From a riverside café to recent entries in Michelin stardom by way of a hilltop restaurant, a family-run institution, a contemporary inn and a basement chef’s table, these chefs and restaurants have been selected are based on my own experiences in 2020 and 2021 and on recommendations from gastronomes, both residents and travelers, whose suggestions I’ve solicited.

This list is not intended as a Vaucluse best-of-the-best but as a way of recognizing the variety of venues for a meal prepared with fresh ingredients and capable hands, in towns and villages of touristic interest in Vaucluse. Kind service was also (and always is) a criterion in selecting these restaurants.

There are certainly other worthy options in the region, and I will add them or eliminate others as I follow the Vaucluse culinary scene through my own travels and through suggestions from knowledgeable residents and travelers. Feel free to send write to me at gary [at] francerevisited.com with your comments about any of these chefs or restaurants or any others that you’ve enjoyed that I might consider in periodically updating this list.

Avignon

La Mirande, Avignon’s premier hotel, presents several eating options, now led by Florent Pietravalle at Le Restaurant. While acknowledging his Michelin stardom, I note that I’m particularly fond of La Mirande’s upbeat basement chef’s table, La Table Haute, where a chef and a commis prepare and present an excellent, semi-rustic meal while doing their best to ensure a convivial atmosphere. Chef Jeff Mouroux and his sidekick Alexandre Malinverno took on the task during my September visit to Avignon. Buyer beware: Despite the chefs’ best efforts, the atmosphere on any given evening depends heavily on the willingness of diners to engage with each other, so only go if you understand the word “conviviality,” and hope the others at your table do as well.
Mathieu Desmarest at Pollen, 18 rue Joseph Vernet, both refined and relaxed, was newly honored in 2021 with a Michelin star. Carte blanche dinner.
Pascal Barnouin at Maison de la Tour, 9 rue de la Tour.
The Hiély family continues to treat hungry diners from near and far to quality bistro fare at La Fourchette, 17 rue Racine.
Justine Imbert’s winning, unpretentious, modestly-priced cuisine kindly served beneath the branches in the charming back courtyard at Au Jardin des Carmes, 21 Place des Carmes. A chef to keep an eye on.
Jon Chiri, an American chef at Les Halles, the central food market of Avignon, was one of my guests on the France Revisited Culinary Conversation of June 29, 2021.
When it comes to the pleasures of sitting alfresco in Avignon, I’m inescapably drawn to Grand Café Baretta, 14 place Saint Didier.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape

Top culinary honors in the village go to Julien Richard’s gastronomy at La Mère Germaine, 3 rue Commandant Lemaitre, in the lower part of this hillside village. Meanwhile, in proper weather, my lunchtime appetite is drawn toward the top of the village, just below the chateau ruins, for a great view and reliably pleasing cuisine at Le Verger des Papes, 2 rue du Château. If you won’t be visiting wine producers out among the vineyards, you can begin your Chateauneuf-du-Pape education with a tasting of two or four wines in the atmospheric wine cellar of Le Verger des Papes. Pursue your education at Vinadéa, 8 rue Maréchal Foch, official boutique of the appellation.

Beaumes-de-Venise

Each evening of my two-night stay in Beaumes de Venise while on a biking trip began with an aperitif at the Café La Forêt “Le Siècle,” a local watering hole at 65 cours Jean Jaures. For dinner, La Table des Balmes, 31 place de l’Eglise, had a well-placed terrace for a satisfying meal in the center of the village. I was even more satisfied by my dinner the following evening in the semi-hidden setting of the semi-Provençale Auberge Saint Roch, 9 route de Caromb.

Vaison-la-Romain

And the buzz goes to… Christophe Wernet at the hip and creative bistro LUM, 55 rue Trogue Pompée.

Pernes-les-Fontaines

Hugues Marrec at Auberge de La Camarette, 439 chemin des Brunettes. La Camarette is une auberge, an inn, rather than un restaurant, says Hugues Marrec, because one doesn’t come to an auberge in search of an extensive menu but instead confident that that the chef is cooking up something worthwhile. Read my article about Chef Marrec here. He was also one of my guests on the France Revisited Culinary Conversation of June 29, 2021 His little inn has only two rooms, worth considering for a night or more if dining here.

