Picture of my great nephews Conor, Fionn and Rory with my nephew David and an unknown gentleman in white.
This was sent by telephone to his mother in Spain and then relayed by her to me.
We haven’t had any snow yet in the Languedoc, a few sparse flocons but it feels cold enough today.

It has just struck me that I have blogged about several different religious topics in the last few weeks , the Cathars recently and then the Sacristy Crucifix and, not too long ago, the sheet of the old Hymnal we found at a Vide Grenier.

As I am a self-confessed athiest why am I writing so much about religion ?Could it be that I am being subtly influenced by previous incumbents of Le Presbytére ?

Two Cathar Castles (well actually two post Cathar Castles built on the site of the original Castles) at Lastour.

You cannot really exist in Languedoc without being made constantly aware of The Cathars.
They are without doubt the one of the most important symbols of the area and , surprisingly for a movement that essentially had died out by the end of the thirteenth century, their echo stills lives on to our own age influencing people like Hitler and the awful Dan Browne of the Da Vinci Code fame.

They were basically a Catholic Heresy which believed in a dual set of gods, one good and one evil, which spread through Languedoc like wildfire at the end of the twelfth century and the begining of the thirteenth.
They put the wind up Pope Innocent 2nd so much that he organised a Holy Crusade against them ; The Albigensian Crusade , which descended on them like a ton of bricks and their first gesture, to burn and pillage the city of Beziers, including torching the innocent citizens in the churches , set a tone for the bloody crusade which raged and was waged throughout Languedoc from 1209, when they attacked Beziers, to 1229 when the Peace of Paris was declared.
The Cathars did continue, in a much depleted form for some years after that until they were finally ousted by the Dominican Fathers in the Inquisition.

Much later on their cause was revived by writers like Simone Weil who saw Catharism as a pure force which was a shining example of European pre-Roman civilization being crushed by the (Roman) church. She was much influenced by the Maire of the village of Arques ; Déodat Roché who wrote at length about his chosen people and how he reckoned that their treasure (The Holy Grail ?) had been smuggled out of Montsegur Castle before the last surrender of the Cathars there.
Otto Rhan, a German contempory of Weil, espoused her cause and philosophy and his writings about a pure European civilization are thought to have influenced Herr Hitler.
Dan Browne just confused Déodat Roché’s writings with various other pop histories and wrote a best seller.

Strangely it was only during the 1990’s that Catharism again came into vogue and since then there seem to have been a lot of books written on the subject.

My interest was rekindled by being sent a book on the Albigensian Crusade by a customer (thank you John) written by Johnathan Sumption, and then some further reading of a book on the Cathars by Malcom Barber- both of these are available in paperback.

I suppose that one of the reasons that the Tourist Board of Languedoc have embraced the Cathars recently (the airport in Carcassonne has just had its name changed from Salvaza Airport to L’Airport des Pays Cathares) is that they built their Castles in the most inaccessible romantic and dramatic places (inspired no doubt by the results of being conquered by the members of the Crusade) .
I have previously visited some closer to the Pyrenees but last week I took the excuse of having some friends to stay to visit a group north of Carcassonne which I pictured above .
They are breathtakingly positioned on the rocky tops of peaks in Les Montagnes Noires and well deserve the climb up to see them.

Thanks very much to guidance from Martine (see previous piece) I am now able to understand far more of the symbols on the Sacristy Crucifix.

The following is edited from Wikipidea.

(“Weapons of Christ”), or the Instruments of the Passion,
are the objects associated with Jesus’ Passion in Christian symbolism and art.

They are seen as arms in the sense of heraldry, and also as the weapons Christ used to achieve his conquest over Satan. The purpose of the representations was to symbolize the sufferings of Christ during his Passion.
The Instruments :
The Cross on which Jesus was crucified.
The Crown of Thorns.
The pillar or column where Jesus was whipped in the Flagellation of Christ.
The whip, used for the 39 lashes.
The Holy Sponge set on a reed, with which gall and vinegar were offered to Jesus.
The Holy Lance with which a Roman soldier inflicted the final of the Five Wounds in his side.
The Veil of Veronica
The Seamless robe of Jesus .
The dice with which the soldiers gamed for Christ’s robe
The ladder used for the Deposition (removing the body of Jesus from the cross for burial).
The hammer used to drive the nails into Jesus’ hands and feet
The pincers used to remove the nails.
The sun and moon, representing the eclipse which occurred during the Passion.
Thirty pieces of silver (or a money bag), the price of Judas’ betrayal.
The hand which slapped Jesus’ face.
The sword used by Peter to cut off the ear of the High Priest’s servant

This means the only symbol I cannot recognise is the lion at the top of the cross, unless there is any way it could be a cock, often placed there to remind us of Peter’s betrayal.

