Medieval Narbonne: A City At The Heart Of The Troubadour World 9780860789147, 0860789144

Table of contents :
Cover
Series Page
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Avant-Propos
Foreword
Introduction: Medieval Narbonne and the Urban Mediterranean World,
Historical Overview
I: Narbonne from Roman Foundations to the Fifteenth Century
Urban Development at Narbonne
II: Urban Expansion in the Region of Languedoc from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century: The Examples of Narbonne and Montpellier
III: Les Remparts de Narbonne, Des Origines à la Fin du Moyen Age
IV: Les Paroisses de Narbonne au Moyen Age: Origine et Developpement
The Politics and Rulers of Narbonne
V: Origin and Development of the Temporal Lordship of the Archbishop in the city and Territory of Narbonne (9th-12th Centuries)
VI: La Seigneurie Temporelle de L’Archevěque Dans la Ville de Narbonne (Deuxième moitié du XIIIe Siècle)
VII: Le Consulat de Narbonne: Problème Des Origines
VIII: Une Manifestation Narbonnaise des Persécutions Antisémites au Xle Siècle?
IX: Les Seigneurs de Narbonne Dans le Conflit Toulouse-Barcelone au XIIe Siècle
Ermengarde of Narbonne
X: Ermengarde, Viscountess of Narbonne (1127/29-1196/97): A Great Female Figure of the Aristocracy of the Midi
XI: Une Idylle Entre la Vicomtesse Ermengarde de Narbonne et le Prince Rognvald Kali des Orcades Au Milieu du XIIe Siècle?
Society and Religious Life
XII: Hospices et Assistance à Narbonne (XIIIe-XIVe Siècles)
XIII: Hospitals, Charity, and Urban life in the Middle Ages: The Case of Narbonne ‘Revisited’
XIV: Le Studium de Narbonne
XV: Narbonne Au Début du XVe Siècle
Addenda and Corrigenda
Index

Citation preview

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VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

Medieval Narbonne

Jacqueline Caille

Jacqueline Caille

Medieval Narbonne

A City at the Heart of the Troubadour World

Edited by Kathryn L. Reyerson

O Routledge S ^ ^ Taylor & Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2005 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition © 2005 by Jacqueline Caille Jacqueline Caille has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN 13: 978-0-86078-914-7 (hbk) British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Caille, Jacueline, 1939Medieval Norbonne : a city at the heart of the troubadour world. - (Variorum collected studies series) 1. Narbonne (France) - History I. Title II. Reyerson, Kathryn 944.8702 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Caille, Jacqueline, 1939— Medieval Narbonne : a city at the heart of the troubadour world : Jacqueline Caille ; edited by Kathryn Reyerson. p. cm. - (Variorum collected studies series ; 792) Includes index. ISBN 0-86078-914-4 (alk. paper) 1. Narbonne (France) - History - To 1500. I. Reyerson, Kathryn. II. Title. III. Collected studies ; CS792. DC801.N24C33 2005 944'.87-dc22

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS792

2004062273

CONTENTS List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements

x

Avant-propos, Jacqueline Caille Foreword, Jacqueline Caille Introduction: medieval Narbonne and the urban Mediterranean world, Kathryn Reyerson

xi xiv

xvii

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW I

Narbonne from Roman foundations to the fifteenth century

1—56

First publication

URBAN DEVELOPMENT AT NARBONNE II

III

Urban expansion in the region of Languedoc from the eleventh to the fourteenth century: the examples of Narbonne and Montpellier Urban and Rural Communities in Medieval France: Provence and Languedoc, 1000—1500, ed. Kathryn Reyerson and John Drendel. Leiden: Brill, 1998 Les remparts de N a r b o n n e , des origines a la fin du Moyen Age Defendre la ville dans les pays de la Mediterranee occidentale au Moyen Age, Jictes de lajournee d'etude du 6 mars 1999, ed. Daniel Le Blevee. Montpellier: Centre historique de recherches et d'etudes sur la Mediterranee occidentale, 2002

51—72

9-37

vi IV

Contents Les paroisses de Narbonne au Moyen Age: origine et developpement Annales du Midi 102. Toulouse, 1990

229—238

THE POLITICS AND RULERS OF NARBONNE V

Origin and development of the temporal lordship of the archbishop in the city and territory of Narbonne (9th-12th centuries) 1-42 English translation of 'Origine et developpement de la seigneurie temporelle de Farcheveque dans la ville et le terroir de Narbonne (IXe—XIIe siecles) \ published in Narbonne archeologie et histoire. Montpellier: Federation historique du Languedoc mediterraneen et du Roussillon, 1973

VI

La seigneurie temporelle de l'archeveque dans la ville de N a r b o n n e (deuxieme moitie du X H I e siecle) Cahiers de Fanjeaux 7. Toulouse, 1972

165—210

Le consulat de N a r b o n n e : probleme des origines

243-263

VII

Les Origines des libertes urbaines. Rouen: Publications de FUniversite de Rouen, 1990

VIII

IX

Une manifestation narbonnaise des persecutions antisemites au Xle siecle? ArmandLunel et lesjuifs du Midi, Colloque dejuin 1982, ed. C. lancu. Montpellier, 1986 Les seigneurs de Narbonne dans le conflit ToulouseBarcelone au Xlle siecle Annales du Midi 97. Toulouse, 1985

133-140

227-244

ERMENGARDE OF NARBONNE X

Ermengarde, viscountess of N a r b o n n e ( 1 1 2 7 / 2 9 - 1 1 9 6 / 9 7 ) : a great female figure of the aristocracy of the Midi English translation of Ermengarde, vicomtesse de Narbonne (1127/29—1196/ 97). Une grandefigurefeminine du Midi aristocratique\ La Femme dans Fhistoire et la societe meridionales (IXe—XIXe s.).Narbonne: Federation historique du Languedoc mediterraneen et du Roussillon, 1994

1—46

Contents XI

vii

Une idylle entre la vicomtesse Ermengarde de Narbonne et le prince Rognvald Kali des Orcades au milieu du Xlle siecle?

229-234

Memoires de la societe archeologique de Montpellier 21. Montpellier, 1993

SOCIETY AND RELIGIOUS LIFE XII

Hospices et assistance a Narbonne (Xllle-XIVe siecles) Cahiers de Fanjeaux 13. Toulouse, 1977

XIII

Hospitals, charity, and urban life in the Middle Ages:

261—280

the case of Narbonne 'revisited' 1—11 English translation of 'Hopitaux, assistance et vie urbaine au Mqyen Age: le cas de Narbonne "revisite"', Mondes de Fouest et villes du monde. Regards sur les societes medievales. Melandes en Fhonneur d'Jlndri Chedeville, ed. C. Laurent, B. Merdrignac and D. Pichot. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1998 XIV

Le studium de N a r b o n n e

245-258

Cahiers de Fanjeaux 5. Toulouse, 1970 XV

N a r b o n n e au debut du XVe siecle Lesprelats, I'eglise et la societe (Kle—XVe siecles). Hommage a Bernard Guillemain, ed. F. Beriac. Bordeaux, Universite Michel de Montaigne, 1994

71-84

Addenda and Corrigenda

1—11

Index

1-10

This volume contains xxvi + 388 pages

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Chapter I Vicomtes de Narbonne et famille royale de Castille Vicomtes de Narbonne et juges d'Arboree Narbonne: the Aude, the 'etangs' and the Mediterranean (conjectural reconstruction) Principal commercial routes, end of 13th—start of 14th century The mills of Narbonne in the 14th century Interior of the old church of Sainte-Marie-Lamourguier — the museum of Roman stone

8 14 20 22 47 56

Chapter II Towns of Roman and medieval origin in the Narbonnaisepremiere Narbonne: the "shrunken" city Narbonne: the development of the medieval suburbs Montpellier: situation and site The formation of Montpellier Montpellier: topographical maturity Narbonne: topographical maturity Montpellier and Narbonne today: with the inclusion of former fortifications and the localization of monuments and medieval establishments (surviving or now lost)

51 53 55 57 59 63 64 65

Chapter III Narbonne aujourd'hui: restitution du trace des anciennes enceintes et localisation des establissements medievaux conserves ou disparus Narbonne en 1720 d'apres le plan Reverdy s'inspirant du plan original de 1720 Narbonne: la cite reduite Narbonne: la formation des faubourgs medievaux Narbonne: la maturite topographie (XHIe—XlVe siecle)

34 35 36 36 37

Chapter IV Narbonne: les paroisses (premiere moitie du XlVe siecle)

228

List of Illustrations Les paroisses de Narbonne au Moyen Age

ix 231

Chapter V Narbonne from the 8th to the 12th century The lands of Narbonne (second half of 12th century). Conjectural reconstruction of the medieval topography Genealogy of the viscounts of Narbonne Narbonne: les seigneuries (premiere moitie du XlVe siecle)

2 6 23 40/41

Chapter VI Narbonne: les seigneuries (premiere moitie du XlVe siecle)

166

Chapter VII Narbonne (Xlle — debut XHIe siecle): les origines du consultat Les vicomtes de Narbonne aux Xlle et Xllle siecles

250 251

Chapter IX Maisons de Narbonne et de Barcelone (Xle—Xllle siecles) Mais on Trencavel

242 243

Chapter X L'ascendance normande d'Ermengarde de Narbonne Vicomtes de Narbonne (Xe—Xlle siecles) Vicomtes de Narbonne (fin Xlle—fin XVe siecles)

31 32 33

Chapter XI Des Orcades a Narbonne: le periple de Rognvald Kali

234

Chapter XII Les hopitaux de Narbonne (fin Xllle—debut XlVe siecle)

263

Chapter XIII The hospitals of Narbonne, end of 13th—start of 14th centuries Chapter XV Narbonne (1404)

4 75

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Grateful acknowledgement is made to the following persons, institutions and publishers for their kind permission to reproduce the papers included in this volume: Brill Academic Publishers, Leiden (II); Centre historique de recherches et d'etudes medievales sur la mediterranee occidentale, Universite de Montpellier (III); Editions Privat, Toulouse (IV, IX); Federation historique du Languedoc mediterranean et du Roussillon, Montpellier (V, X); Centre d'Etudes Historiques de Fanjeaux (VI, XII, XIV); Publications de l'Universite de Rouen (VII); Centre regional d'histoire des mentalites — Centre de recherches et d'etudes juives et hebraiques, Universite Paul-Valery, Montpellier (VIII); Societe archeologique de Montpellier (XI); Societe d'histoire et d'archeologie de Bretagne and Presses Universitaires de Rennes (XIII); Universite Michel de Montaigne, Bordeaux.

AVANT-PROPOS C'est au professeur Philippe Wolff, dont je voudrais ici saluer la memoire, que je dois d'avoir choisi comme sujet principal de mes recherches universitaires la ville de Narbonne au Moyen Age, en privilegiant la periode s'etendant de la fin du Xe siecle au milieu du XIVe siecle. D'emblee un probleme se pose a qui veut entreprendre une etude systematique de la metropole languedocienne: le caractere disperse, disparate et surtout desordonne des sources dont dispose le chercheur pour mener a bien cette tache. II faut en effet savoir qu'on ne trouve pas a Narbonne de fonds notarial (a la difference de Toulouse, Montpellier, Perpignan), pas non plus de cartulaire laique (a la difference de Montpellier ou Carcassonne), pas de cartulaires ecclesiastiques si ce n'est quelques fragments (a la difference de Nimes, Beziers ou Agde), pas de chronique urbaine (contrairement a Montpellier). En l'absence d'inventaires thematiques, reste a se plonger dans la masse documentaire (encore tres abondante malgre les nombreuses destructions) en degageant, chemin faisant, des sujets particuliers a etudier des lors que Ton dispose, sur l'un ou l'autre d'entre eux, d'un dossier relativement coherent, mais pas forcement complet. De ce type d'approche nait la necessite, de temps a autre, de « revisiter» un aspect deja aborde, des lors que de nouveaux renseignements sont decouverts au hasard d'investigations toujours poursuivies. Malgre tout, a la suite de toutes ces annees de recherches, il nous est desormais possible de brosser a grands traits un tableau d'ensemble de la Narbonne medievale, l'un des principaux centres urbains du Midi languedocien au Moyen Age. C'est ce qui est propose dans ce volume avec un accent particulier mis sur les Xle, Xlle et XHIe siecles. Un « survol historique » general (I) donne pour commencer un cadre global a partir duquel des renvois sont faits, pour de plus larges developpements, aux quatorze articles reproduits ici ou encore aux quelque vingt travaux concernant l'antique metropole languedocienne que nous avons publies par ailleurs, l'ensemble constituant une «bibliographie panoramique» de la question. Les quatorze etudes qui ont ete retenues pour le present ouvrage sont reproduites, soit sous leur forme initiale avec des addenda et corrigenda, soit sous forme de traductions en anglais as sorties de mises a jour

xii

Avant-propos

systematiques. Les unes et les autres ont ete regroupees autour de quatre themes principaux. II s'agit, premierement, de montrer le developpement urbain d'une agglomeration composee d'une « Cite » antique (a la fois ville du seigneur ecclesiastique et ville du seigneur laique, ce qui n'est pas le schema le plus courant) et d'un «Bourg» medieval auxquels s'ajoutent divers faubourgs du Moyen Age, les uns et les autres soumis aux deux dirigeants de la Cite. Le deuxieme centre d'interet concerne les seigneurs de la Cite avec, tout d'abord, deux articles (V, VI) portant sur l'organisation seigneuriale et feodale de Narbonne qui ont ete retenus, bien que relativement anciens, parce qu'ils trouvent aujourd'hui un regain d'actualite a un moment ou la recherche recente confirme ce qui s'y trouve en filigrane, a savoir l'existence «d'une feodalite» et aussi celle «d'une seigneurie » en Languedoc, l'une et l'autre structurant de maniere evidente la «vie politique narbonnaise» des le Xle siecle. A cela s'ajoutent les numeros VII et VIII, portant sur le consulat, d'une part, et la communaute juive de la ville, d'autre part, ou sont presentes quelques aspects du « peuple » de Narbonne face aux deux seigneurs qui se partagent le pouvoir sur l'agglomeration. Enfin, le numero IX situe ces deux derniers, archeveque et vicomte, dans le contexte historique regional, celui de la « grande guerre meridionale du Xlle siecle», elle aussi objet d'un incontestable regain d'interet ces derniers temps. Dans la troisieme partie est mise en exergue l'une des « figures » de cette « grande guerre », veritable « guerre de Cent Ans languedocienne », a savoir la fameuse vicomtesse Ermengarde qui gouverna Narbonne et sa vicomte pendant plus d'une demi-siecle et fut celebree par les troubadours a l'instar de sa contemporaine la duchesse Alienor d'Aquitaine dont on a commemore le huitieme centenaire de sa mort en 1204. Le quatrieme et dernier theme, societe et vie religieuse, fait une place toute particuliere aux hopitaux et a l'assistance (XII, XIII, XIV, XV), sujets sur lesquels on dispose pour Narbonne de renseignements assez nombreux que nous avons pu preciser au cours de nos dernieres recherches, completant ainsi l'ouvrage que nous avons consacre a la question en 1978. La reimpression ou la publication en traduction des divers articles repris ici n'auraient pas ete possibles sans la liberalite des responsables des publications ou des maisons d'edition qui ont abrite les parutions originales : que les uns et les autres soient remercies. II nous faut egalement remercier le docteur John Smedley d'avoir conduit avec « fermete », mais aussi «patience et comprehension», la production de ce volume des Variorum Reprints. Enfin, il nous reste a exprimer toute notre gratitude a notre collegue, le professeur K.L. Reyerson sans qui cette publication

