Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 46 Béziers - Capestang

Il y a des hommes dont la vie s'illustre par une seule action. Lorsqu'elle est grande et utile à l'humanité, cette action suffit à leur assurer dans l'avenir un nom qui bravera l'oubli et l'indifférence de la postérité.

(There are men whose lives stand out for a single action. An action so great and useful to humanity that it saves their names from oblivion and from the indifference of posterity.)

- Jacques Fernay, Un grand Français du XVIIe siècle (1884)

The 240 kilometre long Canal du Midi connects the Étang du Thau, a lagoon draining into the Mediterranean, with Toulouse, where it links up with the Canal de Garonne and through it to the Atlantic Ocean. Together the two canals form the Canal des Deux Mers, an ambitious project eliminating the need to sail cargo vessels through the pirate-infested waters south of Spain. Built during the reign of Louis XIV between 1666 and 1681, the Canal du Midi is one of Europe's oldest canals, and one of the greatest feats of engineering of the seventeenth century. 

Statue of Pierre-Paul Riquet in Béziers

The engineer in charge of the project, Pierre-Paul Riquet, was a native of Béziers. Interested in science and mathematics since his youth, Riquet became a tax collector and provider of munitions to the Catalan army, earning him great wealth, nearly all of which he spent on his pet project. The construction of the Canal du Midi absorbed all of Riquet's time and money from 1665 until his death in 1680; the numerous and seemingly insurmountable problems involved caused his sponsors to lose interest, even King Louis XIV himself. The canal was auctioned off and Riquet himself bought it; it continued to be maintained and operated as a private enterprise by his heirs until the French Revolution. 

Image source: Wikipedia 

If the Canal du Midi is 240 kilometres long, I must have walked twenty to thirty percent of its length by now! Walking into Toulouse in 2018, I passed its watershed, the highest point on the Canal, known as the Seuil de Naurouze, where Riquet created the Bassin de Saint-Ferréol, an artificial reservoir accumulating water from the streams of the Montagne Noire to make sure that the canal would never run dry. And today I passed more of the canal's remarkable structures. Actually the first, and perhaps most dramatic, came yesterday afternoon, right before I reached the pilgrim hostel in Béziers: the Pont-Canal sur l'Orb, a bridge carrying the Canal du Midi over the Orb river. I walked right across the bridge, beside the canal. 

The pilgrim hostel in Béziers is located right between two of the most impressive feats of engineering on the Canal du Midi: the canal-bridge over the Orb and the Écluses de Fonserannes, a sort of staircase consisting of nine locks bringing the water down the Valley of the Orb into Béziers. 

About halfway through the day I passed the Malpas Tunnel, the world's first navigable canal tunnel, carrying the canal under the hill of Ensérune.  The tunnel is 165 metres long, with an arch eight metres above the surface of the water, and it nearly caused the death of the whole project: the sandstone was brittle and subject to slippage during drilling. The French Prime Minister ordered the project to be stopped. But Riquet had his workers continue drilling in secret, successfully completing the tunnel and installing a concrete ceiling in only eight days.

It took 15,000 men and women fifteen years to build the Canal du Midi, digging manually with shovels and pick-axes. Riquet paid his workers well: twice the standard wage for farm labour - until the landowners complained that they couldn't get any labourers to work for them, and forced him to reduce the wages he offered! More importantly, Riquet offered unprecedented benefits, paying his workers their wages even on days when rain made it impossible to work, on Sundays and on holidays; he even paid them when they were sick!

The main purpose of the canal was to transport wheat and wine from the Languedoc without having to travel all the way around Spain and through the Strait of Gibraltar: an achievement various rulers had dreamed of since the days of the Roman Empire. King François I even brought Leonardo da Vinci to France in 1516 to conduct a feasibility study for a similar project connecting the Garonne at Toulouse with the Aude at Carcassonne. But the problems had always seemed overwhelming, until the determination of one man made the whole enterprise possible. In 1996, the Canal du Midi was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its outstanding engineering and artistic design.

I followed the Canal du Midi all the way to Capestang, which was the site of another important feat of engineering in Roman times: a 1500 metre long bridge carrying the Via Domitia across the marshes, which unfortunately no longer stands. Capestang comes from the Latin Caput Stagnum: the head of the marsh, and the village is located at one end of a salt marsh that has now largely dried up. 

Here I am staying in a lovely Airbnb flat just off the canal, and just round the corner from the massive collegiate church of Saint-Étienne, built between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. 

The view as soon as I step out the door

Home sweet home

This will do very nicely for today thank you!

Béziers - Capestang 20 km

Italy to Santiago II Part 1: Via Domitia Day 45 Portiragnes - Béziers

Je ne marche pas pour rajeunir ou éviter de vieillir, pour me maintenir en forme ou pour accomplir des exploits. Je marche comme je rêve, comme j’imagine, comme je pense par une sorte de mobilité de l’être et de besoin de légèreté.

(I don't walk to regain my youth, or to avoid growing old, to keep in shape or to accomplish something. I walk just as I dream, just as I imagine, just as I think, to achieve a sort of mobility of being and respond to a need for lightness.)

- Georges Picard, Le Vagabond approximatif (2001)

A short walk today - twelve kilometres along the Canal du Midi. And then another nine kilometres exploring Béziers!

The canal path may be monotonous, especially in dull weather, but it is not entirely without interest. It has occasional attractive features - such as locks, bridges, barges/houseboats, and giant earthworms!

The latest new candidate in the "longest earthworm on the Camino" contest!

