Provincia Gallia Narbonensis, Septimania, the Kindom of Narbonne, Gothia, County of Toulouse, Province of Languedoc, Occitania and Languedoc-Roussillon

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

More on Celts
in the Languedoc


More on Greek
settlement in the Languedoc


More on Phoenician
settlements

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.

More on the Romans
and Gallia Narbonensis

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.

More on Alamans,
Vandals and Visigoths and Septimania

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.

More on the Moors
and al Andalus

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.

More on the Franks

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.

More on The
Counts of Toulouse

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.

More on War
against the Cathars  

More on The
Annexation of the Languedoc to France

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: