A trip to Cathar Country in the Langedoc - 6
Toulouse

Sunday was supposed to be an off-day but our driver, the never-to-be-forgotten Cyrille (because he took us to his father's café in Albi for a great feast for €11) took us to Toulouse, once the seat of the Counts of Toulouse who's tacit support for the Cathars was most valuable to them. When Simon de Montfort tried to besiege it in 1211, he got nowhere & when he tried again in 1218, some women operating a catapult, bashed his head in with a rock & not before time, either. Unfortunately, his son Amaury continued the family tradition of trying to wipe out ideas by violence. In fact, the Cathars were more vulnerable to the more psychological approach of 'St' Dominic, who aped the Perfects in his ministry & by his followers, who were commissioned by the Pope to set up the Inquisition & by police work the Gestapo (incidentally, Hitler was a Catholic), would have been proud of.

Toulouse is a most attractive city. Highlights shown below are the Romanesque church of St Sernin (who? who?) & the cathedral of St. Etienne, both built over centuries. St. Sernin is consistent but St. Etienne's builders seem to have lost the plot several times, resulting in a weird mixture of styles but also some great tapestries of the 16th C.

St Sernin	Inside St Sernin	Inside St Sernin
The Jacobin's (Dominican)	The Capitoleum	Place de la Trinité
St. Etienne's Cathedral	Inside St. Etienne's	Pont Neuf