Toulouse has always been an important city for pilgrims.   During the Middle Ages it was a major stop on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.  The travelers would be welcomed at the Hôtel-Dieu Saint Jacques (which functioned as a hospital as well as a rest stop), and would visit the Basilica of Saint Sernin (Saint Sernin was an early Bishop of Toulouse martyred in 250).  To underscore the importance of the city, Pope Urban II himself travelled to Toulouse in 1096 to consecrate the Basilica  of Saint Sernin.   The largest Romanesque church in Europe, St. Sernin could be viewed by some as the quintessential symbol for the city of Toulouse,  were it not for a particularity of the French culture which defines the ideals of the French Republic as liberté, égalité, fraternité—laïcité?  (Secularism? Sort of)