STORY AND PHOTOS BY CAROL LARREY
The train running 150 miles east to ancient Carcassonne from my home in southwestern France was, unusually, only one euro. Given that my husband was absorbed by projects in his office, I decided to spend the euro and head east for a stroll by myself around the famous citadel. The cheap ticket would provide a chance to do some things I’d never done before, such as walk the Canal du Midi from one lock to another and climb the 232 stairs of the Saint Vincent belfry to enjoy a view of the Cité from a mile away.
Plans taking shape, I further discovered that entrances to the restored castle and its battlements were free that day, as well as the art museum downtown. It seemed like a fun day was ahead. Of course, Carcassonne is more than just a cool setting for the film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves—it’s also a reminder of historical tragedies. So “fun” might not be the right word.
Back in the 12th century, the Carcassonne area was a center of a particular movement within the Catholic church. Among other beliefs that diverged from traditional Catholic theology, fervent believers had come to understand that the holy scriptures said to commemorate Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross each time they ate bread or drank wine. This meant commemoration with every meal, rather than only during highly ceremonial services inside churches, which had been the Catholic church’s long tradition.

With time, these believers’ practice developed into a regular little ceremony in their homes: The oldest person sitting at the table would lift a loaf of bread over their left shoulder and recite a few special sentences. Priests were left out of this, so although many of these people continued to faithfully attend church services despite this practice, the clergy called them heretics and came down hard on them.
This movement that was given the name of “Cathars” took on another particularity: They claimed they could trace the transmission of the Holy Spirit by the laying-on-of-hands all the way back to the apostles, Jesus’s closest disciples during his earthly life. This belief actually made the Cathars’ situation worse, because it seemed the only way to stop their movement was to prevent them from passing it on by touching another person. Therefore, the clergy of the Catholic church imprisoned them inside walls or ordered their immediate death. One famous motto came from a papal representative who wasn’t sure which people in a besieged Cathar town were the heretics and which were considered Catholic faithful, so just in case, he gave orders to “Kill them all; God will sort them out.”
In Carcassonne, both the room where perceived heretics were tried in ecclesiastical courts and the passageway leading from this trial room to the prison towers are off limits to tourists. However, one of the main attractions in Carcassonne is the Museum of the Inquisition that displays a collection of the torture machines invented by the clergy for use on the accused.
Carcassonne’s fine art museum contains a great portrayal of a famous episode in Carcassonne’s Cathar history: The monumental 14-foot by 11-foot painting La délivrance des emmurés de Carcassonne (The Deliverance of the Walled-In Prisoners of Carcassonne) by late 19th-century master Jean-Paul Laurens depicts a group of Cathars who had been walled-in in order to prevent them from touching somebody.

In the oil-on-canvas scene, Friar Bernard Délicieux has just convinced the inquisitors to open the wall and transfer the captives to the royal prison. That’s the best he could do. He’s the one addressing the crowd, supposedly trying to calm them. Almost every city in the area has named a street after this brave Franciscan who tried to spare the Cathars and in doing so took several beatings before dying prematurely in Carcassonne’s prison.
This dramatic painting is as big as a wall, so seeing it in person drew out a deeper reaction in me than seeing images of it on screens or paper. The anti-clerical Laurens was such a talented artist who based his painted compositions on written historical research. I’ve viewed others of his works a little nearer to home in Toulouse and love the detail he pours into them.


In this painting, I was particularly drawn to the kids’ faces, to the expressions of these innocents who were caught up in events too large for them to understand. Yet these little ones bear the effects nonetheless. Viewing it in the city where this scene took place added further emotional weight. Painting the scene in the 1870s, six centuries after it happened, Laurens took 21st-century me inside the moment a further 150 years after he painted it. My connection to this history is deeper and more tangible now.
And so, as I caught my train back home, I was glad I’d followed the idea to take advantage of the special train fare. I was fuller for it—more full of history, more full of understanding, more full of the brightness of a day spent exploring.

Carol Larrey left the United States in 1975 for theological studies in France. She met and married a Frenchman and thus has remained in France ever since. A lover of history, her writing and research has led her to explore France’s long roots, with a sense that knowing the past is important for understanding the present. She has published two books—a guide to sites of significance in the Protestant history of Paris and another exploring the history of southwestern France.