Cavaillon

Prévôt, 353 avenue de Verdun, home to the melon king Jean-Jacques Prévôt, accompanied by his daughter Sandra-Rose. It’s been several years since I’ve eaten here, but my memory of Jean-Jacques’ warm and informative tableside manner and of the tasteful, fragrant fare that he prepared for our group of five diverse eaters (a vegan, a vegetarian and three omnivores), not to mention the trip report of recent visitors, keeps this restaurant on my Vaucluse list.

Mazan

Christophe Schuffenecker at La Salle à Manger,  8 place Napoléon, the gastronomic restaurant at the hotel Château de Mazan, four miles west of Carpentras. Awarded a Michelin star in 2021. Update: Christophe Schuffenecker has since left Mazan to manage his own restaurant, La Colombe, six miles north in Bédoin. It’s set to open in early spring 2022.

Fontaine de Vaucluse

Fontaine de Vaucluse, at the source of the Sorgue River, provides a breath of cool, damp air in an otherwise dry region. No need for an address for the friendly, traditional, family-run eatery Philip, just follow the path along the rushing waters leading to the fountain from which the river springs into daylight and you’ll reach it. The restaurant, created in 1926 by Isabelle and Gaston Philip, is now in its fourth generation of family ownership. There’s a fascinating story about the ownership of the land on which it sits. Ask about it when here.
La Figuière, 3 chemin des Gougette, gets a shoutout on the recommendation of traveling gastronomones who laud the hearty and traditional Provençale-leaning cuisine served here, in the shade.

L’Isle sur Sorgue

Enjoyable moments of refined simplicity by Daniel Hébert at Le Jardin du Quai, 91 avenue Julien Guigue, and by Benjamin Fabre at La Balade des Saveurs, 3 quai Jean Jaurès.

Roussillon

Among the ochre hills of Roussillon, Restaurant David at the hotel Le Clos de la Glycine, 1 place de la Poste. I’m adding this to the list on the recommendation of epicurean friends who recently had a deliciously soothing meal there while on a hiking trip in the Luberon.

Cadenet-Lourmarin

Nadia Sammut at Auberge La Fenière, 1680 route de Lourmarin (D943). At her gastronomic restaurant, Nadia Sammut’s precise, innovative cuisine and generous personality can restore the spirit of the fallen, as you can read about in this detailed article of mine. Also watch my Culinary Conversation with the chef here. La Fenière is also a hotel.

Maubec

One of the wonderful cliché fantasies of a stay in Provence involves going food shopping at a farmers or village market then returning, perhaps via vineyards or lavender fields, to a cozy kitchen where you’ll transform your fresh, local finds into tasty dishes while sipping Rhone Valley wines or a Provence rosé, in good cheer, in friendly company,… and in English. Which is why so many chefs in the region offer regular or occasional cooking classes. Jean-Marc Villard, 409B chemin du Carraire in Maubec, is one of them. Several of the other chefs or eateries noted on this list also occasionally offer cooking classes (La Mirande, Jon Chiri, Hugues Marrec, Nadia Sammut and others).

Food markets

A traveler in France would be remiss to not visit a food market, whether in a city, a town or a village. Among the most notable in Vaucluse are the Tuesday morning market at Vaison-La-Romaine, the Friday morning market in Carpentras, the Tuesday morning market at Gordes, the Thursday morning market at L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, as well as the daily (except Monday) central food market Les Halles in Avignon. Plug in a day and/or town on this map to find a nearby food market while traveling in Vaucluse.

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut.

The post Cuisine in Provence: Notable Chefs and Restaurants in the Vaucluse Region appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Several miles short of Auberge La Fenière, my destination on day one of a solitary cycling tour of the Luberon region of Provence, I mistimed braking for a village speed bump and landed on the tarmac, tangled in my bike. The car coming up behind me was far enough back to stop well before reaching me. A car coming in the opposite direction slowed down and stopped alongside. The driver rolled down her window and asked if she should call for help. I stood up, pulled my bike to the side of the road, picked up my saddlebags, and told the driver that I was alright. I twisted the front wheel back straight, uncoiled and reset the brake lines, bent the mud guard back into position, and set off wobbly on the final miles to La Fenière, thinking all the way, “Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap.”

