Although I've been living in Jaca for 20 years, it's always something a bit special to go to France for the day. It's 30 minutes by car to the border; there aren't usually any border controls, but I always take my passport-being British I don't have a resident's card any more. Perhaps when we do the Brexit thingy I'll be given one again.
Anyway, our usual destination is Oloron Sainte-Marie, but this time our destination was Orthez, which is a bit further away; in fact the drive was two hours in total. Roads in the south of France are rather pretty and not terribly good in general. There is a great road in Spain from Jaca to Canfranc, then you drive 8 km through the Somport tunnel-5 km in Spain and 3 in France. It means you don't have to go over the mountain pass, but you can't avoid the drastic descent on the narrow roads that follow the Gave d'Aspe. Well it wasn't bad as we know that bit. Arriving in Oloron Sainte-Marie we turned left and drove along quite narrow rural roads until we finally arrived at our destination of Ortez.
Here's a screenshot of a Google map with the route we took marked in blue. It's only 121 km but the road is "picturesque" (wiggly).
Also picturesque is the town of Orthez itself. The French seem to be better at street flowers than the Spanish, and that always helps. We parked just outside the town and crossed over the river; one of the first things we saw was the beautiful medieval bridge.
Then there was this tower; it's all that's left of a rather good castle.
This is what Wikipedia says:
Sights
The Gave de Pau is crossed at this point by a 14th-century bridge which has four arches and is surmounted at its centre by a tower. Several old houses, and a church of the 12th, 14th and 15th centuries are of some interest, but the most remarkable building is the Tour Moncade, a pentagonal tower of the 13th century, once the keep of a castle of the viscounts of Béarn, and now used as a meteorological observatory. A building of the 17th century is all that remains of the old Calvinist university. The town hall is a modern building containing the library.
Economy
The spinning and weaving of hemp and flax, especially of the fabric called
toile de Béarn, flour-milling, the manufacture of paper and of leather, and the preparation of hams known as
jambons de Bayonne and of other delicacies are among its industries. There are quarries of stone and marble in the neighborhood, and the town has a thriving trade in leather, hams and lime.
History
During the 12th century, Orthez was the capital of
Béarn, after
Morlaàs and before
Pau which is still the prefectural administrative capital. At the end of the 12th century, Orthez passed from the possession of the viscounts of
Dax to that of the viscounts of Bearn, whose chief place of residence it became in the 13th century.
Froissart records the splendour of the court of Orthez under
Gaston Phoebus in the latter half of the 14th century.
Jeanne d'Albret founded a Calvinist university in the town and
Theodore Beza taught there for some time. An envoy sent in 1569 by
Charles IX to revive the Catholic faith had to stand a siege in Orthez (
battle of Orthez) which was eventually taken by assault by the Protestant/Huguenot captain,
Gabriel, count of Montgomery. In 1684
Nicholas Foucault, intendant under
Louis XIV, was more successful, as the inhabitants, ostensibly at least, renounced Protestantism, which is nevertheless still strong in the town. Another
battle of Orthez occurred during the Napoleonic Wars on February 27, 1814 in which the
Duke of Wellington defeated
Marshal Soult on the hills to the north of Orthez. More recently, Gaston Planté, the French physicist, was born here on the 22 April 1834, his major claim to fame was the invention in 1859 of the lead-acid battery, the common car battery.
One of the main reasons we went to Orthez was to see the Musée Jeanne d'Albret. It is in a rather nice old house with formal gardens in the back. It's also called the museum of Bearnais Protestantism. You can see from the Wikipedia history that there were a lot of religious conflicts. People nowadays can't imagine how much some suffered. Here's what Wikipedia says about Jeanne:
Jeanne d'Albret; 16 November 1528 – 9 June 1572), also known as
Jeanne III or
Joan III, was the
queen regnant of
Navarre from 1555 to 1572. She married
Antoine de Bourbon,
Duke of Vendôme, and was the mother of
Henry of Bourbon, who became King Henry III of Navarre and IV of France, the first
Bourbon king of France. She became the
Duchess of Vendôme by marriage.
Reading on in her history, it seems she converted to Calvinism and declared it to be the official religion of her kingdom (Navarre) in 1560. She was the highest ranking protestant in France and resisted all sorts of threats from the Pope and the Inquisition to renounce, supported or at least didn't resist the Huguenots. Her son, Henri was willing to renounce his protestantism in order to become king of France. However, he signed the Edict of Nantes.
The
Edict of Nantes (
French:
édit de Nantes), signed probably on 30 April 1598 by
King Henry IV of France, granted the
Calvinist Protestants of
France (also known as
Huguenots) substantial
rights in the nation, which was still considered essentially
Catholic at the time. In the
edict, Henry aimed primarily to promote civil unity. The edict separated civil from
religious unity, treated some Protestants for the first time as more than mere
schismatics and
heretics, and opened a path for
secularism and tolerance. In offering general
freedom of conscience to individuals, the edict offered many specific concessions to the Protestants, such as amnesty and the reinstatement of their
civil rights, including the right to work in any field or for the state and to bring grievances directly to the
king. It marked the end of the
religious wars that had afflicted France during the second half of the 16th century.
This edict stood until the time of Louis XIV, Jeanne's great-grandson when it was revoked and persecution of "heretics" was resumed.
There is a display in the museum of the "Church in the Wilderness"
Once again from Wikipedia:
Emerging from the
Reformation in the 16th century, the
reformed Churches in France were organised independently and, by force of circumstance,
clandestinely. The first national synod of the Reformed Churches was held in 1559; their first formal confession of faith (the
Confession of La Rochelle) was composed in 1571. Recognised but restricted by the
Edict of Nantes in 1598, the last official synod met in 1659; subsequently, the churches were suppressed in France by the
Edict of Fontainebleau of 1685, which revoked the Edict of Nantes.
The revocation of the Edict of Nantes began a period of systematic state persecution known as in
French as the
Désert (wilderness), an allusion to the sufferings of the Hebrews when they wandered in the wilderness following the flight from Egypt. This was associated with mass
emigration to other European countries, North America, and South Africa (
les pays de Refuge). In 1787, the
Edict of Versailles, issued by
Louis XVI of France, ended most legal discrimination against non-Roman Catholics – including Huguenots. In 1802, the church was recognised in accordance with the
Organic Articles (
les Articles organiques) which followed
Napoleon Bonaparte's
concordat with the
Roman Catholic Church. This permitted a local and non-national organisation of the church, which did not reflect its traditional organisation (synods, participation of lay members in the pastoral organisation of the Church, etc.)
In other words, systematic persecution of protestants from 1685 until 1787. They met in secret, exchanging tokens to identify themselves, made Bibles so small they could be hidden in a woman's hair. If caught, men could be sent to row in galleys and women were imprisoned.
That's all the history. Anyway, it was a lovely day out. Orthez is a beautiful town.
We found a "batcave"
near a rather nice old house.
