres up the road, which was searched by Dominique Sacchi in 1967 [ who manages to call the bigger grotte - Tournal's one - La Grotte de Tournai . . . ] - for more info and photos - of an endangered bat, and a terrified woman - and a Very Important Notice - please continue over on La Grande Grotte de Tournal à Bize Page.

And the Le Caylar oppidum? We were defeated by the sheer verticality of the cliff - plus the fact that I had picked the wrong side to climb up. I'm saving up a few bob for the next attempt.

Hillforts, enclosures, defensive spurs, walls and ditches do not spring up in times of ease and peaceable neighborliness. It is during times of fear and uncertainty that massive effort is demanded of the local populace - producing, in our small area of the Aude, many significant 'proto-castles' during the transitional period Bronze final/ Premier Age de Fer.
The uncertainty must have started with the collapse of the Minoan civilisation, and again when vital trading links were lost with the end of the Mycenean empire. This Dark Age lasted for over three centuries. The fear? Rumours of a north-eastern race that were armed with new weapons and new skills: The Volques Tectosages and their Iron - the coming of the Celts.
Our local autocthones [native inhabitants] were the 'peuples élisyques' - a tribe centred on the Montlaurès hill-settlement, above the lagoons surrounding modern Narbonne - called by the Greek traders, Hélicé. South of here towards Spain were the Iberic tribes, and east towards Italy were the Ligurians. Herodotus of Halicarnassus writing in the 5th C BCE in his History [ Book 7 ch. 165] writes of a mercenary army made up of Phoenicians, Lybians, Iberians, Ligurians, Elysics, Sards [of Sardinia], and Cyrnians [Corsicans] - that is, all the tribes around the Gulf of Lion and the western Mediterranean.

For centuries preceeding the arrival of the Celts, the Elisycs ruled from Narbonne in the east to Carcassonne in the west. A short stretch of territory but an area that was rich in mineral wealth and full of cultural and historical wealth: the biggest dolmens, menhirs and necropoli in Languedoc. For millennia this land had been a benign and peaceable trading corridor : Pyrennean sheep herds in transhumance arriving from the South, Cornish tin and Irish silver in transit from the North, Cypriot copper and Greek wine in boats from the sea. All had to pass the marshy plain of the Atax/Attagus - the River Aude - between the foothills of the Montagnes Noires and the massif of Mont Alaric and the Corbieres Hills. All benefited from the mineral wealth - the gold and manganese - and the metallurgic skills of the local tribes. And from the peace and stability that had held since the Copper Age.
The breakdown of this civilisation led to the Dark Ages : the elaborately decorated pottery, the exchange of ornaments from afar, as evinced in funerary goods - gave way to a cruder and unadorned ceramic style, and to the rise of warrior classes and a heirarchy of power and protection.
Thus a series of proto-castles were constructed around -800 by the Elisyan people, on promontories that allowed commanding views out over the plain and the road and river traffic, and security from attack by means of massive earth- and stone-works. From the oppida by the sea at Peyriac-de-Mer and Pech Maho in the east, past the the two vast settlements at Montlaurès and Ensérune, to La Moulinasse at Salles d'Aude, and on west inland to one of the greatest settlement-towns of the hinterland : La Cayla at Mailhac. And thence to Mourrel-Ferret at Olonzac, Camp Rolland here above our village of Moux, and onward to the Cros hill fort at Caulnes-Minervois and the Millegrand oppidum at Trebes - with Carsac at Carcassonne at the eastern limit. The pattern continues up towards the Atlantic coast - all defending and provisioning the vital trade route to the North.
It was however the Volques Tectosages themselves, centred on Toulouse, who took them over and re-established the trading-routes, ceding them eventually to the Romans - who made good use of some of them, while razing others to the ground.

There are six main oppida here in The Aude - follow the links in the Pages panel to the right. The Cros Hillfort and the Pic St-Martin hillfort have already been published there - the Roc Gris oppidum will be next, followed by the Mourrel-Ferrat oppidum. More to follow.

Dit jaar weer, is er het festival "Musiques au Choeur du Vignoble" :  van 7 mei t/m 31 mei. Net als elk jaar : Muziek concerten met "dégustation de vin" van locale Wijnboeren...

Een selectie van datums:

• Op 7   mei - 21h, in de kerk van St Chinian, Blues/Gospel muziek met de "Bayou Brothers".
• Op 9   mei - 21h, in de Salle polyvalente van Quarante, Oriental Jazz muziek met "Trio Zira".
• Op 16 mei - 21h, in de kerk van Aigne, A Capella Quintet met "Annacruz".
• Op 17 mei - 21h, bij de Caveau van de Cave de Berlou, "ETC - Eminent Tzigane Complot".
• Op 30 mei - 21h,  in de Theatre de verdure in Siran, Latino/Jazz muziek met "Allegria Brass Band".
• Op 31 mei - 21h, in de kerk van Cessenon sur Orb, de Requiem de Faure met "L'orchestre. Méditerranée" en "La Cantarela de Béziers".

Op meerdere datums is er ook het Spectacle Musical  "Le secret de Firmin" door  "L'Orchestre du pays". Er zijn 110 koristen en 60 instrumentisten in dit orkest een ze komen allemaal uit de dorpjes van de omgeving.

Voor meer informatie en reserveringen bij de Maison du Pays Haut Languedoc et Vignobles, 1 rue de la Voie Férrée in Saint Chinian (+33 4 67 38 11 10). Klik op de afbeelding voor de complete programma. U kunt ook reserveren via Moerland Verhuur - tel +33 467 38 07 91.

De concerten vinden plaats in de volgende dorpen : Saint-Chinian, Quarante, Murviel les Béziers, le Bousquet d'orb, Aigne, Berlou, Capestang, Roujan, Siran, Cessenon sur Orb.

But I was delighted to discover that les lauses - thick flat slabs of schist that tile the roof of the 13th. C. Chapelle de Notre-Dame de Centeilles are phonoliths : they 'ring' when tapped. I had come to the little church only because there were prehistoric vestiges in the area, but the time spent tramping through the vines and the garrigue convinced me that this was a rather extraordinary place : there is an unusual amount of context - geographic and historic, and lithic. The sheer amount of stones around Centeilles is astonishing, and attests to a continuous inhabitation since neolithic times.

This was taken from the top of a walled area of stone 15 metres wide by twenty metres long. There is another in the background - also 4 metres high. They are all that remain of a neolithic settlement.

More 'modern' are the capitelles that cluster round the chapel, the dolmen, the well and the spring :

There are fourteen of these clochán, or beehive huts visible from the path. Usually they are isolated shelters for shepherds and in more recent times, for fieldworkers. Here their use ranges over the millennia from hermitages to pilgrim huts to transhumant herders' lodgings during mediaeval Fairs.

See the Capitelles de Centeilles Page for more.

The first fresco to face the weary pilgrim was that of St. Christopher, patron saint of travellers.

La Révolution put an end to this tradition - the human population deserted it, and it was used as a barn. For the next one hundred years it was occupied by sheep. It was sold in 1960, for 500 francs. to the Diosese of Narbonne who later handed it over to Les Amis de Centailles, an association that undertook its repair and upkeep.

The early christian church had not chosen this place at random - it was a site of sacred significance since the earliest times. For wherever Our Lady has been installed and adored it is certain that she replaced a pre-christian animist or fertility cult - usually of Cybele, or Potnia Theron, the Queen of the Animals - one of the myriad names of the Mother Goddess.

For more photos and info- see the Chapelle de Centeilles Page

The menu is unfussy and honest: geographically and seasonally specific, it unapologetically offers vegetables which many French consider suitable only for animal fodder, including swedes, parsnips and jerusalem artichokes (these last apparently particularly disliked because the French were left to eat them during the war instead of the potatoes that the Germans had requisitioned).

For a starter I had Lou Pastiflet, which is not an ageing night-club singer but a hearty pâté made from Noir de Bigorre pork (a Gascon relation of the Spanish black Iberico pig), and which seems to be a 'house special'. It came in a large glass jar under nearly an inch of soft lard, served with brown bread and a stoneware jar full of cornichons. Simple and delicious. The pâté had an earthy, gamey flavour and was agreeably variable in its chunkiness. I was open to suggestions for a wine to go with it, and was proposed a glass of AOC Minervois (carignan), which was absolutely spot-on: light, fragrant, fresh, and appetite-giving.

For the main course, I decided to order the spit-roast pork (again, porc noir de Bigorre), mainly out of curiosity: pork isn't my favourite meat. The roast was served with softish chips (cooked in duck fat, and irresistible) and some buttery braised carrot and swede. The roast pork came in three thinnish slices and was a much darker coloured flesh than I expected. This may be due in part to the breed (perhaps this pig is noir on the inside too) but was mainly because it was served bloodier than most rare steaks come in the UK.

In Britain one is always given the impression that pork, like chicken, should be cooked right through - and that serving pork a little rosé is, if not dangerous, then at least recklessly epicurean and inviting returned plates to be 'done a little more'. Perhaps this is for food hygiene considerations which have escaped the French (or which the French have escaped).

I don't eat pork often and I've never seen it served with more than a hint of pink before. So I tried to hide my astonishment as they brought me the plate. In the case of this particular pig, right is on the side of the French. The meat had a rich flavour - almost beefy, I thought (although perhaps that's because beef is the only other meat I've eaten that rare). It was a far remove from the usual pale English roast pork - and the rareness of the meat contributed to its tenderness (perhaps it would have been tough if cooked through?). When I thought hard about the flavour, I suppose I could have identified it as pork, but not with confidence, and only by a process of elimination.

What an eye-opener, or rather, palate-opener! I'm now interested to try some of the British rare breeds, and some of that wild boar the man at the market sells...

The scree slope rises about 300 feet from here to the walls.

More photos and info on the Pic St-Martin Hillfort Page

Cachette de fondeur de l'âge du Bronze à Centeilles. [Traces of Bronze Age smelting]
29 dolmens* et tumulus.
Habitat préhistorique à Centeilles, Ausine, Belvédère.
Champ des Morts.
Nécropole 1^er âge du Fer à La Prade.
14 villas romaines, principalement : Najac, Saint-Michel de Montflaunez.
Oppidum du pic St-Martin occupé de l'âge du Fer au 6^ème apr.J.-C.
Mosaïque gallo-romaine* à la chapelle de Centeilles.
Tombes wisigothiques à La Rouviole, Le Champ des Morts, Centeilles, Saint-Martin, Saint-Pierre des Troupeaux, Saint-Gontran.

And this is what the new IGN map says is there:

Centeilles seemed central to this rich and diverse little corner, and was one of the few from the list to be marked on the map, as was the Gallo-Roman fort [camp or oppidum] closeby. That confident red star looked a certain bet, so I set off this saturday to see what I could find - knowing that information on Quid could well be long out-of-date and that I could be beating around the bush all afternoon for nothing. But not suspecting that the map could get it so wrong.

The 13th.C. Chapelle de Notre-Dame-de-Centeilles was certainly there with its stone roof and holy well - as was a host of other fascinating structures and features [see following Posts & Pages] - and so were the remains of a massive emplacement deep in the wood where the map shows the red star. It wasn't until I got home and compared this new map with the 1967 version that doubt set in about The Thing in the Wood. I now needed to persuade Jessi and Mary to come out on another hunt this sunday.

The story of this weekend's two visits to Centeilles is complicated, so the photos about it all are over on the Pages section. Starting with the Not the Gallo-Roman Camp Page. And as fast as I can post them, the following will appear :-

The real Ancien Camp Gallo-Romain on the Pic St-Martin Hillfort Page.

The dolmen of Centeilles - or les Pierres Plantées, take your pick - on the Centeilles Dolmen Page.

The dolmen du Mourel des Fadas - on the Dolmen des Fadas Page.

The Chapelle de Notre-Dame de Centeilles - the extraordinary frescoes, its history, holy well and capitelles - on the Chapelle de Centeilles Page.