I wasn’t alright. I was battered, bleeding and my ribs hurt. Already I was late arriving at La Fenière, a property (hotel, restaurants, vegetable garden, pool) that owner-chef Nadia Sammut calls a “lieu de vie” or living space. Earlier in the afternoon, I’d lost my way—allowed myself to lose my way—on the slopes of the Luberon Massif and dawdled along its vantage points. I’d planned to arrive at least an hour earlier so as to check in, shower, speak with Nadia, then rest up before dinner. “We’ve been expecting you,” said the receptionist, and seeing my bloody forearm, “Oh my, what happened?” “A little accident.” “Do you want me to call someone? Do you want to go to the hospital?” “No, but if you have some bandages that would help.” She gave me an emergency kit with bandages and antiseptic.

Up in my room—a bright, peaceable space with a long view of the back of the property and the nearby hillside—I looked at myself in the mirror. I was banged up alright. My ribs and thigh and wrist were sore. I had three more days of biking ahead of me. Should I call it quits now? I cleaned and bandaged myself. The bleeding—rough scrapes but no gashes—would soon stop. How badly was I injured? I couldn’t tell. But I shivered at the thought of how lucky I was, aware that my fall could have been worse, much worse. (Yes, I was wearing a helmet.) I had a reservation for the second seating at the restaurant, so I napped for an hour then went downstairs.

As I reached the lobby, I saw Nadia passing through the patio dining area and the kitchen. I introduced myself and apologized for arriving too late to speak with her earlier. In the rush of dinner I had a first glimpse of her generosity of spirit. “I hear you had an accident,” she said, “Are you alright?” I assured her that I was. She said, “We’ll take care of you,” she said, “and we have all morning tomorrow to talk, if you’d like.”

Ernest Hung Do, the sommelier and maître d’, came over to my table to say hello. I told him that I’d just had a “little biking accident” and could use something strong, say, whiskey, to start. He went inside and returned with a bottle of perfumed gin. He explained how and where it was made. But rather than pour a glass, he told me that he didn’t recommend that I have it. Nadia’s meal is constructed to evolve from dish to dish, he explained, and strong alcohol would affect its proper unfolding.

“What do you recommend instead?” I asked.

“Why not just let the meal express itself and I’ll bring some wine?” he said.

“Fine,” I said, “I’d rather not make choices tonight anyway. I’ll follow your lead, and Nadia’s.”

Two dozen peas and a verbena leaf

Nadia Sammut is a culinary explorer. The 12 or so dishes of the 160€ “expérience” tasting menu proceed through a fluid evolution of ingredients and textures that awaken the senses, from the intentionally bland opening to the iodized middle to the smooth finish. (There’s also a 120€ “découverte” tasting menu, but no à la carte menu.)  Nadia’s quest isn’t so much to astonish, I think, but to create harmony. Ernest’s, too, for that matter; the meal was accompanied by Ernest’s coherent yet unobtrusive wine pairing.

“Precise” is how I thought of the slow parade of small dishes that evening, while “consciousness” is a term that Nadia Sammut applies to her culinary approach. The two terms meet in what appeared to be the simplest of dishes: two dozen peas and a verbena leaf the size of a daisy petal. Deceptively simple, though the full description of the dish is more complex: petit pois, crème de placenta de fève, verveine, bourrache, cardamone noire râpée, huile du domaine de Jasson. Still, I can only think of the dish as two dozen peas and a verbena leaf, and for me it lit up the patio. It was my satori moment.

Yes, it’s a dish that can easily be ridiculed: She charges how much for two dozen peas and a tiny leaf? But there you have it, the appetizer through which I realized that such culinary moments are a way of bringing one into oneself: one’s taste buds, one’s environment, one’s sense of self and of a shared meal, both with one’s table companion(s), if any, and with diners at other tables with whom you might never exchange a word. I hadn’t forgotten the physical nature of my fall several hours earlier, but I was no longer restrained by the trauma of it or by my awareness that the following day or two would reveal the full extent of my injuries. Two dozen peas and a verbena leaf allowed me to settle into the—do I dare use the word?—enlightenment of the meal, the surroundings, the evening and my travels into the Luberon. What a beautiful biking day it had been, landing me here!

