Cathédrale Saint-Nazaire de Béziers et le 22 juillet 1209

Béziers

On 22 July 1209, the feast of Saint Mary Magdalene, the army of the crusaders arrives below Béziers. The bishop has proposed to the inhabitants that they hand over the heretics whose list he holds; they have refused. A sortie by young men against the servants of the camp turns out badly: the ribalds come in through the gate left open, and the town is taken in a few hours. The people, Catholics included, are massacred in the streets and in the churches where they had taken refuge — the Madeleine, Saint-Jude, the cathedral. Then the town is pillaged and burned; the vault of the Romanesque cathedral collapses in the fire. The legate Arnaud Amaury wrote to the pope that "nearly twenty thousand" inhabitants had been killed "without distinction of age or sex" — the figure is that of a man boasting, but the town then had fewer than ten thousand inhabitants, and the massacre was nonetheless one of the greatest of the western Middle Ages. The cathedral one sees is the one the bishops rebuilt, in Gothic and as a fortress, from 1215: a single nave, crenellated towers, a rose window, and, from the top of its parvis, the gaze that falls on the Orb, the Pont-Vieux and the road by which the crusaders came.

Wikipédia — Cathédrale Saint-Nazaire ↗

Getting there : Plan de la cathédrale, at the top of the old town, fifteen minutes' walk from the station. Open every day, free entry; the cloister and the bishops' garden look out over the Orb. Park at the allées Paul-Riquet or at the Madeleine car park.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound