Tea at Trianon: The Cathar Trail

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

The Cathar Trail

In the footsteps of the "Bons Hommes" or "Good Men," keeping in mind that the castles used by the Cathars were built by Catholics. From California18:

Mountains, rivers, gorges, citadels, castles, salt marshes… The Cathar trail or “path of the good men” is a splendid hiking route that links Ariège to Aude, the Pyrenees to the Mediterranean. By taking this mythical route, this new episode of the “100 Places to See” takes us along with local guides, all attached to their land, in a region steeped in the history of these Cathars who dared to defy the Church. in the thirteenth century. First stop, Foix, the capital of Ariège, and its imposing 12th century fortress (photo) remained impregnable, even for the famous and cruel Simon de Montfort who tried, in vain, to seize it in 1211.
But this territory of character, which will impose itself as the high place of Occitan resistance, is not only fortresses and fights. The Ariège, the river that crosses it, thus carries gold. “The prettiest nugget found weighed the equivalent of 18 grams”, tells us gold miner David Bruno. According to legend, he adds, the thin film of precious metal covering the Holy Grail comes from there. The walk continues in the Aude, at Alet-les-Bains, renowned for the remains of its Benedictine abbey, Notre-Dame d’Alet, which was considered the most beautiful and largest in the south of France and whose the ocher color is reminiscent of Petra. We then leave this small medieval village where Nostradamus would have stayed in his youth (Read more.)