Last Saturday was a Jour de Patrimoine in Thezan and they opened the church for the morning so people could brouse about inside at their leisure.
In the sacristy, over the door there was this crucifix which was just heavily decorated with symbols and had to be photographed.

Now some of these symbols I have seen already on early grave stones in Ireland but some are a mystery to me.
The Crucifix is crossed by a pair of what look like spears except one doesn’t have a blade but a red ball.
Let me describe it from the bottom up.
Firct there is a headless red robed figure on a long column. It seems that he wasn’t always headless as there is a mark on the wood where the head would have been.
This space is now filled with a pair of dice showing a five and (I think ) a two.
Next up is a skull and then above this where the two spears cross is a strange black ball which is a mystery to me.
After this there is a ladder which goes up to the cross piece.
Across this are a hammer, then Veronica’s cloth , then a smiley sun with rays from it, then what looks like the blade of a scimitar then the crown of thorns encircling a bleeding heart.
Then there is a flail , a man in the moon face , a severed hand and then a pincers.
Right at the top of the crucifix there is a red animal, possibly a lion.

Now quite a lot of these make sense if they are about the crucifixion itself.
The hammer which drove in the nails, the spear which peirced his side, Veronica’s cloth, the ladder with which the body was taken from the cross.
The crown of thorns and the flail are all obvious but I am not at all sure what some of the other symbols mean.

The IT asked me for recommendations for cheffy Christmas presents , and printed my suggestions in a supplement with Thursday’s paper.

Voila:

(It looks better in the original here)

My personal favourite Larson

Well……..every three or four days anyway.

My first job in the industry was in Snaffles in Leeson Street in Dublin, a very classy establishment where the money and the gentry dined in the seventies and eighties.

One of our most colourful clients was Lady Cusack-Smith , master of the Galway Blazers , I wrote the following about her some years ago ;

Molly, Lady Cusack Smith was a frequent costumer and a loyal fan of the restaurant. When a member of her party once spotted a fly in the gravy and started to point it out she instantly raised the jug to her lips, downed it and the fly in one go and said , regally, “More Gravy John!”

There is a wonderful story told about the same Lady Cusack Smith, a lady who in her day was such a beauty that Harrods obtained her permission to use her portrait on the tin in which they packed their fruit cake and called it “Molly O Rourke” in her honour. The story was that Lady Smith, for many years master of the Galway Blazers, arrived back from the hunt one hay with her horse covered in sweat and obviously exhausted. Her reply to the groom, who said “Jaysus Maam you have him in a terrible lather” was a classic.
“So would you be my good man if you had been between my thighs for the last four hours”

Bermingham

She lived in Bermingham House in Tuam which when times were hard she used to run as a sort of Manor House Bed and Breakfast.

When ever I fear that I am not giving my guests here in France enough tender loving care I think of another story about her.

Some wealthy Americans came into Snaffles one evening for dinner and got talking to John, the Maitre d’.
They had, they told John , just come from a night with Lady Smith in Bermingham.
“How did you get on ?” asked John.
“Well…, It was an amazing house and she was an astonishing woman; but we found the food a little inadaquate ”
“Oh?” said John- surprised and knowing that Molly was a Cordon Bleu cook.
” Well for dinner ” they told John “She gave us boiled eggs ”

More Curtains

Again blessing to Síle’s Auntie Emer, another sheet from Edenderry County Offaly was pressed into service in the Languedoc today.

Their destination was this time the rather unglamerous but essential downstairs loo in Le Presbytere.

There we had the same problems as in the upstairs bedrooms.
The fine linen curtains which preserved modesty during the hours of daylight didn’t provide sufficient opaqueness when the internal lights were lit.

The slightly heavier Irish sheets were brought in to the rescue.
They were dyed first grey ( wrong grey for the French shutters ) then olive green and then cut and machined by Madame to provide perfect elegant curtains which will ensure that daylight lights the room and that modesty is preserved at all times while using the facilities.