Get Off Your High Horse, The Cathars Are Overrated!

The overwhelming response to my last post (!) was I come off sounding like a know-it-all. The fact is, I don't know squat about the Cathars or Occitan, and it may turn our my interests in both are symptoms of the uninitiated.

Through a French colleague I knew in Japan during my Vodafone career, I was introduced to a delightful Toulousain couple. We met for coffee next to the Place Esquirol. The wife is a retired teacher of French literature, and the husband is a retired architect. Both were gracious and kind.

Here is my take on our conversation. Keep in mind, I know enough French to get into deep conversations but not get out of them, so apologies in advance if I got any of this wrong...

How About Those Cathars?

1. Well, we (some, many French people) have had enough of them. For such a minor footnote in French history, the Cathars occupy an oversized influence on land development and tourism. "Cathars" means money, and tourists come to the area just to see Cathar castles (never mind the Cathars didn't actually build many of the castles attributed to them; Carcassonne is a prime example).
2. Toulouse and other cities have zoning regulations restricted to development of Cathar-related tourist sites, and it gets in the way of normal development. Everybody seems to want to cash in on Cathars these days, and the Albigensian Crusade lasted for only 40 years. If you want to learn about cultural influences, study the Visigoths. Toulouse was a Visigoth capital until 507, when Clovis I (France's first king) took control of the city.

Okay, You've Disposed of The Cathars, What About Occitan?

1. Like many people I've spoken with, my conversation partners didn't disagree with the statement that Occitan is a dead language. Sure, it's used on the announcements in the Metro, alongside French (they say "estacion" instead of "gare" for "station"), and sure, there are elementary schools that teach in Occitan, but nobody uses Occitan for commerce or mass media.
2. Unlike Catalan, which is spoken widely by Catalonians in Spain and is used as political as well as cultural tool of separatism, Occitan is more a "nice to have" (my own words).

We talked about historical revisionism and the removal of statues in the U.S. I mentioned there were some religious sculptures in the Musée des Augustins here in Toulouse whose heads or noses were missing. I compared it to the defacing of artwork in China during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

I recently watched an interview of Stephen Fry on YouTube where he argued statues should not be removed but rather kept, because they serve a purpose for teaching history. History, like people, Fry argues, is nuanced and complex. The tendency toward reductionism, all-or-nothing, is simplistic and unacademic.

Even if those depicted in statues did monstrous things, people who feel hurt or insulted by statutes should grow up, Fry argues. It's an argument with which I'd like to agree, but I'm aware it's fraught with political baggage. It takes deep reserves of patience to make a case for every statute that offends someone or some group.