Avant-propos

xiii

n'aurait pas pu voir le jour. Nous avons trouve en elle, tout d'abord, une traductrice emerite des articles I, V, X et XIII : a sa parfaite maitrise du francais, qui a permis d'en rendre la lettre, s'est en effet ajoutee, pour en rendre l'esprit, sa connaissance approfondie du «Midi medieval» pour lequel « nous partageons la meme passion ». Surtout, elle a, tres amicalement, soutenu de bout en bout l'elaboration de ce volume apportant, chemin faisant, par maintes suggestions constructives, diverses ameliorations au pro jet initial. JACQUELINE CAILLE Serignac-en-Quercy Decembre 2004

FOREWORD It is thanks to Philippe Wolff, whose memory I would like to invoke here, that I came to choose the town of Narbonne as the principal object of my research, with a focus on the period from the end of the tenth century to the mid-fourteenth. At the outset, whoever wishes to undertake a systematic study of this metropolis of Languedoc faces a problem: the dispersed, disparate and above all the disordered nature of the sources available to the researcher. One must realise that there is no notarial archive to be found at Narbonne (unlike Toulouse, Montpellier or Perpignan), no lay seigneurial cartulary (unlike Montpellier or Carcassonne), no ecclesiastical cartularies, other than a few fragments (unlike Nimes, Beziers or Agde), nor any urban chronicle (unlike Montpellier). In the absence of thematic inventories, one has to plunge into a mass of documentation (and this is still very abundant, despite much destruction), picking one's way through to light upon some particular subjects to study when one has amassed a sufficiently coherent dossier, even if an incomplete one, on one topic or another. This type of approach necessitates the "revisiting", from time to time, of a topic already covered, when new information comes to light during one's on-going investigations. Despite all this, after all these years of research I have been able to draw a picture of medieval Narbonne, one of the chief urban centres of medieval Languedoc. This is what is achieved in the present volume, with a particular emphasis on the period from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. To open the volume, a historical overview (I) provides an overall framework, and for detail on the development refers the reader to the fourteen studies that follow, and to a further twenty or so other articles I have published on Narbonne. Together they constitute a bibliographic "panorama" on the subject. The fourteen studies included in the present work are in part reproduced as first published, with addenda and corrigenda, in part in English translations which have been systematically updated. They are grouped around four main themes. First comes a group (II, III, IV) showing the urban development of an agglomeration comprising an antique "Cite" (at once the town of the ecclesiastical and the secular lords, which is not the

Foreword

xv

most common form of urban organization), and a medieval "Bourg", to which several suburbs were added during the Middle Ages, both under the jurisdiction of the two lords of the Cite. The second centre of interest has to do with those who "ran" the town. To start with, two articles (V, VI) deal with the seigneurial and feudal organization of Narbonne. These have been included, even though relatively old, because they have gained a new relevance now, as recent research has confirmed the line taken in them. This is that there did exist a "feudal system" as well as a "lordship" in Languedoc, both of which clearly shaped the political life of Narbonne from the eleventh century. Studies VII and VIII, one dealing with the consulate, the other with the Jewish community of the town, present some aspects of the "people" of the Narbonne in relation to the two lords who shared power over the town. Article IX, finally, places the two lords, the archbishop and the viscount, within the historical context of the region — being the "great southern war" of the twelfth century, which in itself has attracted much renewed interest in recent years. In the third section, pride of place is given to one of the "protagonists" of this war, a true "Hundred Years' War" in Languedoc, the famous viscountess Ermengarde (X, XI). She ruled Narbonne and its viscounty for more than half a century and was celebrated by the troubadours, just like her contemporary, the duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine, the 800th anniversary of whose death was commemorated in 2004. The fourth and last section, on the theme of society and religious life, gives prominence to hospitals and communal assistance (XII, XIII, XIV, XV). These are subjects on which we have a good deal of information for Narbonne, and which I have been able to make more precise in recent research, thus completing the work I devoted to the topic in 1978. The reprinting or republication in translation of the articles included here would not have been possible without the generosity of the editors and publishers of the works which first gave them a home; I thank them all. I must also thank Dr. John Smedley who has undertaken, with firmness but also patience and understanding, the publication of this volume in the Variorum series. Finally, I must express my deepest gratitude to my colleague, Professor K.L. Reyerson, without whom this work would not have been possible. She has, first, been a fine translator of studies I, V, X and XIII; her mastery of French, which enabled her to translate the text, is completed by her profound knowledge of the medieval Midi, for which we share the same passion, and which has enabled her to capture the spirit of the work. Above all, she has with great kindness, from start to finish, supported the preparation of this book, all along the way giving

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constructive comment and helpful suggestions for how the initial project could be improved. JACQUELINE CAILLE Serignac-en-Quercy December2004

INTRODUCTION The articles that follow are the work of Jacqueline Caille, an urban historian of medieval southern France and a specialist of the history of medieval Narbonne, one of the principal sites of troubadour culture. For almost forty years Jacqueline Caille has been a perceptive student of the urban institutions of this rich past. Caille is an archival scholar par excellence, who knows the archives of Narbonne in depth and has been consistently revising the work of nineteenth- and earlier twentieth-century historians and enhancing our understanding of urban development, urban politics, society, and religious institutions. Among the towns of Languedoc, Narbonne enjoys a remarkably diverse history that included a role as an important Roman administrative center and economic entrepot, echoed in the Middle Ages when it became a dynamic site of commerce and industry on the Mediterranean coast of southern France. From the thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century, Narbonne reached its medieval heyday, combining investments in the luxury trade with significant artisan industry in leather and in cloth production. Its merchants traveled the Mediterranean, trading in the Levant alongside Italians and other southern French. Politically, Narbonne was a double town, with two resident lords, the viscount and the archbishop, archrivals for urban domination. Culturally, the court of Viscountess Ermengarde was a magnet for southern troubadour culture. Escaping the brunt of repression of heresy, Narbonne maintained a reputation for religious orthodoxy. By the thirteenth century the town supported a vibrant tradition of hospitals and charitable institutions and numerous houses of the mendicant orders. Jacqueline Caille has brought medieval Narbonne to life through her meticulous reconstruction of the topography and physical landscape, and her analysis of the society, politics, and economy of the town. What are the elements particularly identified with medieval southern France? Heterodoxy in religion, particularly the Cathar heresy. Troubadour culture. Minorities and cross-cultural exchange. A flourishing urban world closely tied to rural surroundings and engaging with the wider Mediterranean through trade and travel. A noble culture linked by oaths of fidelity. A secular political society rather than one dominated by the

