Carcassonne and the Chateaux, August 12-13, 2010

My next major destination, one where I booked a hotel for two nights, was the city of Carcassonne, second only to Toulouse as the center of military, political and ecclesiastical activity during the Cathar Crusade period.

But it was on my way there from Albi, the afternoon of August 12, that I was introduced to the stunning array of medieval chateaux, better translated in most case as fortresses than castles, that dotted the entire region like the playing pieces on a topographical chessboard. As the surrounding lands were ruled by whoever controlled these mammoth structures, they were the centers of social activity during peace and of conflict during war in the feudal period.

In San Antonin and Albi, I had seen centuries-old stonework—city walls, cathedrals and palaces—that had survived and been restored in currently populated areas. In contrast, the two ruins—the chateaux Saissac and Lastours—I visited en route to Carcassonne were seemingly lost in the wilderness of the Montagne Noire (Black Mountain) region northwest of that city.

I was looking for Lastours, a significant conglomeration of four towers in the area; but, misreading its location because I tried to piece together several maps on different scales, I wandered far afield, eventually discovering that I was headed in the wrong direction. During course correction, I happened upon Saissac, a site not on my agenda, its history unknown to me. Only later did I learn that it played a role during the Albigensian Crusade: the lord of Saissac, Bertrand de Saissac, himself a Cathar, was an ally of Raymond Roger de Trencavel, the Count of Carcassonne and champion of the Cathar cause in the early part of the Crusade. In 1229, the invading forces headed by Simon de Montfort conquered Saissac and stripped the lord of his title. Not the most important of historical landmarks, but significant to me as an indication that I had indeed crossed into Cathar country.

I finally reached the remote and impressive Lastours; but, hours behind schedule and still fighting through jet lag, I gave it short shrift. It didn’t help that the structures were built on promontories well above the roadway. Now a historic monument, the four castles are on a rocky spur, just 1300 feet long by 165 feet wide, above the village of Lastours, itself isolated by the deep valleys of two rivers. Cabaret, Surdespine and la Tour Régine stand in line, while Quertinheux is built on a separate pinnacle close by.

I wound up as far as I could get by car but bailed on the strenuous climb it would take to reach the actual structures, telling myself that they were close enough to Carcassonne that I could come back, which didn’t happen.

In the meantime, it was becoming clear that my quest was not going to be a quick pass through a museum with displays conveniently placed side-by-side. The Cathar Crusade was no minor skirmish between rock-throwing mobs. It lasted as long as it did because it pitted two formidable forces—military, political and religious—against each other with immediate consequences disastrous for the Cathars and the Languedoc, but also with long-term significance for the entire continent. Why so many people, the protagonist in my novel The Perfect among them, would be drawn to this region in search of a key, sometimes called the Grail, to Europe’s history,

Just as it did in medieval times, the fortress of Carcassonne erupts from the midst of the ordinary city buildings, like a volcano of history in stone. I arrived at my downtown hotel late and tired enough the evening of the 12th that I did not suspect that a few blocks away across the bridge was a sight that would stagger my credulity more than any Hollywood film set.

In stark contrast to the exasperating ambivalence, which eventually doomed the Cathar cause and the county’s independence from France, of his sometimes ally Raymond VI, the Count of Toulouse, Raymond Roger de Trencavel, the viscount of the eastern region of the county, took a firm stand against the overwhelming forces of the invading crusaders, thus making his capital, Carcassonne, a primary target for the attacking armies. In August 1209, barely a month into the war, Simon de Montfort besieged the city and demanded its surrender. With the town’s access to water cut, Raymond-Roger accepted a safe-conduct to negotiate terms of surrender in the Crusader camp. But he was tricked. At the conclusion of the negotiations he was taken prisoner and imprisoned in his own dungeon and allowed, or induced, to die. For the remaining 30 years of the war, Carcassonne served as a Crusader fortress and a center of operations for the Papal Inquisition, which ferreted out Cathar believers from the population with a combination of interrogation and torture that eventually developed into the standard procedure used by tyrannical leaders and movements throughout the western world.

Walking on the winding pathway atop the walls of the citadel, brilliantly restored by the architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century, it required little imagination to immerse myself into that city’s troubled history. In the Basilica of Saint-Nazaire was a piece of the tombstone of de Montfort and a sign marking the spot where the famed St. Dominic preached against the Cathar heretics. There was the tower that housed the Catholic Inquisition, still known as “The Inquisition Tower” and the related “Musée de la Torture” with some of the original torture equipment.

The complex viewed as whole, touted as the largest remaining fortified city in Europe, stands proud in the sunlight during the day and equally impressive floodlit at night, a glorious monument to an era when chivalry and faith werein flower. And yet its individual stones, spattered with the blood of its defenders and blackened with the fires that consumed “he retics,” shout out against the prejudice and persecutions which they witnessed. I, the writer, came to the city to experience its history objectively. When I, the person, left that city on the morning of August 14th to continue my journey southward, there was a tear in my eye. I had felt the stones of Carcassonne in my soul and I would never forget them.

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