Meditating with an anonymous engraver (13th century)

Toulouse would be “infested by heresy”! No, this is not a contemporary statement reacting to some outrageous artistic manifestation. No, it was the papal legates themselves, in the 13th century, who passed this dark judgment on the Pink City. But why so much hatred? The fear of the Cathar heresy visibly gripped the hearts of the legates, beyond reason no doubt.

Because archaeological excavations tell us of an ordinary life which in no way reflects the ascetic excesses of the Albigensians hunted by the local Inquisition. Funerary practices demonstrate, on the contrary, a very marked desire for individualization, with each person taking away objects that are dear to them when they die. The city itself continues to be embellished with large, prestigious buildings. The count’s castle was redeveloped several times after the former capital of the Visigoths entered the fold of the Kingdom of France, around 1271. It was in the soil surrounding the building that this pink brick was recently excavated on which an anonymous artist of the time – a child, a worker, a fisherman? – engraved, no doubt for fun, the beautiful silhouette of a salmon. Because until the 19th century, oceanic fish traveled up the Garonne to spawn far in the Occitan lands, offering their delicate flesh on the way to the tables of the local elites.

The image is reminiscent of that of the fish often represented in the paleochristian catacombs in Rome. Symbolizing the resurrected Christ going up the waves of death to the source of eternal life, theichthus Christian invites believers, living stones of the Church, to fidelity and perseverance.