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church. Twelfth-century seigneurial administrations relying more on Jews than clerics as experts (Narbonne, Montpellier), and thus lacking that clerical administrative culture of the North. A Roman law/written law tradition and a notariate providing a common business culture that stretched throughout the Mediterranean world and beyond. Mediterranean France was a region of large towns or cities - Avignon, Marseille, Montpellier, Narbonne, Perpignan, Toulouse, and somewhat smaller Aix-en-Provence, Aries, and Beziers. Italy on the east and Spain on the west, particularly Aragon-Catalonia, were well-endowed in this regard, too, and Italy was for southern France and Catalonia a pace setter in legal, political, and economic matters. Though the towns of the French Mediterranean world have disparate origins, some a Roman origin like Narbonne, and others a medieval beginning without a Roman past, there is a consistent culture which emerged in this area at least from the eleventh century when new agglomerations like Perpignan and Montpellier became towns in their own right. History is written by the winners, and southern France and its medieval civilization did not prevail, because of the victory of northern France in the thirteenth-century Albigensian crusade. Though its unique past was never obliterated, politically the North came to dominate the south (the Midi) in later periods of French history. This said, southern France has always represented more than a lingering attraction for the North and still does today. And this goes beyond climate and beaches. This volume opens a window for the reader into the rich world of the medieval Midi, viewed from the perspective of one of its cultural capitals. Caille's insights invite comparison with other southern French towns and with the northern urban experience. This collection begins with Caille's synthesis (I) of the history of Narbonne from Roman beginnings through the end of the Middle Ages in the fifteenth century, written for this volume. The reader will find a wealth of facts about the place of Narbonne within the Midi, emerging first as a Roman town, then, after a passage in the Early Middle Ages under Visigothic and, subsequently, Muslim rule, evolving as a seigneurial capital with an archbishop and a viscount each possessing lordships, as a bourgeois and consular town, and finally as a bonne ville of the French king, with the viscounty fully integrated by King Louis XII into his domain in 1507. In this introductory overview Caille then examines the history of medieval Narbonne thematically, beginning with its economic role as a significant center of artisanal production and international trade within

Introduction

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Languedoc, for which she situates a medieval apogee in the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth centuries. A second thematic approach concerns the physical development of the town in its topography, monuments, and urban landscape. Particularly insightful is her discussion of the vicecomital and archiepiscopal contributions to this double town of Bourg and Cite, unusual in that both authorities resided in their fortresses in the Cite. Caille pursues the issue of urban development in three articles, the first (II) comparing the growth of the old town of Roman origin, Narbonne, with that of the new dynamic metropolis of medieval foundation, Montpellier. In spite of their divergent origins, there were many similar trends that affected both urban sites. Inquiring about the reasons for the economic ascendancy of Montpellier over Narbonne, Caille emphasizes the more favorable geographic location of Montpellier, closer to Italy and well-placed on the road systems stretching north to the Champagne fairs and to Paris and west to Aquitaine. The presence of Italian merchants in Montpellier, earlier and more numerous than ever they were in Narbonne, reinforced this advantage. Finally, the political situation of Montpellier permitted the emergence of a more autonomous consulate under distant lords while in Narbonne the archbishop and the viscount were ever present. The ramparts of Narbonne (III) offered Caille the challenge of textual reconstruction in the absence of any visible trace of the medieval fortifications today. The result is a meticulous review of all written evidence for the walls, themselves a negotiated collaboration between the archbishop and the viscount in the seigneurial period. Towers of the fortifications were held in fief of the archbishop in his section, with defensive responsibilities accompanying the holder, but an absence of sources prohibits the tracking of the viscount's techniques in managing the walls. With the emergence of consulates in the Cite and the Bourg in the thirteenth century, the defense system witnessed even greater competition. In all some thirty-five hectares of town and suburbs (eighty-six and one half acres) were enclosed within defensive structures by the end of the twelfth century. The third contribution under the heading of urban development treats the organization of parishes in Narbonne (IV). In contrast to a general presumption of an early multiplicity of parishes in medieval towns, Caille describes the experience of Narbonne with a late onset of parish organization like that of other southern towns of Roman origin. Prior to the eleventh century the community had remained undivided under the

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archbishop. The appearance of parishes was part of a broader phenomenon of urban growth, from the eleventh to the early thirteenth centuries, by which time eight parishes had emerged. Also reflecting urban growth was the establishment of an archiepiscopal lordship in Narbonne. In her section on urban politics, Caille traces in detail (V) the creation of an archiepiscopal lordship over all of the Bourg and over the western third of the Cite. The Carolingian era set the foundation for the landed wealth of the Narbonnais archbishopric. Weathering the heyday of the proprietary church in the mid-tenth through mid-eleventh century, a series of strong archbishops, beginning with Guifred of Cerdagne (1016—1079), the infamous simoniac, whose father bought the archbishopric for him at age ten, rebuilt the lordship and triumphed in a struggle with the viscount, reviving the bevy of rights associated with the see under the Carolingians. The Gregorian reform had little effect, needless to say, on this process. Viscounts were the "men" of the archbishops for certain of their holdings in the Cite. Even the formidable Viscountess Ermengarde would recognize that she was the "vassal" of the archbishop in 1155. To retain their political clout the archbishops relied periodically on their relations with the counts of Toulouse. Political and economic rights over Narbonne were divided between the archbishop and the viscount in the twelfth century. In a second study of archiepiscopal power (VI) Caille traces the evolution of the temporal lordship of the archbishop in the second half of the thirteenth century. The Albigensian crusade gave the archbishop an opportunity to attempt seizure of the whole of the lordship of the Cite, hitherto shared with the viscount. Archbishop Arnaud-Amalric even attributed to himself the title of duke of Narbonne from the spoils of the Raymonds of Saint-Gilles until Simon de Montfort claimed it for himself. The archbishop was the feudal superior of the viscount for half of the Cite and for the totality of the Bourg. The viscount put his hands in those of the archbishop and swore "fidelity in all things." However, the viscount reserved his liege homage for the king of France, creating thereby some ambiguity. The archbishop in turn was a direct dependent of the king of France for the western half of the Cite and for all of the Bourg. These titles gave the archbishop prerogatives of justice, both civil and criminal. Caille dissects the functioning of the archiepiscopal court that enforced sentences excluding the death penalty, mutilation and whipping, these being monopolies of the viscount. The archbishop also enjoyed economic rights over wine sales, ovens, mills, etc., customs duties, jurisdictional rights over

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town markets that he shared with the viscount, and a shared right of coining money. The consuls exercised a growing role of surveillance and organization of the town artisanal trades. In the thirteenth century the formation of a consulate introduced a third organ of government at Narbonne. By the end of the thirteenth century, with royal support, the consulate offered a challenge to the shared vicecomital and archiepiscopal administration of Narbonne. Yet, at this date, the archiepiscopal lordship remained powerful. Caille analyzes thoroughly the problems surrounding the appearance of a consulate at Narbonne in her next article (VII). Consular movements, of Italian inspiration, reflected the influence of the growing mercantile and artisanal population in urban government in Languedoc. Though consuls were mentioned in Narbonne as early as 1132 in a representative role abroad on behalf of the town, it would only be in the early thirteenth century that four consuls of the Cite and four of the Bourg appeared in an arbitration proceeding at home. By the end of the first quarter of the thirteenth century the consuls had acquired certain prerogatives in the municipal administration in the areas of the economy, urban policing, and public works. No document constituting either consulate has survived, but by the last quarter of the thirteenth century the consuls were claiming to hold their prerogatives directly from the king of France. Narbonne experienced considerable growth in the same era, with demographic and topographic expansion, and the development of international trade. The viscount and the archbishop extended their lordships over the surrounding countryside. The urban community of bourgeois, merchants, and artisans, milites, and descendants of the familia of both the archbishop and the viscount created an urban identity as a universitas of the Cite and of the Bourg, coming together as the "cives narbonenses tarn Civitatis quam

suburbir in the thirteenth century. The flourishing of intellectual life, the development of law, the creation of a notariate, and the emergence of charitable and hospital facilities accompanied this urban expansion. Narbonne was also the site of considerable cross-cultural exchange over the centuries, with domination first by Arian Visigoths, and then by Muslims. A significant Jewish community weathered the rule of these diverse powers. However, three documents suggest anti-Semitic measures on the part of the Carolingian Charles the Simple, with confiscations of Jewish property on behalf of the church. In an article examining antisemitism at Narbonne (VIII), Caille questions the authenticity of these sources because she discovered Jews still in possession of some of the

