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A church in which service is no longer said, and archives that are incomplete. Even the very cemetery of Maguelonne has vanished, as though Death had feared to encounter himself in this desert, where naught remained save the skeleton of a cathedral. Yet what dust is here!
In 1331 statutes for the monastery on Maguelonne were drawn up, which proved that the discipline kept therein left much to be desired; and a monastic treatise on cooking that came thence shows that the monks and canons were consummate epicures. Maguelonne was ruined first by Charles Martel.
Then the southern towns began to decline," and the buildings which remain to represent most perfectly the "Church-Fortress" are not those of Provence, which are "patched" and "restored," but those of Languedoc, Agde, and Maguelonne, and Elne of the near-by country of Rousillon. Gascony, the last of the southern provinces and the farthest from Rome, had great prosperity under Imperial dominion.
At last he perceived a new city, constructed from the ruins of Maguelonne, of Lattes, and of Substantion. He contemplated long its site, its aspect, its neighbourhood, and resolved to establish on this hill of Montpellier a temple for himself and his priests. All smiled on his desires.
And rising I saw it was touching dawn, for the east was red, and the morning star, Maguelonne the shepherd's star, as we call it in our hills was burning bright. Mademoiselle and Pierrebon were still asleep, and it was too early yet to awaken them. It would be time enough when the sun rose, and in the meanwhile I began to reflect upon the best means of bestowing mademoiselle in safety.
A dead town The Rhones-morts Bars S. Louis and the Crusades How S. Louis acquired Aigues Mortes His canal The four littoral chains and lagoons The fortifications Unique for their date Original use of battlements Deserted state of the town Maguelonne How reached History of Maguelonne Cathedral The Bishops forge Saracen coins Second destruction of the place Inscription on door Bernard de Treviis His Romance of Pierre de Provence Provencal poetry not always immoral Present state of Maguelonne.
Guillaume Pellicier, Bishop of Maguelonne or rather then of Montpellier itself, whither he had persuaded Paul II. to transfer the ancient see was a model of the literary gentleman of the sixteenth century; a savant, a diplomat, a collector of books and manuscripts, Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac, which formed the original nucleus of the present library of the Louvre; a botanist, too, who loved to wander with Rondelet collecting plants and flowers.
Aigues Mortes is a dead town, and differs from Maguelonne, to be presently described, in this, that it is a dead town, whereas Maguelonne is only the ghost of a dead town. It is a great curiosity, for it is a dead mediaeval town surrounded by its walls, and dominated by its keep. But first about its name, which signifies Dead Waters.
The best way to reach this latter very singular spot is to take the train from Montpellier to Villeneuve de Maguelonne, and walk thence to the border of the Etang. There one is pretty sure to find fishermen they catch little else than eels who will row one across to the narrow strip of land that intervenes between the lagoon and the sea.
A few years before, Pope Urban II had landed at Maguelonne and ridden to Clermont to preach the First Crusade. On his return he stopped at Nîmes and held a Council for the same holy purpose.
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