Gaul

Before the Romans arrived, the area was part of Gaul, occupied by Celts, with a Greek colony at what is now Marseille from around 600 BC, and Phoenician settlements from 560 BC

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Gallia Narbonensis

The Provincia Gallia Narbonensis was a Province of the Roman Empire dating from 123 BC up until the 5th century. It was originally known as Gallia Transalpina (Transalpine Gaul), and informally by the Romans as as Provincia Nostra.

Gallia Narbonensis or in English Narbonese Gaul, named from the settlement at Narbonne, was the part of Gaul lying across the Alps from Italia. Its western region was known as Septimania.

Gallia Narbonensis became a Roman province in the late 2nd century BCE, constituting the first significant Roman territory outside of Italy. Its boundaries were roughly defined by the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Cévennes and Alps and north and west.

The province of Gallia Transalpina (Transalpine Gaul) was renamed Gallia Narbonensis, after its capital the Roman colony of Narbo Martius (Narbonne, founded on the coast in 118 BCE.

Romans called it Provincia Nostra ("our province") or simply Provincia ("the province"), as it was the first significant permanent conquest outside the Italian peninsula. The name has survived in the modern French name of Provence, now a région of France, corresponding to the Eastern part of Gallia Narbonensis.

 

History

Already by the mid-2nd century BC, Rome had been trading heavily with the Greek colony of Massalia (modern Marseille) on the southern coast of Gaul. Massalia, founded by colonists from Phocaea, was by this time already centuries old and very prosperous. Rome entered into an alliance with Massalia, by which it agreed to protect the town from local Gauls and other threats, in exchange for a small strip of land that it wanted in order to build a road from Italy to Spain, to assist in troop transport. The Massalians cared more about economic prosperity than territorial integrity - they had no interest in empire building. It was from this strip that Transalpine Gaul was founded. On this strip of land the Romans founded the town of Narbonne, which was to become a major trading competitor with Massalia.

The area became a Roman province in 121 BCE, originally under the name of Gallia Transalpina (Transalpine Gaul). This name distinguished it from Cisalpine Gaul, the part of Gaul on the near side of the Alps to Rome.

Mediterranean settlements on the coast were threatened by the powerful Gallic tribes to the north, especially the tribes known as the Arverni and the Allobroges. In 123 BCE, the Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus Allobrogicus campaigned in the area and defeated the Allobroges and the Arverni under king Bituitus. This defeat substantially weakened the Arverni and ensured the security of Gallia Narbonensis. It was from the capital of Narbonne that Julius Caesar began his Gallic Wars.

Bordering Italy, control of the province provided the Roman state with significant benefits, control of the land route between Italy and the Iberian peninsula; a buffer against attacks on Italy by tribes from Gaul; and control of the lucrative trade routes of the Rhône valley, over which commercial goods flowed between Gaul and the trading centre of Massalia.

At one point, Narbonese Gaul and Transalpine Gaul were governed as separate territories. When the Second Triumvirate was formed, Lepidus was given responsibility for Narbonese Gaul and Spain, while Mark Antony was given Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul.

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Septimania, Gallia, Narbonensis

Under Theodoric II, Visigoths settled in Aquitaine as foederati of the Western Roman Empire (450s). Visigoths were then holding the Toulousain - the Area around Toulouse. In 462 the Empire granted the Visigoths the western half of the province of Gallia Narbonensis to settle. In fact the Visigoths under King Theodoric II initially occupied the whole Provence (including eastern Narbonensis) in 462, but in 475 the Visigothic king, Euric, ceded the eastern Narbonensis to the Roman Empire by a treaty under which the emperor Julius Nepos recognised the Visigoths' full independence in respect of their other territories.

Septimania was the western region of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis. Under the Visigoths it was known as Gallia or as Narbonensis. It corresponded roughly with the modern French region of Languedoc-Roussillon.

The name "Septimania" may derive from part of the Roman name of the city of Béziers, Colonia Julia Septimanorum Beaterrae, which in turn alludes to the settlement of veterans of the Roman VII Legion in the city. Another possible derivation of the name alludes to the seven cities (civitates) of the territory: Béziers, Elne, Agde, Narbonne, Lodève, Maguelonne, and Nîmes. Septimania extended to a line half-way between the Mediterranean Sea and the Garonne River in the northwest; in the east the Rhône separated it from Provence; and to the south its boundary was formed by the Pyrenees.

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Kingdom of Narbonne

As control of the area fragmented, the Visigoths maintained a kingdom centred on Narbonne, though they lost control of even their capital from time to time.

