Curious? Wanna come too? Revealing ALL about next week ;-p

Have you ever been to France? Do you know of any great historical or picturesque places, and will you please comment and advise me if there is somewhere important in the area that I’m missing?

Finally, Monday is the BIG DAY. We’ll be going off to Southern France for a whole week! I’ve been looking forward to this for so long, and now that it’s finally here, I can’t begin to assimilate it. So, in order for me to gloss over the particulars (again) and for you to have an idea about where I’m going, I am going to list all the places we have researched, found on the map, inserted in the SatNav and in our day-by-day itinerary (because yes, that is how we roll). However do not think that everything is or will go as planned – we always seem to find ourselves in strange places, exploring stuff we had never heard about, and not just the things we planned.

                                                                      Monday

   Marseilles
Cathedrale de la Major
Le Fort Saint Jean
Abbaye Saint Victor
Notre Dame de la Garde
Musee des Beaux-Arts

Tuesday

Chateau de Lastours
Medieval City of Carcassone
Chateau de Montsegur

Wednesday

Caderousse
Orange
Ancient Roman Theatre
The Triumphal Arch of Orange
Chateau des Adhemar
Chateau de Suze-de-la-Rousse
Chateau de Grignan

Thursday

Fort de Salses
Chateau de Querbius
Chateau de Peyrepertuse
Beziers
Cathedrale Saint Nazaire

Friday

Arles Amphitheatre
Abbaye Saine Pierre de Montmajour
Barbedal Aqueduct
Tarascon Chateau
Chateau des Baux de Provence
Chateau de Gordes

Saturday

Catellum Aquae
Arena of Nimes
Valeinte’s Half-Day Cruise and Lunch on the Rhone River
Papal Palace
Rocher des Doms

Sunday

Anywhere which takes our fancy
Abbaye de Fontfroide
St Fulcran Cathedral
Saint Michel de Grandmont Priory

Have I missed anything? I DO plan to visit Northern France, Paris, etc in future too :0)

Church Massacres 7,000 in the name of Catholicism

No, it did not happen today. It did not happen yesterday. It happened more than 800 years ago in 1209. Does that make it ok?

While we still bemoan awful events like the 9/11 twin tower bombings and the disappearance of Madeline McCann, society in general seems to have conveniently forgotten the atrocities done in the name of Catholicism, preferring instead to foist all the blame and religious fanaticism on Islamic belief.

In 1209 the then-current Pope declared a ‘crusade’ against a sect of the Catholic church known as Cathars, branding them as heretics because of their differences in practiced creed. Papal knights and delegates were sent to Southern France to exterminate and eradicate all of the Cathars (of which there were thousands), while confiscating their properties, palaces and money.

When they arrived at the outskirts of Beziers, a city in the County of Languedoc, the Papal legate wrote a list of 222 names and sent it to the Mayor, demanding that these people would be sent over to him to be hanged, or else all would die. The city as one refused. After a siege, the ‘Papal knights’ entered the town slaughtering men, women and children right and left. The routiers rampaged through the streets, killing and plundering, while those citizens who could run sought refuge in the churches — the cathedral, the churches of St Mary Magdalene and of St Jude. Yet the churches did not provide safety against the raging mob of invaders. The doors of the churches were broken open, and all inside were massacred. It is estimated that 7,000 people died in the Church of St Mary Magdalene alone.

The building of the church itself was not even respected as sanctuary… which goes to show what the ‘Papal legate’ and his ‘knights’ were really after.

After the massacre it came to the distribution of the city’s spoils. The crusader knights became enraged that the rabble of the army had already taken the plunder. They took control of the situation, chased them from the occupied houses and took their booty away. In turn, the angry and disappointed soldiers responded by burning down the town.

Nice.

Real religious and brave.

The cherry on the cake? The papal legate himself knew that there were many innocents being killed – that is, non-Cathar worshippers. He is known to have told the knights to kill everyone anyway. His famously cited words were:

“Kill them all, God will know His own”

I will be going to the Languedoc region and visiting Cathar castles and other related places next month. Can’t wait to learn more about them.

Lazy Sundays – Castles in France and Cuddles

I love lazy Sundays – in a world where every day is a constant battle with time, they are a real jewel. After working full time for five days, Saturday is always a hectic day too since all the chores and friend/family stuff tend to take place then. However Sundays are days to laze around with one’s partner, enjoy hours in bed, then getting up for lunch, and, in my case, play PS4 or read or watch a favorite T.V series.

THIS particular Sunday we have some homework to do. However it is an exciting type of homework.

1. Measure furniture in order to be sure it will fit in the new house, when this is selected.
2. Plan for our Valentine’s week holiday to Southern France. We’ve already selected the spots we wanna see, but now we’ve gotta decide how we are gonna visit them in sequence, depending on their location and opening times, as well as insert the details into the SatNav.
3. Peruse a number of links of house-selling sites and talk about whether we should go view them or not.

There – that’s the kind of ‘homework’ I like 🙂

Btw, this is one of the castles we are DEFINITELY gonna visit. It is one of the castles which belonged to the Catholic sect of the Cathars. Never heard of them? Perhaps it’s because, since their creed ‘differed’ from the main accepted Catholic one, they were hunted down, eradicated and burned by the Roman Catholic Church first in a trumped up crusade, and then for heresy. Hint: all the wealth, castles, lands and money belonging to the Cathars was ‘confiscated’ by the Church when these massacred them… tolerance and love aye? lol

In an aside, the Cathars had women priests and thought that males and females were of equal importance and should have equal opportunities and power in life… obviously, for the ‘accepted’ Church, this too was heretical… righttt…

The Languedoc, which is a region in the South West of France, is full of Cathar Castles, which are the most beautiful castles in France, since the region itself was one of the most rich and fruitful (obviously, since the Church took so much bother and killed so many innocent people to get to it).