No, I wasn’t cured from my fall. But I was, for the moment, soothed of it and conscious above all that it could have been much worse. (Five days later I would consult my doctor in Paris. As impressed as he was that I’d continued biking for three days after the fall, he told me that he would have recommended against it. He sent me for x-rays of my left wrist and right ribs. Turns out that I had broken a bone in my wrist, though it was the ribs, apparently without fracture, that hurt more.) But for now, I was pleased with my good fortune of feeling well enough to experience dinner at La Fenière and digesting my trauma while enjoying a precise and natural gastronomy, Nadia Sammut’s gastronomy of nature.

There are greater traumas, of course, not all of which can be soothed by kind service, a good meal and a peaceable setting. Still, all traumas need to be digested, don’t they? Linguistic aristocrats and associated snobs in France will tell you that it’s gauche to wish fellow diners a “bon appétit” before a meal; “appétit,” they’ll say with condescension, refers to the unpleasantries of digestion, which isn’t something one should mention at a polite table. But digesting one’s worries and traumas and anxieties is clearly commendable and worth wishing on one another, like raising a glass to each other’s good health. Furthermore, Nada, having dealt with celiac disease, naturally and implicitly wishes a healthy, nourishing digestion for all of her guests. Bon appétit for sure.

Gluten-free and rooted in Provence

Nadia’s “cuisine libre” (free cooking) approach, as she calls it, is neither a refusal of nor in opposition to the cuisine(s) of Provence. She remains deeply rooted in the region. Her family has lived in the Luberon for several generations. In 1972, her grandmother opened a little bistro in an old hayloft, called une fenière in Provence, in the village of Lourmarin. She then worked with her son, Nadia’s father. And when he married, his wife, Reine, learned how to cook alongside her mother-in-law. Reine Sammut eventually took over the restaurant and, in 1995, became one of the rare women in France at the time to receive a Michelin star for her cuisine. Well-known throughout Provence and beyond, Reine prepared rather traditional gastronomy. In 1996, Nadia’s parents then bought the property that is La Fenière’s current location in the countryside between Lourmarin and Cadenet. Though no longer installed in a hayloft, they brought the name with them.

At around the age of 30, between 2009 and 2011, Nadia was often quite ill from celiac disease. She says that she was basically bedridden for two years. As she explained during our lengthy conversation the morning after my dinner experience, “I said to myself, ‘This can’t be! With my culinary heritage I have to learn an inclusive approach to food that’s respectful of the environment and respect of individuals while being gastronomic and delicious.’”

She began working with her mother in 2015, soon taking the reins of Reine’s kitchen. In 2017, Nadia herself was awarded the Michelin star for La Fenière. Reine stayed with her in the gastronomic restaurant for another year, at which point, as Nadia tells it, her mother said, “You’ve got do it alone now because you have your vision, your intentions, your recipes, and it’s important that you continue to convey them.”

Though celiac disease is a significant part of Nadia’s personal story and of the development of the culinary explorations that have given her much recognition, she would rather not have her cuisine labeled solely as gluten-free. People come for the experience, she says, not for their celiac problems. Of course, there’s often a table or two where someone will speak with her about their digestive issues because they know of her personal experience. She doesn’t mind. She’s had clients who arrive in culinary distress, worried about every little thing they might eat, and she aims to calm them down. “By the second dish,” she says, “they’ve relaxed and are simply happy to be having a good meal, and that sense of happiness extends to the rest.”

Had I not known in advance that the meal would be gluten-free I doubt that I would have noticed. Presented with the chestnut bread, I thought, hmm, chestnut bread—and it was delicious—and then chick-pea bread—that too—without wondering about the absence of gluten. (Nadia operates a mill for the various flours that she then uses in her breads and other flour-based products that are served in the restaurant and available in specialty stores.) Just as one doesn’t think when eating a good piece of fish that it doesn’t taste like beef, one simply enjoys the dish. (Omnivores, by the way, drawn in by the evolution of the meal and the discovery of each small dish, might not even notice that that none of the dishes contains meat.)

“I have no obligations in my cooking,” says Nadia. “First, I don’t cook traditionally because I can’t, so for me there’s an enormous field of permanent research on plants, on living things, on the way to present naturalness and simplicity.”