And the second earlier church at Centeilles [in many ways even more extraordinary] - on the Chapelle Ruinée Page. There was a third even earlier church here at one time - but it's been lost . . .

And then there's those Roman villas, and the visigoth necropoli, and the neolithic habitat here too, somewhere - but I need another visit or ten, for them.

Its owner has got all fired up about the protohistoric vestiges littered around this corner of Languedoc. And has taken upon himself the pleasurable task of unearthing what still remains.

It's a week-by-week stumble  through the garrigues of the Corbieres and the Minervois, in search of a few humble prehistoric stones.

Now covered by pines that provide welcome shade - the original fort would have stood on clear ground: at 350 m. above sea-level this would have been cold and exposed in winter, and very hot in summer.

Go to Pages, on the right, for more info, photos and references.

I have searched repeatedly for these, and will continue until I find their 'presence' or the reason for their absence. These searches uncover places and reveal people: Germain, an old man with passionate memories of a megalithic necropolis discovered as a young man up on les Causses de La Planette - meeting him up in the hills has set in motion a whole new area of reseach.

This Easter, we went looking for le dolmen de Combe Violon above La Livinière, but a cold wet wind cut short the search. The dolmens de Mousse were not far away but again it was too cold to stay - even though we were close to hell. L'Enfer is a barren hillside of white jumbled rubble, a petrified torrent of shattered limestone that resolves into walls and tumuli and capitelles -

Just beyond is the hillside that contains les dolmens de Mousse and le grand dolmen de Lauriol - but not for us that day. I returned to the internet to research these dolmens - and discovered that someone else was up there that afternoon - Yves Le Pestipon had posted photos of them on a remarkable multi-author weblog called L'Astrée.net - an unfolding series of events and situations, writings and images - including many on megalithic culture.

We've been running an open house for all sorts of courses and speciality weeks for six years now: yoga teachers from the UK come with their groups and we cook for them - painting groups from San Francisco, cookery groups from Cork, Cathar researchers from Dublin - walkers, botanists and birdwatchers : and that's not counting our own painting and mosaic groups. We have a big pool, great food - and the wine is free.

So we are proposing a week of stone-chasing around one of the lesser-known but still fascinating megalithic centres of southern France.

UPDATE NOTE    I've made a fixed page for this post and moved the rest of it over to the Megalithic Holiday in Languedoc Page. So for more info on this holiday offer, please look in the right-hand column.

Quarante (village in Minervois-Herault)
Vestiges préhistoriques et antiques

* Habitats chalcolithiques : Bel Air, Fontanche.
* Dolmen de Pech Ménel.
* Cromlech de Malviés.
* Cachette de fondeur (fin âge du Bronze) à Bellevue.
* 35 villas romaines principalement : Pech Ménel, La Massale, Saint-Fréchoux, Les Clapiers, Parazols, Les Sèmièges, La Condamine de Rivière, Les Commandeurs, La Barreire.
* Tombes wisigothiques : Souloumiac, Parazols, Grange Haute, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin, Saint-Fréchoux.
* Les Huyères : ancien fief seigneurial ; cimetière abandonné, 3 silos.
* Nécropole à incinération du type "Champ d'Urnes" du 1er âge du Fer au lieu dit Recobre (35 tombes, mobilier au musée de Narbonne).

But I have learnt to take all this with a large pinch of 'hand-crafted' salt from Gruissan.
I set out with high hopes - while fully concious that half of this guff has been cobbled together from old documents, and that in the land-rush of the 1970's any old stone that happened to be sitting in a field growing lichen was bulldozered into the ditch to make way for the Great New Wines of Languedoc.

Now that the grants have dried up - and so have some of the French (they are no longer drinking three times their body-weight in wine per annum - man, woman and child) - it may be too late.
I only managed to find one of these sites.

The dig at Pech Ménel

And even if it was a dismal collection of stones, and even if I did have to cross vineyards to interview every person I saw on the landscape, only to hear that No: they had never heard of any neolithic site, or stone alignment, or dolmen, or prehistoric settlement, and that they had a) Lived here all their lives or b) Just moved to the area .... it didn't matter. The day was sunny and calm and just about every heap of stones spoke volumes about mediaeval toil - and never mind the prehistory.