The Visigoths, because they were Arian Christians, met opposition from the Catholic Franks in Gaul. The Franks allied with the Celtic Armorici, whose land was under threat from the Goths south of the Loire, and in 507 Clovis I, the Frankish king, invaded the Visigothic kingdom, whose capital was Toulouse. Clovis defeated the Visigoths at the Battle of Vouillé. The Goths' child-king Amalaric was carried away to safety in Iberia, while Gesalec was elected to replace him and rule the remaining Visigothic kingdom from Narbonne.

Clovis, his son Theuderic I, and his Burgundian allies proceeded to conquer most of Gothic Gaul, including the Rouergue (507) and Toulouse itself (508). The attempt to take Carcassonne, a heavily fortified site guarding the Septimanian coast, was defeated by the Ostrogoths (508) and Septimania thereafter remained in Visigothic hands, though the Burgundians managed to take and hold Narbonne for a time and drive Gesalec into exile. Border warfare between Gallo-Roman bishops and other powerful nobles against the Visigoths had become common during the last phase of the Empire and this warfare continued under the Franks.

Kings after Alaric II favoured Narbonne as a capital, but twice (in 511 and 531) were forced back to Barcelona by the Franks before Theudis moved the capital there permanently.

The Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great reconquered Narbonne from the Burgundians and re-established it as the provincial capital. When Theodoric died in 526, Amalaric was elected king in his own right and he immediately established his capital in Narbonne. He ceded Provence (which had again passed back into Visigothic control) to the Ostrogothic king Athalaric.

The Frankish King of Paris, Childebert I, invaded Septimania in 531 and chased Amalaric back over the Pyrenees to Barcelona in response to pleas from his sister, Chrotilda, who claimed that Amalaric (her husband) had been mistreating her. The Franks did not try to hold the province, but raided it again in 541.

Under Amalaric's successor the government of the kingdom crossed the Pyrenees , Theudis establishing his capital at Barcelona. Later the capital of the Visigothic kingdom moved further south to Toledo.

By the end of the reign of Leovigild, the province of Gallia Narbonensis, usually shortened to just Gallia or Narbonensis (and not now called Septimania) was both an administrative province of the central royal government and an ecclesiastical province whose metropolitan was the Archbishop of Narbonne. The province of Gallia held a unique place in the Visigothic kingdom, as it was the only province outside of Iberia, north of the Pyrenees , and bordering a strong foreign tribe, the Franks.

Under Theodoric Septimania had been safe from Frankish assault. When Liuva I succeeded the throne in 568, Septimania was a dangerous frontier province and Iberia was wracked by revolts. Liuva granted Iberia to his son Leovigild and kept Septimania to himself.

 

Gothic province of Gallia

During the revolt of Hermenegild (583-585) against his own father Leovigild, Septimania was invaded by Guntram, King of Burgundy, possibly in support of Hermenegild's revolt.

A Frankish attack in 585 was repulsed by Hermenegild's brother Reccared, who was ruling Narbonensis as a sub-king. Hermenegild died at Tarragona that year and Reccared took Beaucaire (Ugernum) on the Rhône near Tarascon and Cabaret (now called Lastours), both of which then lay in Guntram's Burgundian kingdom. Guntram ignored pleas for a peace in 586, so Reccared undertook a Visigothic invasion of Francia.

Guntram invaded Septimania again in 589 and was roundly defeated near Carcassonne by Claudius, Duke of Lusitania. Throughout the sixth century the Franks had coveted Septimania, but were unable to take it. The invasion of 589 was their last attempt.

In the seventh century Gallia had its own governors or duces (dukes), who were typically Visigoths. Most public offices were also held by Goths, far out of proportion to their part of the population who throughout all this were descendants of the original Celts.

The native population of Gallia was referred to by Visigothic and Iberian writers as "Gauls" and there is a well-attested hatred between Goths and Gauls. Gauls commonly insulted the Goths, though the Goths regarded themselves as the defenders and protectors of the Gauls.

By the time of Wamba and Julian of Toledo a large Jewish population had grown up in Septimania.

Thanks to the preserved canons of the Council of Narbonne of 590, something is known about surviving pagan practices in Visigothic Septimania. The Council may have been responding in part to the orders of the Third Council of Toledo, which found "the sacrilege of idolatry [to be] firmly implanted throughout almost the whole of Iberia and Septimania. The Roman pagan practice of not working Thursdays in honour of Jupiter was still prevalent. The council set down penance to be done for not working on Thursday (except for church festivals) and commanded the practice of rest from rural work on Sundays, to be adopted. The council also decreed punishment for fortune-tellers, who were to be publicly lashed before being sold into slavery.