😅

At the Port de Plaisance or marina of Béziers, I stopped in a café for a miniature quiche and an end-of-stage beer - though it wasn't even noon yet! I had planned a short stage partly because it was supposed to rain, and partly because I wanted the afternoon free to explore the city. It was only noon when I called the hospitalier at Gíte Bon Camino to tell him I was at the door. After about fifteen minutes he rode up on his bike, let me into the hostel, took down my details and showed me around. I was as usual the only one staying in the pilgrim hostel, and probably the last of the season: number 981 this year, according to the registry! I wasted no time in the hostel but headed off to explore the town, clutching a ragged map on which the hostel volunteers had marked out their recommended route. 

The Béziers area has been inhabited since Neolithic times, and a Greek colony was established on the site in 575 BC, making it the second-oldest city in France, after Massilia (Marseille); the city was originally named Rhôde, after the homeland of the colonists. The Romans refounded the city around the year 36 BC as Colonia Julia Baeterrae Septimanorum, a colony of veterans of the Seventh Legion located on the Via Domitia road linking Italy with Spain. Remains of the Roman amphitheatre are still visible, and the floor mosaic of a Roman house was uncovered during renovation of Béziers' covered market, Les Halles, in 2024.

The city was conquered by the Muslims in AD 720 and remained part of Islamic Iberia until 752. Between the tenth and twelfth centuries the viscounts of Béziers ruled the coastal plain around the city and controlled the east-west road through the Languedoc region, which roughly followed the route of the Roman Via Domitia. 

I started my exploration by crossing not the old bridge, but the adjacent road bridge, so that I could take pictures of the medieval bridge beside it. Then I located the elevator and series of walkways leading up to the cathedral at the top of the town.

The Romanesque cathedral that was built starting in the eighth century, on the site of a Roman temple, is no longer there. It was destroyed on July 22, 1209, set on fire by Crusaders, so that the roof and much of the cathedral collapsed on the people inside, killing thousands of men, women and children who had taken refuge in the church.

Crusaders, killing Christians, in a church? This is what happened during the "Albigensian Crusade" of 1209 - 1229, the only crusade ever to be called against a Christian sect. Pope Innocent III called the crusade, in agreement with the French king, against the heretical reformist sect of the Cathars, also known as the Albigensians because of the popularity of the movement in the area centring around the town of Albi. As usual, religion offered as an excuse to start a war that actually had political motives: maintaining the dominance of the north of France over the south. 

Though the Cathar beliefs were, admittedly, pretty radical. In a reaction against the scandalous and dissolute Catholic clergy of the day, the Cathars sought a return to the Christian message of perfection, poverty and preaching. But unlike other twelfth-century reformers such as Saint Francis, they rejected the physical, material world as entirely sinful, created not by God but by an evil force they called Rex Mundi, to lead us astray from the ideal of a purely spiritual life. The word "Cathar" comes from the Greek katharos, meaning "clean" or "pure", and the Cathar ideal would have been to live as pure spirit; all connections with the material world, such as eating, were considered unclean. Marriage and sex were particularly evil because they produced new human beings, perpetuating the cycle of souls being trapped in an impure bodily existence. The Cathars believed in two equal and opposed forces: a God who was pure spirit, and the evil Rex Mundi, ruler of the material world. 

The Cathars rejected not only the authority of the Pope and the clergy, but all forms of worldly government, refusing to obey the law, swear oaths or perform military service. It's no wonder then that they were impopular with the authorities, of both church and government! The Cathar movement gained the most ground in the Languedoc region, also known as Occitania, an area that didn't really consider itself a part of France, being linguistically and culturally closer to Catalonia than to northern France. Occitanian cities were particularly cosmopolitan and enjoyed a fair degree of religious freedom; Jews and dissident groups such as the Cathars and the Waldesians were tolerated, and while Muslims did not enjoy the same freedom, Islamic literature and scholarship were known and respected. The cities of the south enjoyed a time of peace and prosperity, and were viewed with suspicion and unease by the rulers of the north of France. 

When Innocent III was elected Pope in 1198, he resolved to deal with the Cathars, sending a delegation of friars to the province of Languedoc to assess the situation. It was found that the Cathars of Languedoc were not showing proper respect for the authority of the French king or the Catholic Church, and that their leaders were being protected by the local nobles, who had a clear interest in maintaining their independence from the king. Innocent III made an attempt at dealing with the situation diplomatically, sending a number of Cistercian monks to preach to the Cathars and bring them back into the fold, but with a few exceptions their mission failed. In the end, Innocent III declared a crusade against the Cathars, and Papal legate Arnaud Amalric, Abbot of Cîteaux Abbey, assumed command of the enterprise.

The Crusaders marched first on Béziers, a city with a strong Cathar community, and laid siege to the town, demanding that the Catholics come out of the city and the Cathars surrender. When both groups refused to obey, the Crusaders slaughtered the entire population of Béziers, estimated at 15,000 to 20,0000 people, and burnt the city to the ground. 

It is said that the Crusaders asked their commander, the Pope's representative Abbot Arnaud Amalric, how to distinguish between Catholics and Cathars, seeing as they looked the same. He replied Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius: "Kill them all. God will know which are his."

The city, and the cathedral, of Béziers were rebuilt beginning in 1215. Only a few details of the original Romanesque construction survived, but the cathedral begun in 1215 is an excellent example of Gothic architecture in southern France. 

Having visited the cathedral, I spent the rest of the afternoon happily wandering around the town centre. The city reminded me of Montpellier, but on a smaller scale.

Christmas decorations were going up in many parts of the city: a sight I have never seen on a Camino before! And they looked really out of place on a sunny afternoon with a temperature of around twenty degrees! But the days are getting shorter, and so I soon made my way back to the pilgrim hostel, with supplies for an early dinner. 

Portiragnes - Béziers 12 km

(+ 9 km wandering around the town!)