Asked about her relationship with traditional Provençale cuisine, Nadia claims a clear and present affinity with it, including the techniques that she learned in part from her mother. “Provence,” she says, “has developed its culinary techniques in relation to the products that were available to work with. Provençale cuisine is also that of economy. People paid attention to what went into their cuisine; they didn’t throw anything away. Provençale cuisine is very plant-based. It’s a distinct yet varied cuisine comprised of different smaller regions. People don’t eat the same way in Marseille or in the Camargue or here in the Luberon. Its diversity is quite beautiful and should be brought to light. Its recipes, its beautiful recipes, haven’t been extinguished, and they need to be created and recreated, transmitted from generation to generation. The heart is transmitted with them, that’s a beautiful part of the energy of life.”

Regenerative and holistic

I’d arrived on opening night, so to speak, June 9, 2021, the first evening that La Fenière was welcoming diners since its 2020 Covid closing and months of evening curfew. Dining out without watching the clock was new to all of us, a time of renewal, particularly for those who, like me, prefer a late or second seating in a restaurant.

Nadia uses the term régénérateur—regenerative, something that makes you feel replenished—in speaking of the environment that she set out to create at La Fenière. That environment extends beyond the gastronomic restaurant to include the bistro on the property, the lodging, the landscape, the service, the swimming pool, the kitchen garden, the occasional activities and workshops, and the overall atmosphere. She speaks of the importance of being “conscious” of oneself and one’s environment.

“What’s essential in my life and what I think I’m able to offer others is that sense of self-awareness. To do so requires being connected to both matter and nature. And I believe that the best way to let go is to feel good, to have a sense of trust in a place, to be conscious of where one is. All that is regenerative… I like that people feel good and, beyond feeling good, that there’s a kind of interaction with themselves.”

Nadia is generous enough with her time and spirit to interact with clients if they wish, even during the meal. As she put the finishing touches on dishes in a corner of the dining patio the evening of my visit, diners would occasionally get up to see what she was doing, to ask her questions, and Nadia willingly engaged with them. She came by each table twice to deliver and explain a dish.

My most frequent interaction that evening, however, was with Ernest Hung Do, the sommelier and maître d’, a gentle, knowing, kind presence throughout the meal. Ernest came to France from Vietnam as an infant, his family having fled the country in waves of refugees known as “boat people.” As a young man, he became particularly interested in fish and became a sushi master with his own restaurant. He was named best sushi master in France one year. In 2013, he sold his restaurant since he’d become increasingly interested in all things vegetal, a move from the sea to the earth. He met Nadia’s sister, a food journalist, in Marseille, and her sister said, “You and Nadia speak the same way about food, you should meet.” That was seven years ago. They have been together ever since, as companions and as business partners. “We truly work in synergy together,” says Nadia. I asked Ernest, given his background as a chef, why didn’t he want to work alongside Nadia in the kitchen? “Because I wanted to leave her with her vision in the kitchen while presenting her cuisine and wine to clients.” He does an excellent job of it. (He credits Nadia’s father as one of his mentors in learning about wine.)

“What I do, I believe, is goes beyond the dish,” says Nadia. “I like to lead people to ask themselves questions. When you start out with something that’s bland, you ask yourself ‘Why bland?’ But what’s bland is essential for digestion, it’s essential in silence, in calm. And then something rises up, for example on the shrimp. What especially interests me is that people feel and have sensations. Of course, the dish is a part of an overall experience, and it’s essential that everything about that dish be precise. Then once you have that precision you can talk about everything else. That’s where a meal goes beyond the dishes themselves.”

Each dish grabs attention for its finesse and balance. Following the aforementioned shrimp—it was a raw Mediterranean shrimp with a squid ink emulsion, with a squid ink “chip” that nearly struck me as enlightening as the verbena leaf—the fluidity and complex harmony of a cream of bitter lettuce with an oyster in a sourdough tempura was my favorite dish. After that, the rouille in a dish called “memory of a bouillabaisse” was a discovery in and of itself.

Here’s how Nadia describes her inspiration for the penultimate dish, chickpea ice cream served with a shot of rum: “When I opened that rum a few weeks ago—it’s a friend of mine who makes it, Guillaume Ferroni, in Aubagne [near Marseille], aged in casks sometimes from Rasteau and in this case from Beaumes de Venise—when I opened that rum I said to myself, “Ah, that’s it, that’s what I want to feel,” because even though I don’t drink alcohol, just smelling it made me feel something. I don’t want sugar in my cuisine because sugar releases dopamine, which is quite different than serotonin. I want to work with serotonin, what’s called the hormone of happiness, not the hormone of pleasure. Happiness is more intense; it’s a lot more timeless. It’s something that awakens the interior of our body, not just to make us say ‘Wow’ but to make us conscious, which is much greater.”