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"confiscated" properties in the second half of the tenth century. More telling was the continued participation of Jews in the management of the real and mobile property of the archbishops of Narbonne. Caille investigates as a possible source of interpolation, Guifred of Cerdagne, who had already embroidered upon a Carolingian diploma of 844 for the sake of his lordship (V). However, the evidence remains unconvincing, and Caille invokes instead as the source of these falsifications the movement to recover tithes and the struggle of the archbishop to create a rival lordship to that of the viscount at Narbonne. Caille argues for a tradition of toleration and cosmopolitanism at Narbonne that permitted Benjamin of Tudela to praise the doctors of its Jewish community in the twelfth century. Frequently absorbed by the internal workings of the town of Narbonne, Caille steps back to consider the broader political situation in an article following the fate of the lords of Narbonne in the rivalry of the houses of Toulouse and Barcelona for the south of France in the twelfth century (IX). Adding to the mix was the powerful vicecomital house of the Trencavel with one branch in control of Carcassonne and Beziers, another in possession of Nimes and Agde. These rivalries gave rise to wars and bravura that found their echo in troubadour poetry. AlphonseJourdain of Toulouse gained some control of the viscounty during the childhood of Ermengarde, even to the point of attempting to marry her in 1142, but this move was too much for the Trencavel and their allies who imprisoned Alphonse. Peace came with Alphonse's engagement to restore the viscounty to Ermengarde who had married Bernard of Anduze, a follower of the Trencavel. For a period in the mid-twelfth century Ermengarde ruled her lordship with little resistance, participating in the siege of Tortosa and taking the initiative to bring about a reconciliation between the Trencavel and the house of Barcelona in the person of Raymond-Berenger IV in 1150. This alliance was disturbing for the count of Toulouse, causing the count to imprison the Trencavel. Several years later in 1157 the quarrel had subsided, for Raymond of Toulouse, son of Alphonse, promised to aid Raymond Trencavel against all except his (Raymond's) brother. The count of Toulouse was again a target of a coalition (including Ermengarde) in 1158 in which Henry II of England participated. Only the aid of Louis VII of France, who joined with Raymond in defending Toulouse, brought about a truce. Ermengarde was closely allied to the Barcelonnais, all the while conciliating the Trencavel who in turn had close relations at this time with the count of Toulouse.

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Ermengarde herself had to appeal to Louis VII for assistance in a law suit against the rebellious lord of Puisserguier, supported by Raymond V of Toulouse and his wife Constance when Puisserguier wished to throw off vicecomital jurisdiction. Relations shifted again in the latter part of the twelfth century. Ermengarde of Narbonne entertained good relations with the count of Toulouse, but she pledged allegiance to Louis VII in 1173 in response to Raymond V's homage to Henry II of England. She sought Louis VII's intervention in the south as did the archbishop of Narbonne who feared a Plantagenet invasion. In 1177 Raymond V of Toulouse's ambitions against Narbonne and the Trencavel caused a coalition to form against him and pushed Ermengarde again into the corner of the Aragonese. By the end of the century the houses of Barcelona and Toulouse had reached a reconciliation with the marriage of Raymond VI and Eleanor of Aragon. Several months later the viscount of Narbonne, Aymeric III, recognized that he held Narbonne, excepting what he had of the archbishop, in fief from the count of Toulouse. In the horror that was the Albigensian crusade (1209—1229), Toulouse and Barcelona allied to face the northern forces, while the viscount and the archbishop of Narbonne had as their highest priority the safeguard of their lordships. They escaped the invasion of northern troops, but the spiritual leader of the crusade, Arnaud-Amalric, becoming archbishop of Narbonne, did what he could to subordinate the viscount to his power. Viscountess Ermengarde has always been a particular focus of Caille's interest and merits one of the sections of this volume. A direct contemporary of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Ermengarde ruled her viscounty for over fifty years. She was a battlefield participant, a lord who inspired loyalty in her followers, a diplomat in the viper's nest of southern French politics, and a patron of troubadours. Caille's lengthy, well-documented 1994 article (X) focuses on the youth and poignant late years of the distinguished twelfth-century viscountess. Her attention to these two periods in the life of Ermengarde can serve as bookends for the significant recent study by Fredric Cheyette, Urmengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2002). In her work Caille refrains from developing the whole of Ermengard's career in light of the already extensive work by previous scholars. Particularly informative in her focus on the last years of Ermengarde's life was the tragic fashion in which she was forced from her lordship by her nephew Pierre de Lara, whom she had associated in

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power. Ermengarde died in exile with few, if any, of the trappings of her station surrounding her. Her fate recalls that of Constance of France and Marie de Montpellier. Caille also traces the legendary dimensions of this mattresse femme in the literature of the sagas (XI). In the Orkneyinga Saga, dating from the late twelfth century and reworked about 1234—1235, the prince Rognvald Kali, ruler of the Orkneys from 1139—1158, is said to have made a visit to Ermengarde in her town of Narbonne during a voyage to the Holy Land in 1151—1153 on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Taken with her, even to the point of contemplating marriage — there are several poems invoking her in the saga —, Rognvald promised to return home via Narbonne. In the end he went back overland to the North. In 1158 he was killed in the Orkneys. Caille accepts as possible the presence of Rognvald in Narbonne and even the participation of his Orkney companions in a court of love, given the troubadour culture at Narbonne, but rejects the marriage project because Ermengarde's husband, Bernard of Anduze, was still alive in 1152. The mention of marriage could have been the result of the influence of French courtly lyric on the authorcompiler of the saga, writing after the events. A final section of this volume treats the society and religious life of Narbonne. In the first two articles (XII and XIII) one witnesses the revisionist spirit of Caille at work on her own scholarship. A specialist of medieval hospitals and the author of a monograph, Hopitaux et charite publique a Narbonne auMoyenAge (Toulouse, 1977), Caille describes in detail the vibrant hospital life at Narbonne. Having sketched the administration of hospital and charity institutions at Narbonne in her first article, Caille thereafter discovered new documentation, permitting her to refine her understanding of the development of charitable institutions in the town. The twelfth century saw the emergence of four houses for the poor and lepers. Two more hospitals for the poor appeared in the thirteenth century. Eight more hospitals and additional charitable activities would join this early network. There was, in addition, a Jewish hospital. Beyond these, the parish churches and religious houses also offered charitable assistance. Caille is able in her second article to add one further hospital foundation to the mix, that of Lamourguier, though the foundation attempt would seem to have failed. This explosion of hospital activity paralleled the economic growth and prosperity of the town well into the fourteenth century. After situating these institutions topographically, Caille examines their administrative and economic structures. Overarching supervision of such charitable activities belonged to the archbishop. The

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hospital orders had their own grand masters. In her first article Caille argues that from the middle of the thirteenth century the municipal magistrates, at least the consuls of the Cite, were active, as well, in administration of some of these institutions. In the second revisionary study, she redates this trend to the end of the thirteenth century and assigns initiative to the consuls of the whole of the town. At mid-century the cathedral chapter still exercised administrative control over the hospital system. There may have been competition between the consuls and the chapter for supervisory prerogatives at mid-century and greater ecclesiastical resistance to the expansion of lay initiatives in the area of charity than earlier thought. By the end of the thirteenth century lay supervision had triumphed. Caille sees this as a movement parallel to the increasing role of the consuls vis-a-vis the viscount and the archbishop, the town's traditional lords, in the exercise of political power by that same date. The intellectual life of Narbonne has also been among Caille's interests. Narbonne was the site of an ephemeral university studium (XIV). A bull of Pope Innocent IV in 1247, in effect, made reference to such an institution. Caille dates its probable inception to the years 1238-1247, perhaps the result, as in the experience of the University of Toulouse, of treaties relating to the Albigensian crusade, in Toulouse's case that of Paris-Meaux of 1229, in the case of Narbonne, perhaps those of Lorris in 1243, in each case, measures mounted against heresy. The fate of the studium in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries is unknown. In the first half of the fourteenth century the University of Paris held an attraction for Narbonnais students, and a college was founded there by the archbishop in 1317. In 1342 a college of Narbonne was founded at the University of Toulouse. In spite of an undoubted decline in the studium of Narbonne, education was still dispensed there, the most illustrious teaching being that of the Spiritual Franciscan Peter John Olivi in the late thirteenth century. Private law schools persisted, and there was a theology school attached to the cathedral church, permitting the survival of higher education in the town at a time when it was still flourishing as an urban center. Jacqueline Caille concludes this volume of studies with an examination of Narbonne in the early fifteenth century, based on a pastoral visitation of 1404 (XV). She is able to reconstruct the itinerary of the visitor in the Cite, the suburbs, and the Bourg, from church to hospital to religious house to leprosarium to private chapel. From the documentary record of the