Visigothic coinage did not circulate in Gaul outside of Septimania and Frankish coinage did not circulate in Iberia or Septimania, which suggests little cross border trade. If there was a significant amount of commerce over the frontier, the coins paid must have been melted down and re-minted.

 

Moorish Septimania

The Moors, under Al-Samh ibn Malik the governor-general of al-Andalus, swept up the Iberian peninsula, and by 719 had overrun Septimania. Al-Andalus is also known as the Emirate of Córdoba.

Al-Samh set up his capital from 720 at Narbonne, which the Moors called Arbuna, offering the still largely Arian Christian inhabitants generous terms and quickly pacifying the other cities. Following the conquest, al-Andalus was divided into five administrative areas roughly corresponding to Andalusia, Galicia and Lusitania, Castile and Léon, Aragon and Catalonia, and Septimania.

With Narbonne and its port secure, Arab mariners were now masters of the Western Mediterranean. The Moors swiftly subdued the largely unresisting cities, still controlled by their Visigoth counts: taking Alet and Béziers, Agde, Lodève, Maguelonne and Nîmes. By 721 Al-Samh was reinforced and ready to lay siege to Toulouse, a possession that would open up Aquitaine to him. His plans were overthrown in the disastrous Battle of Toulouse (721), with immense losses, in which al-Samh was so seriously wounded that he died soon afterwards at Narbonne.

Arab forces based in Narbonne and easily resupplied by sea, struck eastwards in the 720s, penetrating as far as Autun (725).

In 731, the Berber wali of Narbonne and the region of Cerdagne, Uthman ibn Naissa, called "Munuza" by the Franks, who was recently linked by marriage to duke Eudes (or Odo) of Aquitaine, revolted against Córdoba, and was defeated and killed.

In October of 732, an Arab force under Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi encountered Charles Martel between Tours and Poitiers, and was defeated. This "Battle of Tours" (also called the Battle of Poitiers) is celebrated in popular Christian history and traditionally credited with stopping the Moorish advance in Europe.

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Carolingian Gothia

Franks had been expanding southward since the fifth century. By the eighth century they were probing as far south as the Visigothic Aquitaine and Toulousain, and Moorish Septimania.

The territory round Toulouse was taken by the Franks in 732 following the "Battle of Tours". Pippin III then directed his attention to Narbonne, but the city held firm in 737, defended by Goths and Jews as well as Moors under the command of its governor Yusuf, 'Abd er-Rahman's heir.

Around 747 the government of Septimania (and the Upper Mark, from the Pyrenees to the Ebro River) was given to Aumar ben Aumar.

In 752 the Gothic counts of Nîmes, Melguelh, Agde and Béziers refused allegiance to the Emir at Córdoba and declared their loyalty to the Frankish king. These Gothic counts along with Franks then began to besiege Narbonne. Narbonne resisted but attacks continued and Narbonne capitulated in 759. The county was granted to Miló who had previously been the count in Muslim times. The Roussillon was then taken by the Franks in 760.

In 767, after fighting Waifred of Aquitaine, the Franks took Albi, Rouergue, Gévaudan, and the city of Toulouse. The following year, in 777 the wali of Barcelona (Sulayman al-Arabi), and the wali of Huesca (Abu Taur), and the wali of Zaragoza. (Husayn), offered their submission to Charlemagne.

When Charlemagne invaded the Upper Mark in 778, Husayn refused allegiance and he had to retire. In the Pyrenees , the Basques defeated his forces in Roncesvalles (August 15, 778).

The Frankish king found Septimania and the borderlands so devastated and depopulated by warfare, with the inhabitants hiding in the mountains, that he made grants of land that were some of the earliest identifiable Frankish fiefs to Visigothic and other refugees. Charlemagne also founded several monasteries in Septimania, which doubled as fortresses around which the people gathered for protection.

Beyond Septimania to the south Charlemagne established the Spanish Marches on the borderlands of his empire. The territory passed to Louis, king in Aquitaine, but it was in practice governed by Frankish margraves of Septimania, later (from 817) the dukes of Septimania.

The Frankish noble Bernat of Gothia (aka Bernat of Septimania) was the ruler of these lands from 826 to 832. His career characterised the turbulent 9th century in Septimania. His appointment as Count of Barcelona in 826 occasioned a general uprising of the Catalan lords at this intrusion of Frankish power. For suppressing Berenguer of Toulouse and the Catalans, Louis the Pious rewarded Bernat with a series of counties, which roughly delimit 9th century Septimania: Narbonne, Béziers, Agde, Magalona, Nîmes and Uzès. Rising against Charles the Bald in 843, Bernard was apprehended at Toulouse and beheaded in 844.

