“All Gaul is divided into three parts.” This blog entry is about one of them.
Not too long ago, my old college buddy, Jim, called to catch up, and he mentioned that he and his wife were going to France. I think his exact words were a somewhat uncharacteristic “Eat your heart out, Dave, we’re going to Paris.” Francophile that I am, I confess to being jealous, especially as my proposed Pyrenees hiking and climbing trip keeps getting put off. As it turns out, Jim’s plans are really for a trip to southern France, where he and his wife, active Quakers, God bless them, will spend some time at a Quaker-run facility, where Jim will get a couple of weeks of French tutoring in an effort to improve his verbal proficiency. French is the language of one of his daughters-in-law. What worthier motive could there be to brush up on a language he hadn’t used for years just to please his son’s wife!
Among other topics, we got to talking about Provence. For me, there are two Provences: the glitzy Côte d’Azur, and the area west of Marseille. I know that many will jump in with Jean Giono’s Alps, and with Marseille, and with Peter Mayle’s cute hill towns, and probably with Avignon, but having lived in Languedoc, my Provence is Roman Gaul. Perhaps if you pressed me, I would add the Calanques and the Camargue, and Laurence Wylie’s Village in the Vaucluse, a classic (and very readable) anthropological study of a small village, but the lower Rhône offers visitors an extraordinary collection of Roman monuments of high quality, and all within a relatively small area. This is no secret, since every guide book recommends that you visit them, but at 20, when I traveled to France for the first time, I wasn’t very interested in things Roman.
As a former high school history teacher, my duties required teaching more or less uninterested 14- and 15-year olds about ancient civilizations. In their defense, when I was 15, I was never interested in Rome either. In Rome’s defense, most of my students were not interested in anything historical, much less the sociological underpinnings of an ancient society.
I was not a student of Latin either, and I thought the only useful languages were those people spoke. No one spoke Latin except Catholic priests during the Mass. Now you no longer even find it there very often.
Rome actually met me in France, a chance encounter. I was studying in Pau and hitchhiking about the region at every opportunity.
I wanted to see the scenery in the mountain resort of Luchon. On the way was St. Bertrand-de-Comminges, a fortified cathedral in the village of the same name, on the edge of the Pyrenees. Inside, the impressive wooden choir, carved by an unknown sculptor, contrasts with the old Romanesque and Gothic architecture. The choir alone is worth the trip.
St. Bertrand was a large and important Roman center, but was destroyed by various barbarian invaders, and not rebuilt until the Middle Ages. It is also a stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela. I have pics somewhere, but they are not yet available for this post.
The mention of St. Bertrand is a digression, intended to bring us to Valcabrère, for it was there that I met Rome. The Basilica of Saint-Just de Valcabrère is an early Romanesque church which sits in a rural area a kilometer or two from St. Bertrand. The cathedral sits up above in the village. One approaches St-Just through an arch in the cemetery wall. After crossing the small graveyard, the facade of the building stands before you. There are a great many old Romanesque churches in Europe. What made this one so interesting to me was the statuary on the facade. The sculptor clearly used Roman statues as models, and the figures are classical and sublime. That is how I met Rome, reflected a thousand years later by an anonymous medieval sculptor. At the time, the church was locked and I couldn’t visit the interior, so my memories are of that quiet graveyard lined by cypresses and the simple, but striking facade. I have seen many more examples of Romanesque statuary from famous churches and cathedrals, but I shall never forget the faces that look at you from the facade of St-Just.
After Pau, I moved to Montpellier in the southeastern part of Languedoc, on the very western edge of Provence. Here near the mouth of the Rhône, the Romans brought urbanism to newly conquered Gaul.
If you are a fan of the illustrator and author, David Macaulay, and I am a big one, you may be familiar with his book, City, in which he illustrates how a Roman city might come together from scratch.
I love the text, which is for kids and adults alike, and the wonderful architectural drawings. Macaulay clearly used Nîmes as a model for his book. Interestingly, Thomas Jefferson used one of Nîmes’s monuments as a model for his design of the Virginia State House.
Nîmes is about an hour or an hour and a half from Montpellier. It boasts an impressive amphitheater.
Other than its Roman ruins, its main claim to international fame is the cloth “serge de Nîmes” which gave its name to denim cloth. The word jeans, by the way, also is of French origin, from an association with Genoa, Gênes in French.
Nîmes is part of a rectangle of places, all within about an hour and a half or two from each other, that have major Roman monuments, including Arles, Orange, Pont du Gard, and St. Rémy-de-Provence.
Arles, like Nîmes, has an amphitheater, but the amphitheater was formerly used for housing, and that of Nîmes is more complete.
Orange has a triumphal arch and a theater. Orange was named Arausio in Roman times, after a Celtic river god, but the name was corrupted into Orange over time. The city became property of the House of Orange. Louis XIV added it to France by conquest. The House of Orange later produced William of Orange, husband of Queen Anne, invited into Great Britain during the Glorious Revolution.
Pont du Gard is a beautiful and wonderfully preserved aqueduct. It was constructed with huge blocks of quarried stone, set without mortar, and took 15 years to build. The water channel required constant maintenance, and eventually became choked with limestone deposits. Its survival is probably due to its former use as a bridge.
Pont du Gard is actually a bridge that carries the aqueduct over the river Gardon. The aqueduct is 31 miles long, and carried water to Nïmes.
Finally, St. Rémy has Les Antiquités, a triumphal arch, the oldest in France, and a unique mausoleum. I remember thinking during my first visit that we were in the middle of the country and wondering why the monuments were there. In fact there was a Roman settlement, Glanum, close by. The monuments were on a road just outside its walls.
The Romans called this part of southern France, like much of southern Gaul, Gallia Narbonensis,and these places offer the most interesting monuments of Roman France. The Romans also referred to it as Provincia Nostra, from which the name Provence is derived. I have included, among the pictures below, a few of Vaison la Romaine, in the Vaucluse, Wylie country for you anthropologists who want to know what made the French villagers tick, albeit a half century ago. Wylie’s book is a classic, and, if you are a French teacher and haven’t read it, you might check it out. It has even been translated into French, for use in courses teaching French culture.
I put this post together for Jim, but will continue to add pictures later. I have many more pictures of the Roman sites, and, I hope, some of St. Bertrand. I’ve been to all of the Roman sites more than once.
Hope you like the show, Jim.
Morocco That Was 