“Wow,” is what I also said to myself when I tried the chickpea ice cream and rum. A warm honey-and-chestnut madeleine then served as an endnote to the meal.

La Fenière, a living space

Nadia’s gastronomic restaurant is the centerpiece La Fenière but there are other aspects to the property as well. Above the restaurant, in the main building on the property, there are 12 bedrooms, created in 2017. Nadia plans to develop 30 more lodgings on the opposite end of the property in the form of ecolodges. There’s also a second restaurant on the property, a Mediterranean bistro called La Cour du Ferme. There’s a swimming pool. There are hiking paths. Small-group activities are sometimes organized, such as cooking workshop taught by Nadia on Saturday mornings. Yet I wouldn’t call La Fenière a resort. It’s homier than that. There’s no grand décor, no ostentation. More boutiquish, more palatial, more photogenic accommodations are found elsewhere in the Luberon. What then to call this place?

Nadia calls La Fenière a “lieu de vie” or living space, a place of “positive living, of regeneration and of inspiration,” where guests are invited to “participate in the world in which they wish to live.” That may sound too psychic or new-age for some travelers looking to explore the landscapes and villages of the Luberon, though having stated her goal, Nadia doesn’t demand or expect obedience. She would just like visitors to slow down and be conscious of their surroundings. Thus, the hotel has a two-night minimum.

To me, La Fenière is a cultured, unglamorous countryside estate with an earthy restaurant—an earthy restaurant with an exquisite, inventive, sophisticated, earth-and-seaworthy 160€ tasting menu, but an earthy restaurant nonetheless.

An olive tree stands at the center of the patio around which, weather permitting, the tables are set. A concert of frogs played nearby as I sat at one of them that evening. As their song softened, I became aware of the sound of a bees buzzing in the yard and of Ernest’s soft steps over the paving stones. Was it a form of shock from my fall or a form of denial that I may have fractured my ribs or broken my wrist? Whatever it was, that evening at La Fenière I was one happy, regenerated, conscious traveler.

La Fenière, D943, 84160 Cadenet 84160. Tel. +33 (0)4 90 68 11 79. A 2-night minimum is required at the hotel. The gastronomic restaurant is open only when Nadia is present. The bistro remains open even when she is not. Those staying at the hotel on a Friday evening should ask in advance if Nadia will be giving a cooking class on Saturday morning. Cooking classes are also open to those not staying at the hotel.

Near La Fenière in the southern Luberon: The château and village of Lourmarin; a shaded seat in a café or restaurant by the water basin at Cucuron; olive oil tasting at Bastide du Laval; Mérindol and the history of Waldensian (les Vaudois); the 12th-century Cisterian Silvacane Abbey at La Roque d’Anthéron; the garden conservatory for plants used for dying and coloring in Lauris. Tourist information about the village and the entire Luberon region of Provence can be obtained at the Lourmarin tourist office, Place Henri Barthélémy. The Luberon is in the Vaucluse department or sub-region of Provence. For more articles about Vaucluse see here.

A Video Culinary Conversation with Nadia Sammut

Nadia Sammut was one of my guests at a France Revisited Culinary Conversation with three chefs of the Vaucluse area of Provence, along with Jon Chiri and Hugues Marrec, on June 29, 2021. Nadia appears in the introductory portion of Part 1 and then again for nearly all of Part 2. I invite you to watch at least the first 10 minutes of Part 1 in order to situate Nadia in the region and among the three chefs that I selected for this culinary conversation before proceeding to Part 2, here:

© 2021, Gary Lee Kraut

The post Cuisine in Provence: Nadia Sammut at La Fenière, After the Fall appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

Sergio Cervetti is a native of Uruguay, but his mother was born in France of Waldensian ancestry.  Persecuted for centuries in both France and Italy, the Waldensians–les Vaudois–were a sect founded in the 12th century by Pierre Valdès (or Valdo), a Catholic merchant from Lyon who relinquished his property and riches to preach an ideal life of devotion to Biblical teachings of poverty, simplicity, and non-violence.