Three capitelles at Fontanche - field stones cleared and structured as shelters.

So: no cromlech at Malvies today - and there was no one in at the Chateau to ask. But a stone circle down here in the Midi - now that is worth going back for.
No visible neolithic habitat, either, at Bel-Air. As for Fontanche, this wine-domain seemed deserted - yet there, parked in a weedy courtyard was a beautifully restored 1960's BMW 600 series . . . There wasn't time to explore the Iron Age necropolis at "the place called 'Recobre'" with its Urn-field vestiges. But now that I know the lie of the land I'll be able to make more focussed enquiries.
While the under-30's with paid jobs were stacked up over the thermal-ridges in their paragliders, and the retired over 60's were reliving their cycling-club heydays, in packs of bulgey yellow lycra [this is France-Partout, au weekend] the poor vignerons are still hard at work, pruning the vines or cleaning vats - and answering idiot questions from foreigners about old stones. Yes - there was a dolmen. And a dig had started last summer and the man to ask was an historian I'd come across before - Jacques Gatorze, of Cessenon.

I had forgotten how awful a dig looks : the steel pegs, the string and the plastic. I rather wish I hadn't come across it like this: a crime-scene in the undergrowth.
Perhaps I am a Romantic, and not the Classicist I pretend to be.

More on the Pech Ménel dolmen page >

A hunter's stand above Assignan

There are one and a half million chasseurs in France. In the 2006/2007 season they killed 466,352 sangliers out of a population of over a million. The mortality rate is decreasing (for humans, that is) - from 40 per year to 25 recently. All of them hunters. Of 142 people wounded - 12 were non-hunters. Two weeks ago, not far from here, a hunter panicked when a boar charged him. He killed his companion with an accidental blast. In 2005, Claude Rossetti of Montlaur three villages away, was killed while gathering mushrooms on Alaric mountain. He was shot accidentally by an ex-gendarme who was out hunting alone, illegally, on a day when boar-hunting is forbidden. One son, Sylvain, has started a national movement called Partageons La Nature - Share Nature, in an effort to bring an end to unnecessary death and injury.

cartridge cases below the shooting platform

His other son, Claude, wrote recently about the shooting in understandable - if barely intelligible - anger : - ' pour son acte heroique il a ete condamne a 6 mois de prison ferme amenageable ( autrement dit RIEN ) dans l' aude il n y a pas de jour de non chasse quand ce n'est pas le petit c'est le gros gibier et en plus on chasse partout route chemin garrigue public prive et meme a n importe quelle heure du jour ou de la nuit dans l aude si lon n est pas chasseur on est rien . . . '
' there's no day when there's no hunting . . . ' - ' they're hunting anywhere public land private land . . . at any time of the day or night . . . ' - ' if you're not a hunter here - you're nobody . . . '
The rules governing la chasse au sanglier have been tightened following this and other incidents - spot-checks for permits, and regulation orange vests and hats. But it is a macho culture where drinking plays a big role. I keep alert, fear the guns more than the tusks, and look forward to March.

Meanwhile there is the joy of being out in this landscape with such stones.

a borie or stone shelter in the causses of Minervois

This is all that remains of the Allée Couverte du Bois de Monsieur :-

Do you really want directions?
OK. Drive out of Agel on the D20, past Le Moulin de Madame. Somewhere along here the road turns into the D128. Fork L onto the D26 and go thru the hamlet of La Roueyre and on past La Grotte du Gourp des Boeufs, where the road morphs into the D177. You can do all this without knowing any of this - basically you've just gone from Agel to Assignan. The dolmen is in the far corner of the last vineyard on the left, down the track on the left after the pond above the village. It lies at 2.52'40" E , 43.23'50" N.