By the end of the ninth century the Franks were calling Septimania Gothia or the Gothic march (marca Gothica).

Septimania became known as Gothia after the reign of Charlemagne. It retained these two names while it was ruled by the Counts of Toulouse during early part of the Middle Ages, but the southern part became more familiar as Roussillon and the west became known as Foix, and the name "Gothia" (along with the older name "Septimania") faded away during the 10th century, except as a traditional designation as the region fractured into smaller feudal entities, which sometimes retained Carolingian titles, but lost their Carolingian character, as the culture of Septimania evolved into the culture of Languedoc.

The name was used because the area was populated by a higher concentration of Goths than in surrounding regions. The rulers of this area, when joined with several counties, were titled the Marquesses of Gothia or the Dukes of Septimania.

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County of Toulouse

As a march of the Carolingian Empire, and then of West Francia as the empire fractured, Septimania become increasingly culturally and politically separate from France and its central royal government. The region was heavily influenced by the Toulousain, Provence, and Catalonia and was part of the cultural and linguistic region sometimes called Occitania.

Although Occitania was never ruled as a unified state it shared much in common (language, food, architecture, culture, and so on). Much of the area was ruled by the Dukes of Aquitaine to the West and the Counts of Toulouse to the East, both of whom played of the neighbouring powers against each other, notably the Counts of Barcelona (later Kings of Aragon), the Kings of England, the Kings of France and the Holy Roman Emperor.

The Counts of Toulouse (who were also Dukes of Narbonne) also had to contend with other local powers, most notably the Counts of Carcassonne and Beziers , and later the Viscounts of Carcassonne and Beziers, and Counts of Foix.

Under the Ramondine Counts of Toulouse the area knew its golden age. Rulers were educated, tolerant and liberal. Jews and other minorities enjoyed ordinary civil rights. Occitan became the first post-classical literary language of Europe. The culture of the Troubadours was borne and flourished, as did a sophisticated world-view characterised by "paratge". Lay learning was encouraged, the extensive corruption of the Church was widely ridiculed. Ridiculing the Church and refusing to pay tithes had consequences. In the early thirteenth century the area was devastated by a Holy Crusade called by the Pope. The high culture of central Occitania was destroyed by French barbarian invaders and Church Inquisitors. Later in the thirteenth century the area would be annexed by France.

You can read about this tragedy by clicking here to open a new page on the Cathar Crusade.

Septimania had became known as Gothia after the reign of Charlemagne. It retained these two names while it was ruled by the Counts of Toulouse during early part of the Middle Ages, but the southern part became more familiar as Roussillon and the west became known as Foix, and the name "Gothia" along with the older name "Septimania" faded away during the 10th century, except as a traditional designation as the region fractured into smaller feudal entities, which sometimes retained Carolingian titles, but lost their Carolingian character, as the culture of Septimania evolved into the culture of Languedoc.

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Languedoc

The French referred to Septimania and to Occitania as the Languedoc, the area where a distinct language was spoken, a literary language derived from Latin, which at the time was called Roman but is now called Occitan, or by the name of one of its dialects, Provençal. In 1272 the lands of the Counts of Toulouse were annexed to France under the terms of the Treaty of Meaux.

The term Languedoc originally referred to the Occitan language - the language in which the word for "yes" was "Oc". The Langue d'Oc was the "tong of oc". Later the term was extended to area where Occitan was spoken, and the word is still used in both ways today.

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The Province of the Languedoc

Under the Treaty of Meaux in 1229 the Languedoc (Occitan: Lengadòc) became a Province of France. Its capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² (16,490 sq. miles).

It comprised essentially eight of the modern French départments in the current regions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France

The traditional provinces of the kingdom of France were not formally defined. A province was simply a territory of common traditions and customs, but it had no political organisation. Today, when people refer to the old provinces of France, they actually refer to the "gouvernements" as they existed in 1789.

Gouvernements were military regions established in the middle of the 16th century whose territories matched those of the traditional provinces. However, in some cases, small provinces had been merged with a large one into a single gouvernement, so gouvernements are not exactly the same as the traditional provinces.

Historically, the Languedoc region was called the county of Toulouse, a county independent from the kings of France. The county of Toulouse was made up of what would later be called Languedoc, but it also included:

At times it included