Béziers

Béziers (Besièrs in Occitan, and Besiers in Catalan) is a town in Languedoc, in the southwest of France. It is a commune and a sous-préfecture in the Hérault département, with a population around 70,000, called Biterrois.

Geography

The town is located on a small bluff above the river Orb, about 10km from the Mediterranean Sea. At Béziers the Canal du Midi spans the river Orb as an aqueduct called the pont-canal ('canal bridge').

History

The site has been occupied since Neolithic times, before the influx of Celts. Roman Betarra was on the road that linked Provence with Iberia. The Romans refounded the city as a new colonia for veterans in 36/35 BCE and called it Colonia Julia Baeterrae Septimanorum. Stones from the Roman amphitheatre were used to construct the city wall during the 3rd century.

White wine was exported to Rome; two dolia discovered in an excavation near Rome are marked, one "I am a wine from Baeterrae and I am five years old," the other simply "white wine of Baeterrae".

During the 10th through 12th centuries Béziers was the center of a Viscountship of Béziers. The viscounts ruled most of the coastal plain around the city, including also the city of Agde. They also controlled the major east-west route through Languedoc, roughly following the old Roman Via Domitia, with the two key bridges over the Orb at Béziers and over the Hérault at Saint-Thibéry.

After the death of viscount William around 990, the viscounty passed to his daughter Garsendis and her husband, count Raimond-Roger of Carcassonne (d. ~1012). It was then ruled by their son Peter-Raimond (d. ~1060) and his son Roger (d. 1067), both of whom were also count of Carcassonne.

Roger died without children and Béziers passed to his sister Ermengard and her husband Raimond-Bertrand Trencavel. The Trencavels were to rule for the next 142 years, until the Albigensian Crusade.

Beziers was a Languedoc stronghold of the Cathars, whom Catholics determined were heretics and whom they exterminated in the Albigensian crusade. Béziers was the first city to be sacked, on July 22, 1209, burning the cathedral of Saint Nazaire, which collapsed on the terrified inhabitants who had taken refuge inside. Béziers was then destroyed and all its remaining inhabitants killed.

The commander of the crusade, Simon de Montfort, 5th Earl of Leicester, was acting on the advice of the Papal Legate to the Crusaders, Arnaud-Amaury (alternately Arnald Amalaricus, Bishop of Citeaux), the Bishop of Citeaux. When the commander asked the monk how they should they treat the inhabitants when they captured the city because not everybody in the city was a heretic -- some of them were good Catholics, the bishop famously replied, "Kill them all, God will recognize His own" / "Neca ecos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet."

A few parts of the Romanesque cathedral St-Nazaire survived, and it was restored, along with the rest of the city, during the 13th through 15th centuries.

Ecclesiastical history

Local traditions assign as the first Bishop of Béziers the Egyptian saint, Aphrodisius, said to have sheltered the Holy Family at Hermopolis and to have become a disciple of Christ, also to have accompanied Sergius Paulus to Gaul when the latter went thither to found the Church of Narbonne, and to have died a martyr at Béziers.

Local traditions made St. Aphrodisius arrive at Béziers mounted on a camel. Hence the custom of leading a camel in the procession at Béziers on the feast of the saint; this lasted until the Revolution.

The first historically known bishop is Paulinus mentioned in 418; St. Guiraud was Bishop of Béziers from 1121 to 1123; St. Dominic refused the episcopal see of Béziers to devote himself to the crusade against the Albigenses.

Among the fifteen synods held at Béziers must be mentioned that of 356 held by Saturninus of Arles, Arian archbishop, against St. Hilary; those of 1233, 1246 and 1255 against the Albigenses.

A Brief of 16 June, 1877, authorized the bishops of Montpellier to call themselves bishops of Montpellier, Béziers, Agde, Lodève and Saint-Pons, in memory of the different dioceses united in the present Diocese of Montpellier.

Economy

Today Béziers is a principal center of the Languedoc viticulture and winemaking industries.

Transportation

The A75 autoroute passes through Béziers.

Miscellaneous

Modern Béziers fields a rugby union team (AS Béziers) with twelve championships to their credit.

The Béziers Feria offers five days of festivity in the summer.

Births

Béziers was the birthplace of:

Pierre Paul Riquet (1609 or 1604-1680), engineer and canal-builder responsible for the construction of the Canal du Midi
Paul Pellisson (1624-1693), author
Jean Barbeyrac (1674?-1744), jurist
Jean-Jacques d'Ortous de Mairan (1678–1771), geophysicist.
Jean Antoine Ernest Constans (1833-1913), statesman
Jean Moulin (1899-1943), a hero of the French Resistance in World War II
Edgar Faure (1908-1988), French statesman
Alexandra Rosenfeld, Miss France 2006

Cultural references

The book "Labyrinth" by Kate Mosse, a work of fiction, draws on the history of Carcassonne, Béziers and the Cathars.

Twin towns

Sources and External links

Official website city of Beziers.
Visiting the city of Béziers (In English)

Communes of Hérault

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