8 March 2004
Persiste et signe
What do you believe in? Would you put your name to it?
The title to this Home Page Diary is a kind of proverbial French exhortation to stand up for what you think. It's made me think.
800 years ago an army marched from northern France, at the instigation of the pope, to plunder the prosperous lands of Trencavel, Toulouse and Aragon.
The pretext for this aggression was the so-called 'heresy' of the tolerant, worldly wise Cathars.
A nobleman, Guillaume de Tudèle, set himself the task of bearing witness to the Crusade of Christian against Christian. He began writing a poem or 'chanson' or, in the language in which he was writing, a 'canso'.
Guillaume de Tudèle sympathised with the northern invaders. He was of their party. But he criticised the unnecessary barbarity of the repression of the South. And he never finished the poem and the work was picked up by another unnamed hand - still in the langue d'Oc.
This second author is - to this day - a mystery. Man, woman, rich, poor, priest, believer. What is clear is that the second writer of the 'canso' was fully in sympathy with the people of Languedoc.
But they did not sign their name and Tudèle did.
Persevere and you will find a way into the Labyrinth.
