I’m getting heart palpitations just looking at this photo. And I had a lot of cassoulet during the course of that trip. Didn’t get the chance to climb the mountain to view the ruins on account of all the mud, but it was worth it for the awesome little British-themed pub in the village below which served one of the best cassoulets I’ve ever had.

We spent a cold, rainy day there in May 2014, and it was FABULOUS. Well, OK, the actual beginning of the series is in 2012, on an archaeological dig in what looks an awful lot like the base of Montségur, the site of a stronghold where the last major battle against the Cathars occurred in 1243, about 50 miles from Carcassonne.īTW, if you ever get the chance to visit Montségur, do not turn it down. Labyrinth begins right as the Albigensian Crusade is starting up. OK, it’s not like I was expecting actual scholarship here.

Instead, they’re a kind of peaceful colony of medieval hippies who have some tenuous connection with the Holy Grail. Which basically doesn’t even get mentioned in the show. Pope Innocent III came down especially hard on them in the early 13th century, launching the Albigensian Crusade in 1209 with the express intention of eradicating their “heretical” practices. What made them really interesting is that they practiced a form of Christian dualism, Catharism, that held a myriad of controversial beliefs in opposition to the dominate Roman Catholic church, such as equality between the sexes, reincarnation, and the ordination of women as perfecti (basically the highest order of leadership within the faith). The basic premise is that A) it takes place in both the 13th- and 21st-centuries B) it deals with two women who “share a link between past and present” and C) it was filmed on location at Carcassonne, the beautiful medieval walled castle-city in southern France that was a major stronghold of the Cathars.īrief history lesson if you’re not familiar with the Cathars, since it is never really explained in the plot of this film … They were a Christian sect that was active for a brief period in the southern region of France between the 12th- and 14th-centuries. Kendra usually handles that department, being the resident historical novel enthusiast around here.

It’s one of those time-hopping historical novels turned historical film fluff, so maybe that’s why I missed it. What is this? Did someone make a new medieval flick, and I somehow didn’t get the memo?Īs the resident “other times that aren’t 16th-century through 19th-century” “expert” (yes, that is a lot of friendly quotes), I was kind of surprised that I hadn’t heard about Kate Mosse’s Labyrinth, which apparently came out in 2012 (and aired in the US on the CW in 2014).

Kate moss labyrinth