Septimania is a historical region in modern-day southern France. It referred to the western part of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed to the control of the Visigoths in 462, when Septimania was ceded to their king, Theodoric II. During the Early Middle Ages, the region was variously known as Gallia Narbonensis, Gallia, or Narbonensis. The territory of Septimania roughly corresponds with the modern French former administrative region of Languedoc-Roussillon that merged into the new administrative region of Occitanie. In the Visigothic Kingdom, which became centred on Toledo by the end of the reign of Leovigild, Septimania was both an administrative province of the central royal government and an ecclesiastical province whose metropolitan was the Archbishop of Narbonne. Originally, the Goths may have maintained their hold on the Albigeois, but if so it was conquered by the time of Chilperic I. There is archaeological evidence that some enclaves of Visigothic population remained in Frankish Gaul, near the Septimanian border, after 507.
Louis the Blind was the king of Provence from 11 January 887, King of Italy from 12 October 900, and briefly Holy Roman Emperor, as Louis III, between 901 and 905. His father was a Bosonid and his mother was a Carolingian. He was blinded after a failed invasion of Italy in 905.
William I, called the Pious, was the Count of Auvergne from 886 and Duke of Aquitaine from 893, succeeding the Poitevin ruler Ebalus Manser. He made numerous monastic foundations, most important among them the foundation of Cluny Abbey on 11 September 910.
Richard, Duke of Burgundy (858–921), also known as Richard of Autun or Richard the Justiciar, was Count of Autun from 880 and the first Margrave and Duke of Burgundy. He eventually attained suzerainty over all the counties of Burgundy save Mâcon and by 890 he was referred to as dux (duke) and by 900 as marchio (margrave). By 918 he was being called dux Burgundionem or dux Burgundiae, which probably signified less the existence of a unified Burgundian dukedom than feudal suzerainty over a multiplicity of counties in a specific region.
The Spanish March or Hispanic March was a military buffer zone beyond the former province of Septimania, established by Charlemagne in 795 as a defensive barrier between the Umayyad Moors of Al-Andalus and the Frankish Carolingian Empire.
The count of Toulouse was the ruler of Toulouse during the 8th to 13th centuries. Originating as vassals of the Frankish kings, the hereditary counts ruled the city of Toulouse and its surrounding county from the late 9th century until 1270. The counts and other family members were also at various times counts of Quercy, Rouergue, Albi, and Nîmes, and sometimes margraves of Septimania and Provence. Count Raymond IV founded the Crusader state of Tripoli, and his descendants were also counts there. They reached the zenith of their power during the 11th and 12th centuries, but after the Albigensian Crusade the county fell to the kingdom of France, nominally in 1229 and de facto in 1271.
Bernardof Septimania (795–844), son of William of Gellone and cousin of Charlemagne, was the Duke of Septimania and Count of Barcelona from 826 to 832 and again from 835 to his execution, and also Count of Carcassonne from 837. He was appointed to succeed the third Count of Barcelona, Rampon. During his career, Bernard was one of the closest counsellors of the Emperor Louis the Pious, a leading proponent of the war against the Moors, and was an opponent of the interests of the local Visigothic nobility in Iberia.
Berengar, called the Wise, was the duke or count of Toulouse (814–835) and duke of Septimania (832–835). He held the County of Barcelona concomitantly with Septimania.
Bernard II was the count of Barcelona, Girona and margrave of Gothia and Septimania from 865 to 878.
Ermengard of Italy was Queen of Provence as the spouse of King Boso. She was the second and only surviving child of Emperor Louis II. In her early life, she was betrothed to Constantine, the junior Byzantine emperor, but whether the marriage actually occurred or not is still debated among historians. In 871, Ermengard and her family were taken hostage by Adelchis of Benevento but were later freed. In 876, Ermengard married Boso, a nobleman with connections to the Carolingian dynasty, and became queen upon his accession to the throne of Provence in 879. After her husband's death in 887, she served as regent of the kingdom during the minority of her son Louis the Blind.
Adelaide-Blanche of Anjou(c. 940 –1026) was, by her successive marriages, countess of Gévaudan and Forez, of Toulouse, of Provence, and of Burgundy, and queen of Aquitaine. She was the regent of Gevaudan during the minority of her sons in the 960s, and the regent of Provence during the minority of her son from 994 until 999.
William of Septimania was the son of Bernard and Dhuoda. He was the count of Toulouse from 844 and count of Barcelona from 848.
Guerin, Garin, Warin, or Werner was the Count of Auvergne, Chalon, Mâcon, Autun, Arles and Duke of Provence, Burgundy, and Toulouse. Guerin established the region against the Saracens from a base of Marseille and fortified Chalon-sur-Saône (834). He took part in many campaigns during the civil wars that marked the reign of Louis the Pious (814–840) and after his death until the Treaty of Verdun (843). The primary sources for his life are charters and chronicles like the Vita Hludovici.
The title Prince of Gothia or Prince of the Goths was a title of nobility, sometimes assumed by its holder as a sign of supremacy in the region of Gothia and sometimes bestowed by the sovereign of West Francia to the principal nobleman in the south of the realm, in the ninth and tenth centuries. Sometimes hereditary and sometimes not, the title has been rendered in English as Dukeof Septimania or Dukeof Gothia. A similar or the same "office" was often held with the title comes marcæ Hispanicæ: "Count of the Spanish March." The title was also a chronicler's device and, as presented in some chronicles, may never have been used in any official capacity.
Septimania was the western region of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed under the control of the Visigoths in 462. It passed briefly to the Emirate of Córdoba in the eighth century before its reconquest by the Franks, who by the end of the ninth century termed it Gothia. This article presents a timeline of its history.
The County of Melgueil was a fief of first the Carolingian Emperor, then the King of France, and finally (1085) the Papacy during the Middle Ages. Counts probably sat at Melgueil from the time of the Visigoths. The counts of Melgueil were also counts of Maguelonne and Substantion from at least the time of Peter's homage to Pope Gregory VII on 27 April 1085. In 1172 Beatriu disinherited her son Bertrand and named her daughter Ermessenda her heiress. Later that year Ermessenda married the future Raymond VI of Toulouse and by her will of 1176 the county was to go to Toulouse. Bertrand refused to recognise his disinheritance and pledged homage as Count of Melgueil to Alfonso II of Aragon in 1172. The county fell to the Toulouse in 1190 and was annexed to the French crown in 1213, during the Albigensian Crusade. At the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 it was given to the Diocese of Maguelonne and secular and ecclesiastical authority were merged.
The siege of Narbonne took place in France between 752 and 759, led by the Frankish king Pepin the Short against the Umayyad stronghold defended by an Andalusian garrison of Arab and Berber Muslim troops, who had invaded Septimania and occupied the Gothic settlement with its Gallo-Roman inhabitants since 719. The siege remained as a key battlefield in the context of the Carolingian expedition south to Provence and Septimania starting in 752.
The Battle of Toulouse in 844 was part of the campaign by Charles the Bald in Aquitaine to force the submission of Pepin II of Aquitaine, the rebellious son of Pepin, the half-brother of Charles. The historical context of this battle is the three-year Carolingian civil war, culminating in the Battle of Fontenay-en-Puisaye in 841. Here Charles and Louis the German defeated their brother Lothair I, who retreated to the south with his army.
A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France, 768–900 is a book about Frankish medieval history by Arthur J. Zuckerman.