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visit Caille is able to draw up a topographic inventory of the religious establishments of Narbonne that indicated, she concludes, an undisputed decline. The poor state of repair of numerous churches reflected the degenerating economic situation of the town, stemming from the difficulties of the late fourteenth century. By then the heyday of Narbonne had passed, and the age of the troubadours was long gone. KATHRYN REYERSON University of Minnesota

I

Historical Overview: Narbonne from Roman Foundations to the Fifteenth Century Today a sub-prefecture in the south of France, ten kilometres from the Mediterranean, Narbonne remains proud of its Roman and medieval past. It is an historical overview of the latter that will form the basis of the following discussion, but with reference as well to the classical origins of the town.1 I. A POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CAPITAL OF THE MIDI A provincial Roman metropolis (2nd c. BCE — early 5th c. CE) Founded first in 118 BCE as a Roman colony, Narbo Martius was refounded in 45 BCE by Julius Caesar himself. Situated on the via Domitia, the vital artery linking Italy to Spain, recently conquered by Rome, the town grew rapidly in importance in the first century BCE, proving itself, according to the formula of Cicero, "the observatory and the rampart of the Roman people" in transalpine Gaul.2 Having quickly become the seat of provincial government, Narbonne experienced a remarkable expansion for two centuries from the time of Augustus. The city dominated a vast expanse extending from the Alps and Lake Geneva in the east to the river Garonne and the Pyrenees in the west and the south, a territory called

1

On Narbonne and its environs from prehistory to the present, see Histoire de Narbonne, ed. J. Michaud and A. Cabanis (Toulouse, 1981) (2nd ed. 1988) with chapters devoted to antiquity by M. Gayraud and to the Middle Ages by J. Caille and J. Michaud; for generalities on the sources, see R. W. Emery, Heresy and Inquisition in Narbonne (New York, 1941). 2 For the Roman period, see also M. Gayraud, Narbonne antique des origines a la fin du Hie siecle (Paris, 1981), and E. Dellong, D. Moulis, and J. Farre, Carte archeologique de la Gaule. Narbonne et le Narbonnais (Paris, 2002). Brief quotations of Latin authors in this overview have been drawn from these works.

I 2

Historical Overview

thereafter Narbonensis, the "Narbonnaise"; within this Narbonne acted as the religious metropolis of the imperial cult. The third and fourth centuries CE ushered in a period of difficulties. The zone of influence of the Roman city shrank to the region west of the Rhone, called the Narbonensis prima. To the east of the river the Narbonensis secunda escaped the orbit of Narbonne before 381 CE. In keeping with the pattern of topographical reduction and fortification of the core that characterized most Roman cities in the West, Narbonne was surrounded by a solid wall, reducing its surface area.3 The city shared the decline that insidiously affected the western empire of the late Roman period. Although the latter succumbed to the blows of the great invasions of the fifth century, during the whole of the Middle Ages Narbonne remained one of the political and religious capitals of the Midi, at times more important, at others less so. Christianized very early, the town was, from the middle of the third century, blessed with a metropolitan bishop, even if this prerogative was momentarily contested by Aries in the course of the fifth century, before undergoing an undeniable decline. Furthermore, Narbonne continued to shelter, at each stage of its medieval history, representatives of lay power. A Visigothic capital (5th - early 8th centuries) When the Roman frontiers gave way before the invading barbarians, at the beginning of the fifth century, the town, which had grown up on the left bank of what was probably an artificial arm of the river Aude (today replaced by a simple canal, the Robine), was not a direct victim of the Vandals, the Suevi, or the Alans, but from autumn 413 to autumn 414 it was for a time occupied by the Visigoths, who took over peacefully. Their leader, Athaulf, celebrated his marriage with Gallia Placidia (the half-sister of the emperor Honorius) with great pomp and circumstance at Narbonne. Gallia Placidia had been taken hostage by his predecessor, King Alaric, during the famous sack of Rome in 410. Pushed back after that, it was only in 462 that the Visigoths reoccupied Narbonne, but this occupation then lasted for a period of two and a half centuries.

3 This reduction took place from the end of the third to the beginning of the fourth century CE, according to the preferred hypothesis, though it is also possible to date this fortification to the early fifth century (before 436-37); see article no. Ill, "Les remparts de Narbonne des origines a la fin du Moyen Age", in this volume.

I Narbonne from Roman foundations to the 15th Century

3

The town then became one of the metropolises of the vast Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse that had emerged, stretching from the Loire river in the north to the columns of Hercules at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula and from the Atlantic to the Rhone and to the Durance. The capital, installed at Narbonne after the 507 conquest of most of Aquitaine by the Franks of Clovis, following the Gothic defeat at Vouille, thereafter shifted in 530 first to Barcelona, then Merida, and finally to Toledo. Nonetheless, Narbonne remained the residence of the governors of "Septimania" (a shrunken Narbonensis prima, amputated from the dioceses of Toulouse and Uzes and constituting more or less the LanguedocRoussillon of today), the sole province of Gaul still in Visigothic hands. Several times, but ephemerally, the town would again become the capital of the kingdom when one or another of its governors seized the crown. Thus, the most civilized of the barbarian peoples, continuing and reviving Roman traditions, assisted Narbonne in preserving a certain renown, longer than other classical cities. It was to one of its great native jurists, Leo Narbonensis, that the kings Euric and then Alaric II turned to work on the codification of barbarian laws (the Code of Euric) or the compilation of Roman laws (the Breviary of Alaric, hex Romana Wisigothorum). Even before the conversion of King Recared to Catholicism in 587, the metropolitan bishops do not seem to have suffered from the Arianism of the Visigoths. Thereafter, as eminent representatives of the clergy of the Gothic kingdom, they attended the national councils of Toledo and organized provincial councils at Narbonne. A Muslim military base, cornerstone of the Gaulish province of al- Andalus (early 8th - middle 8th century) The collapse of the Visigothic realm under the attacks of Arab/Berber troops brought about the seizure of Narbonne by the Muslims (as early as 715 or, at the latest, in 719), even before the completion of their conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Narbonne then became the spearhead of their annual raids against the decaying Merovingian kingdom, in the direction of Aquitaine on the one hand, towards Provence and the Rhone and Saone valleys, on the other. One theory has it that some of the survivors of the battle of Poitiers of 732, at which Charles Martel annihilated the Muslim armies, took refuge at Narbonne; but there is no evidence for this claim. However, it is a fact that some years later, in 737, the town successfully resisted a long siege undertaken by the same Charles Martel, although the latter defeated a relief force sent by the emir of Cordoba in the immediate

I 4

Historical Overview

neighbourhood. The relief army was exterminated on the banks of the little coastal river of La Berre that flows into the lagoon of Bages. A governor called a wali, who combined administrative, judicial, and especially military functions that he exercised while supervising the Gothic count, still in place at Narbonne as in other towns of Septimania submitted to Islam, defended the walled city of Narbonne, chef-lieu of the province of Gaul of al-Andalus (the Muslim kingdom of Spain and Gaul). This "base" remained a precarious possession, always under menace of attack by either the dukes of Aquitaine, more or less autonomous powers, or by the armies of the Frankish rulers. The latter delivered Narbonne from Muslim occupation in 759 at the wish of Pepin the Short, mayor of the palace, who became king. The town became subject to the new dynasty, all the while maintaining the Gothic count in his functions. Twice, subsequently, the Muslims threatened the town, in 793 and in 1019, but without taking it. Thereafter, if there were Muslims at Narbonne, they were part of a trade in slaves.4 A Carolingian metropolis (mid 8th - late 10th centuries) Rescued by the troops of Pepin the Short and not by those of his son, Emperor Charlemagne in person, as legend would have it, Narbonne enjoyed a century of Frankish peace, protected by the Spanish march created by the conquests of Charlemagne beyond the Pyrenees. The count of Narbonne was one of the great personages of the Carolingian world; at times he held the title of marquis of Gothia, but without this making the old city again the capital of Septimania. Narbonne was nonetheless one of the centres of this region henceforth called Gothia.5 Thus, in 864, Narbonne was one of ten mint sites authorized in a capitulary of Charles the Bald for the West Frankish kingdom, in addition to that of the palace. This ruler may have stayed at Narbonne some twenty years earlier; one of his successors, King Carloman, may have done the same in the years 882—4.

4

On the preceding, see Histoire de Narbonne, 98—102. On the Muslims in Languedoc, see Ph. Senac, "Presence musulmane en Languedoc. Realites et vestiges", Cahiers de Fanjeaux 18 (1983), 43-57. 5 Joining the Goths, already numerous in this ancient Gallic province of the Visigothic kingdom at the end of the eighth to the early ninth century were their compatriots from beyond the Pyrenees, the Hispani; having collaborated with the Franks during the Carolingian expeditions into Muslim Spain, they were obliged to flee the anger of the emir of Cordoba.

I Narbonne from Roman foundations to the 15th Century

5

In the religious domain, the positive experience of Narbonne under the Carolingians is noteworthy. Not only was Narbonne restored to metropolitan rank (with Uzes and Toulouse again subordinate, joining Nimes, Lodeve, Beziers, Maguelone, Agde, Carcassonne, and Elne, reconstituting the Narbonensis prima), but the ecclesiastical province that Narbonne directed was expanded to include bishoprics from beyond the Pyrenees that had been liberated from Islamic domination by the Carolingians (Gerona, Urgell, Barcelona, Ausone-Vich, later joined by Roda). The bishopric was raised to an archbishopric at the time of Nebridius (799-822), who carried on an epistolary correspondence with important figures of the entourage of Charlemagne and Louis the Pious (Alcuin, Theodulf of Orleans, Agobard of Lyon, and Benedict of Aniane, the restorer of the Benedictine order). But from the mid-ninth century new difficulties arose: Saracen (Muslim pirate) and Viking (Norman) attacks; internal struggles at the heart of the disintegrating Carolingian empire; finally, Magyar (Hungarian) raids at the beginning of the tenth century (about 927).6 Profiting from the disorder, little local potentates progressively usurped the power that the kings were losing, then that of the counts, acquiring regalian rights and making these hereditary within their own families. Among these usurpers were the viscounts of Narbonne. A seigneurial capital (late 9th - mid-14th centuries) In Narbonne at the cusp of the ninth—tenth centuries three viscounts succeeded each other from father to son, under the authority of the Guillelmides (Bernard Plantevelue and William the Pious, duke of Aquitaine): Alberic-Aubry, Maieul, Alberic-Aubry II (from whom descended the comital family of Macon, following his departure from Narbonne, and who was the maternal uncle of the abbot of Cluny, Saint Mayeul). After 918—919, another vicecomital line began, under the sway of the house of Toulouse-Rouergue, in the person of Eudes-Odo, son of a viscount named Francon and spouse of Richildis of Barcelona. This new line continued in direct descendance up to the viscountess Ermengarde, who was succeeded by her nephew, Pierre-Manrique of Lara, count of Molina, the founder of the vicecomital family whose elder branch persisted up to Amalric III (1336—1341) and the younger up to Guillaume II (1397— 1424). From the latter the viscounty passed to his uterine brother Pierre de 6

See J. Caille, "Les 'Vikings' et Narbonne: entre histoire et legende", Bulletin de la Societe d'etudes scientifiques de I'slude CI (2001), 51—3, on Norman raids of the mid-ninth century.

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Historical Overview

Tinieres, alias Guillaume III, before being sold to the family of Foix, who in turn ceded it to the king of France, Louis XII, in 1507. In the second half of the tenth century, the hereditary viscounts seized the episcopatus (the bishop's prerogatives) in their town, but from the mideleventh century, they came up against the ambition of archbishops Guifred of Cerdagne (1016-1079) and Richard of Millau (1106-1121), cardinal and ex-abbot of Saint-Victor of Marseille, respectively the founder and consolidated of the archiepiscopal lordship of Narbonne with which the viscounts had henceforth to share the dominium (political authority) over the town and the castra (fortified towns) of the environs, as well as the usurped regalian rights (judicial, financial, economic and other). Henceforth, Narbonne and its hinterland were administered by two rival lords (a layman and an ecclesiastic), each theoretically in the mouvance of the counts of Toulouse who in fact called themselves "dukes of Narbonne" from the late eleventh century. It was Raymond of Saint-Gilles who first took the title of "count of Narbonne" and then of "duke of Narbonne", from 1088, even before he had succeeded his brother in the county of Toulouse under the name of Raymond IV.7 He then transmitted this ducal title to all his successors. In fact, the lords of Narbonne, viscounts as much as archbishops, profited from the rivalries of lignages (family groupings) which tore the Midi apart in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,8 for each to construct a practically autonomous "principality" by relying on their faithful vassals; of these some resided in Narbonne itself where they held the towers of the town in fief.9 The archbishops, supporters of the Peace of God movement (late tenth century), then of the Truce of God (eleventh century), managed to make the viscounts acknowledge that they were vassals of the archbishops for a part of the town. The vicecomital power was not damaged thereby; Aymeric I participated in the crusade to the Holy Land where he died in Jerusalem in 1105. Aymeric II was active in the Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula where he perished at the battle of

7

See nos. V and VI of this volume: "The Origins and Development of the Temporal Lordship of the Archbishop in the Town and the Territory of Narbonne (9th—12th centuries)", and "La seigneurie temporelle de l'archeveque dans la ville de Narbonne (deuxieme moitie du XHIe siecle)". 8 See no. IX: "Les seigneurs de Narbonne dans le conflit Toulouse—Barcelone au Xlle siecle", and H. Debax, La Feodalite languedocienne (Xe—XIIe siecles) (Toulouse, 2003), 72—98: "La guerre de cent ans meridionale (fin XIe—fin Xlle siecle)". 9 See no. Ill: "Les remparts de Narbonne, des origines a la fin du Moyen Age", 23—8.