I came here armed with just one sentence gleaned from a 1962 'account of the activities of a member of the Societé d' Etudes Scientifiques de l'Aude'. In a paper he gave on the prehistoric relics of the region, he noted four sad, forgotten and neglected dolmens in the Minervois. One of them was the Allée Couverte du Bois de Monsieur, 500 metres off the Assignan to Coulouma road, on a 'petit mamelon.'
Now, every maquis-covered bump in this landscape could be described as a 'little breast'. So I assiduously fossicked over all the more likely ones - before doing the sensible thing : ask a local. The local turned out to be Monsieur Donnadieu, the mayor of Pardailhan (not of Donnadieu, which is a hameau nearby). And a font of information on all things historical in the neighbourhood. I managed to stem the flow with a promise to return soon - and got back up the road to a hill that resembled no breast I had ever known.
The dolmen is not marked on any map. The Bois de Monsieur is not mentioned on any plan cadastral. The breast at best is but a chest.
And the Allée Couverte - is just one last large orthostat surrounded by a heap of jumbled slabs. From the angle of the sun the dolmen is facing SW.
Move along now, folks. Nothing more to see.

Maar het heeft niet mogen baten...

In 1209 trok een immens leger langs de Rhone naar het zuiden, om Occitanië, zoals Zuid-Frankrijk toen heette, te gaan bevrijden. Het was Satan zelf die Occitanië in zijn greep hield, had Paus Innocentius III verklaard. En hij had de christenen elders in Europa opgeroepen tot een kruistocht tegen dit Rijk van het Kwaad. En daarbij werd in 1210 Minerve aangedaan. En ook het lot van de toenmalige inwoners van Minerve dat daar het gevolg van was raakt me elke keer weer als ik daar kom.

De leider van de kruistocht, Simon de Montfort, liet Minerve afsluiten van de buitenwereld met een groot leger. Van zijn kant van de gorges, liet hij met katapulten, over de gorges heen, een regen van stenen neerdalen op het kleine stadje. Er was geen andere mogelijkheid. Een bestorming, waarbij men eerst in de gorges zou moeten afdalen en aan de andere kant weer omhoog klimmen, was ondenkbaar.

Huis na huis in Minerve stortte onder de stenenregen ineen. Maar dat was nog niet de ergste vijand van de Minervois. Dat werd de zomerse hitte en droogte. Die was dat jaar uitzonderlijk. De rivieren in de gorges rondom Minerve waren drooggevallen, alleen iets verderop, buiten Minerve, stond nog wat water in de bedding. Maar dat diende slechts voor de belegeraars. Er was nog wel een waterput op de bodem van de gorges om Minerve, maar wie zich daarheen waagde werd meteen belaagd met pijlen van de belegeraars. De bewoners van Minerve zaten zonder water en zonder water was Minerve in de hitte van die zomer hopeloos verloren.

Er zat niets anders op dan te proberen een vergelijk te vinden. Guillaume de Minerve opende de onderhandelingen met Simon de Montfort. Afgesproken werd dat de bewoners hun woonplaats mochten verlaten met achterlating van hun goederen, maar men moest dan wel eerst één voor één het kathaarse geloof afzweren. Een Noord-Franse ridder wond zich daar aanvankelijk nogal over op. Hij was gekomen om ketters te doden, zei hij, niet om steden te veroveren:

Op deze wijze geeft u de ketters de kans om te ontkomen. Natuurlijk zullen ze doen alsof ze hun geloof afzweren om vervolgens vrij heen te gaan.

Maar de pauselijke legaat, kardinaal Arnaud-Amaury, die zich in het gezelschap van Simon de Montfort bevond, antwoordde hem:

Maak u geen zorgen, ik denk niet dat er veel hun geloof zullen afzweren.

Hij kreeg gelijk. De belegeraars trokken Minerve binnen onder het zingen van het Te Deum. Ze plantten een kruis vlak voor het kleine kerkje dat nu nog in Minerve dienstdoet en waartegenover zich nu het prachtige monument met de duif bevindt. Ze begaven zich naar een huis waar de parfaits zich verzameld hadden. Hun werd gevraagd hun geloof af te zweren. Eén van hen antwoordde:

Noch de dood, noch het leven kan ons scheiden van het geloof waarmee wij verbonden zijn.