Originally identifying themselves as Catholics, the “poor men of Lyon,” as Valdès and his followers came to be known, were declared heretics by the church for beliefs that are remarkably contemporary—such as a penchant for equality, disdain for clerical hierarchy, and acceptance of female preachers as early as the 15th century.

Because of the threat their radical ideas posed to the Church and Church-sponsored thrones, the Vaudois were chased and slaughtered throughout France and rural areas of Italy, where many fled in hopes of finding refuge.  So great was public outcry in Europe in the 17th century that Oliver Cromwell made official appeals for an end to the slaughter, and poet John Milton wrote a sonnet, “On the Late Massacre in Piedmont” to protest and memorialize the horrific murder of hundreds of Vaudois in the Italian Alps in 1655.

The Waldensians eventually found tolerance and survival, at times, in ghetto-like pockets established in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. Today, their descendents maintain their religious identity, and the largest contemporary community of the Vaudois is in Italy, where they were granted religious freedom in 1848. Some of the Vaudois eventually joined the legions of Europeans who immigrated to the Americas in search of religious tolerance and economic opportunity.  Small, active communities exist today in Argentina, Uruguay, and in North America, particularly in Valdese, North Carolina, which takes its name from the Vaudois who settled there.

Mérindol, in the Vaucluse, is the site of a hilltop village whose inhabitants were massacred over a period of five days in 1545 in a crusade ordered by the French King Francois I and orchestrated locally by Jean Maynier d’Oppède, president of the parliament of Provence. The population was virtually exterminated, but it is said that some of the Vaudois of Mérindol survived by hiding in the dense mountains of the Luberon.

When my husband and I turned off the D973 road and drove through the modest, contemporary town at the base of the mountain, we had no idea how we would be touched by the hike up to the ancient village of the Vaudois. We found ourselves challenged by the climb, the sad ruins, and a view from the summit that must have been beloved by those who called the mountain home.

It was mid-afternoon when we began our ascent, and we were alone on the path until our return in the late and lingering dusk of Provence. “At Mérindol” describes our journey to the summit and to a spiritual connection with an intangible presence that we felt amidst the ruins.  It is dedicated to the friend who led us there.

At Merindol
(for Sergio Cervetti)

The sun clings to the summit,
and blinks through dark trees
that spiral the hill.
We falter in stone and
growth of four hundred years.
Ahead is a ruin,
looking with shrouded eyes
for its generations.
Our feet pound in ascent.
Our companions are the wind
and punch of breath.
The shadowed twist of tree and earth
blinds us to all but tree and earth.

Remnants of parapets and corners
press into the acclivity–
carcass of village
blanched by sun and crusade.
We think we see the top, but there is more:

more fragments of wall and window
ghostly stairs, flesh-hewn for
rush of man and child to
the smell of bread on stone
a woman’s hand upon a door,
conversation across a sill,
fatigue of night,
the brace of morning.

Sorrows of path and village
yield to the summit and
ochre mountains, the bend
of the Durance through purple fields,
Alpilles to the south, and the sea.
Joy reaches beyond ghosts and martyrs
to hearts on a summer evening
and this sunset: assurance of
the divine in valley, sky, the walls of home.

Light bleeds through a crater in the last ruin.
Shadows sink at its base like souls
returning to the grave.
We read the timeline of Les Vaudois en Provence.
1545    mort pour leur foi

leur descendants affirms
flight to purple fields and the Durance,
ochre mountains, Alpilles to the south,
the sea, searching for the divine,
for home.

Winds of dusk calm to a breeze
and darkness looms.
Our feet move cautiously in descent,
spiraling the dirt path and stone wall
past life and loss, our
eyes on twist of tree and earth
guided by ghostly hands that
know the way.

© Elizabeth Esris

Elizabeth Esris is a teacher and writer. Her poetry has appeared in Wild River Review, Bucks County Writer, and Women Writers. She wrote the libretto for Elegy For A Prince with composer Sergio Cervetti, which premiered in excerpts at New York City Opera’s VOX Opera Showcase in 2007. She and Cervetti also collaborated on a one-act chamber opera, YUM!,  a celebration of wine, food, and friendship. She teaches English and creative writing at Central Bucks High School South (Pennsylvania).

The post Les Vaudois: Reflections on a Religious Massacre in Provence appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.