Renowned Sanctuaries - Aude Pays Cathare
Designed to provide havens of peace in a holistic world, these abbeys are not only architectural buildings made from wood and stone but also symbols of an idel religious life dedicated to prayer. They were also major landowners and importnt centres of economic activity. As burial places for local lords, guardians of religious relics, places of worship and centres of pilgrimage, these religious establishments played an important role in the artistic and culturl development of the Pays d'Aude. The Aude deprtment along with the Pyrenees - Orientales, is now home to the largest number of abbeys in the Languedoc Roussillion region. Around the year 1000, a new blossoming of monastic reform was accompanied by a revolution in technique and style. Born in Northern Italy and quickly adopted by the major abbeys in Catalonia and Roussillion, the Romanesque style spread to all areas of former Septimania via the Upper Aude Valley and the Corbieres ...