Vervolgens gingen ze naar een ander huis waar de vrouwelijke parfaites zich bevonden. Hier probeerde Simon de Montfort zelf de vrouwen over te halen zich te bekeren. Hij zei:

Ik wil dat u allen gered wordt en kennis verwerft van de waarheid.

Het mocht niet baten. Arnaud-Amaury had zich niet vergist. Slechts drie vrouwen lieten zich op het laatste moment nog overhalen door de smeekbeden van een adellijke dame, Mathilde de Garlande, die zich in het gezelschap van de kruisvaarders bevond.

Op de bodem van een van de gorges werd een grote brandstapel opgericht. De belegeraars hoefden geen enkele moeite te doen om de katharen op de brandstapel te zetten. Ze liepen er zelf heen, en wierpen zich één voor één in de vlammen. Het waren er honderdveertig.

Het was de eerste massale verbranding van katharen na het begin van de kruistocht. Er zouden er spoedig meer volgen. In Cassès werden 60 katharen verbrand. Op de brandstapel van Lavaur vonden zelfs 400 katharen de dood. In Lavaur werden de 80 ridders die de stad hadden verdedigd opgehangen. De adellijke Dame Guiraude die de katharen had willen beschermen werd in een waterput gegooid die vervolgens met stenen werd gedempt. ‘En menig schone kettervrouw werd in het vuur geworpen,’ vertelt het Chanson de la Croisade, verwijzend naar een pervers trekje van de Noord-Fransen, die ‘daarbij grote vreugde beleefden’

. Was het een reactie op de gelijkheid van de vrouwen aan de mannen bij de katharen?

Tegenover het kleine kerkje in het midden van het dorpje bevindt zich nu de steen waarin het profiel van een duif is uitgehouwen. Het is de laatste jaren een beroemd symbool van het katharisme geworden. In nagenoeg elke toeristenwinkel tref je het aan op een ansichtkaart. Wie het daarvan kent en het dan in werkelijkheid ziet is meestal verrast dat het maar zo’n klein beeldje is. De duif van Minerve werd gemaakt in 1962 door Jean-Luc Séverac in opdracht van het gemeentebestuur van Minerve. De kunstenaar is zelf wat verbaasd over de bekendheid die zijn duif heeft gekregen: "De mensen willen absoluut geloven dat het een middeleeuwse duif is. Nu, als ze dat leuk vinden, van mij mag het..." (interview in de "Cathares" special van Pyrénées Magazine uit 2000)

In Minerve, in het straatje met de toepasselijke naam Carrjera del martyrs, bevindt zich ook een prachtig museumpje. Daar wordt de geschiedenis van de katharen op schitterende wijze uitgebeeld met kleine tafereeltjes, ooit door een plaatselijke wijnboer in zijn vrije tijd met veel liefde opgebouwd. Er is een Nederlandstalige handleiding. De ontvangst door monsieur Casque die nu het museumpje beheert, is buitengewoon hartelijk. Het museumpje heet ‘Hurepel.’

Het is een absolute aanrader voor wie een korte en heldere samenvatting wil van de geschiedenis van de katharen.

Bram Moerland

www.brammoerland.com

Op slechts 20 minuten rijden vindt u Carcassonne met z'n wereldberoemde middeleeuwse bovenstad ( La Cité ). Tevens zijn leuke uitstapjes bv Narbonne en het Canal du Midi. Vanuit Caunes Minervois rijdt u direct door de gorges van de Montagne Noire, een prachtig natuurgebied, waar u ook enkele grotten kunt bezichtigen. De prachtige stranden van de Middellandse Zee liggen op 40 minuten rijden. Er zijn verschillende villa’s met zwembad te huur in Caunes-Minervois.

Villa La Bergerie de Caunes

Villa la Vigie

Villa Nouveau Brielle

Villa Le Palatin

Villa Angel

Mineral and red fruit flavors are the hallmarks of this well-structured, elegant red. Extremely fresh and balanced, this finishes with lovely notes of cherry and spice. Drink now through 2008. 10,000 cases made. From France.

89 out of 100