Medieval Pilgrimage Site

The Joining of Heaven and Earth is a site is "dedicated to the medieval pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela and the Romanesque World in which it flourished in western Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. It was a time of Pilgrimage and Crusade and the first revival of monumental stone sculpture since the fall of the Roman Empire."

It's a beautiful site with evocative photos, clearly a labor of love. This page, for instance, describes St Guilhem le Désert, the abbey of Gellone, home to the relics of Saint Guillaume d’Orange. "Guillaume was a warrior monk, an early archetype of the Christian knight that would eventually would lead to the formation of the Order of Knights Templar... Instrumental in repulsing the Saracens from southern France, Guillaume spent his last years as a hermit in a remote valley eventually attracting other monks around him to form the abbey of Gellone, known later as Saint Guilhem le Désert."

The eleventh-century bridge was built to connect the abbey of Gellone and the abbey of Aniane across the gorge of the river Hérault. "Like many medieval bridges its construction involves a legendary story involving a duel with the Devil from which it derives its name. The road continued after the abbey upwards towards the aptly named Cirque du Bout du Monde."