I Narbonnefrom Roman Foundations to the 15th Century

7

Fraga in 1134.10 Perhaps ever more impressive, the viscounty was administered for fifty years by an exceptional woman, the viscountess Ermengarde (1143—1192/4). Politically adept (she profited from the greed of the Toulousains and the Catalans), she was nonetheless an attentive patron and protector of the troubadours, reigning, as legend would have it, over a court of love, as did another lady of the Midi, her contemporary, the famous duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine.11 In the thirteenth century, while the renown of Ermengarde was spreading as far as Iceland12 and Saint Louis was reigning in Paris, the viscount of Narbonne was still a sufficiently important figure for the bourgeois of Montpellier to ally with him against their own lord, James the Conqueror, king of Aragon, against whom they were in a struggle to defend their "liberties and privileges". On 24 November 1254, in fact, a league between the universitas (political community) of Montpellier, represented by the consuls and syndics, on the one hand, and, on the other, Amalric I,13 reflected political influence, both seigneurial and urban, which, in the Midi in the mid-thirteenth century, was closely tied to the rival ambitions of the crowns of France and Aragon. A few years later, in the autumn of 1257, the same Amalric I welcomed to his palace Princess Christina of Norway, who stopped over at Narbonne on her way to Spain where she was to marry the infante Felipe, one of the brothers of King Alfonso X of Castille.14 For his part the archbishop busied himself in opposing the viscount. He allied himself with the king of Aragon.15 Thus in 1252, James the Conqueror placed Guillaume de la Broue in possession of the castles and Valencian domains conceded by the sovereign to the prelate's predecessor in Narbonne, Pierre Amiel (who had participated in the capture of Valencia 10

The names of these two viscounts recall that of the epic hero, Aymeri of Narbonne, one of the paladins of Charlemagne. See F. Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours (Ithaca-London, 2001), 1, 23, and notes 21-22. 11 See no. X: "Ermengarde, Viscountess of Narbonne (1127/29-1196/97), a Great Female Figure of the Aristocracy of the Midi". See also F. Cheyette, Ermengard,passim. 12 See no. XI of this volume: "Une idylle entre la vicomtesse Ermengarde de Narbonne et le prince Rognvald Kali des Orcades au milieu du Xlle siecle", following an Islandic saga of the end of the twelfth century, reworked and completed in 1234-1235. 13 J. Caille, "Une ligue entre les Montpellierains et le vicomte de Narbonne contre le roi d'Aragon, seigneur de Montpellier (milieu XHIe siecle)", Montpellier, la couronne d'slmgon et les pays de langue d'oc (1204—1349), slctes du Xlle Congres d'histoire de la couronne d'slmgon (Montpellier, 1985), Memoires de la Sodete archeologique de Montpellier XV (Montpellier, 1987),

65-73. 14 Caille, "Les Vikings et Narbonne", 56-7 and 59: "L'etape narbonnaise de Christina de Norvege", daughter of King Haakon IV Haakonsson. 15 Caille, "Une ligue", 68 and notes 22-23.

GONZALO PEREZ de LARA comte de Molina (1202 - 1239)

PIERRE, comte de Molina (1164 - 1202) vicomte de Narbonne (1192/1194) ep. Sancha de Navarre HENRI II (1214/17) Roi de Castille

FERDINAND de la Cerda

FERDINAND IV Roi de Castille

BERENGERE FERDINAND SANCHE IV PEDRO (t 1283) de Castille de la Cerda ( | 1275) ep. Maria de Molina ep. en 1281 (1253/1300) I Marguen te de Narbonne

AMALRIC II MARGUERITE MA HA UT-MAFALDA epouse ALPHONSE (1298-1326) ep. en 1281 de Narbonne de la Cerda vicomte de Narbonne Don Pedro de Castille

AYMERIC IV (1278 - 1298) vicomte de Narbonne

I

FERDINAND III Roi de Castille (1217/52) Roi de Leon (1230/52)

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DON ALFONSO (f 1272) ep. 1 = dona Mafalda( 1223) «jp. 3 = Marjorie C t e s s c de Molina (t 1244) d e Meneses

SANCHA ep. Pierre de Molina vicomte de Narbonne

BERENGERE e> ALPHONSE IX de Leon (1188/1230)

ISABELLE (t 1292) Desh6hl6c en faveur de sa tante Maria

FERDINAND IV de Castille (1295- 1313)

BLANCHE ALPHONSE X FELIPE BLANCA (t 1293) MARIA (t 1321) ep. en 1261 Roi (1231/74) e"p. Alfonso Fernandez C t e s s c de Molina (1292) / de Castille-Leon ep. en 1258 tetard d'Alphonse X ep. en 1281 (1252/84) Christina de Norvege de Castille Sanche IV de Castille empereur (1256) (1234/62) I fille du roi Haakon IV

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LOUIS IX roi de France (1226/1270)

BLANCHE 6p. Louis VIII roi de France

URRACA de Castille ep. Garcia Ramirez roi de Navarre (1134/50)

ALPHONSE VII Roi de Castille - Leon (1126 - 1157)

FERDINAND II Roi de Le6n (1157 - 1188)

ERMESSINDE (f 1170/1172) SANCHE III de Castille (1157/1158) ep. don Manrique de Lara, I comte de Molina ( | 1164) re"gent pendant la mi norite" de ALPHONSE VIII de Castille (1158/1166/1214) 6p. Alienor, fille d'Alienor d'Aquitaine

AMALRIC I er DON PEDRO DONA MAFALDA LOUIS PHILIPPE III (1244-1260) Roi de France vicomte de Narbonne GONZALEZ (t 1244) (1238-1270) desheriteen 1222 comtesse de Molina 1255 fiance a (1270/85) ep. Don Alfonso, frere de Ferdinand HI de Castille /

AYMERIC III vicomte de Narbonne (1194- 1238)

ERMENGARDE vicomtesse de Narbonne (1127/29-1134- 1196/97)

AYMERIC II vicomte de Narbonne (1105 - 1134)

VICOMTES DE NARBONNE ET FAMILLE ROYALE DE CASTILLE

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I Narbonne from Roman foundations to the 15th Century

9

in Spain with a troop of warriors, as before him Arnaud-Amalric had fought at the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 at the side of Peter II). Thus, it is not surprising that during the course of the thirteenth century there were reborn several disagreements at the heart of the double lordship between the viscount and the metropolitan; the latter continued to develop his temporal power, without neglecting the religious duties of his office, and had been elevated to the honorific dignity of primate in compensation for the loss of Iberian suffragans at the end of the eleventh century. From the mid-twelfth century and through the whole of the following century, the archbishops, among them Guy Foulques (1259-1263), the future pope Clement IV, combated Catharism and Waldensianism. It is true that these had little effect on Narbonne, but the town was soon to be agitated instead (late thirteenth - early fourteenth century) by the condemnation of the Spiritual Franciscans and their disciples, the Beguins and Beguines.16 A "bourgeois" and "consular" town To go back a bit in time, while the feudal and seigneurial organization of Narbonne was in formation, the town experienced great economic expansion in this "springtime of Europe". The agglomeration grew; outside the walls of the city of antiquity, two suburbs appeared on the left bank of the Aude (Coyran-Belveze upstream, Villeneuve downstream) while a third, called simply the "Bourg", developed on the right bank. The population multiplied and diversified. In the course of the twelfth century, the two coseigneurs made a place in the administration of the town for the active elements of the population, urban knights and members of the elite of wealth and education, the probi homines. Although the lords and the "people" (populus) of Narbonne had been represented by individuals called consuls since 1132 in Genoa and 1148 at Tortosa, it was only in 1205 that eight consuls (four for the "Cite"' and four for the "Bourg") began to participate in Narbonne's municipal government. Thus were born at the beginning of the thirteenth century the "consulate of the Cite" and the "consulate of the Bourg".17 Throughout the thirteenth century, the two consulates18 developed, both attaining maturity at the end of the century; endowed with police 16 The Franciscan convent of Narbonne, where the famous Peter John Olivi resided, was at the heart of the struggle. See Dictionnaire du Mqyen -Age, directed by C. Gauvard, A. de Libera, and M. Zink (Paris, 2002), 1018-19 adverbum "Olivi". 17 See no. VII: "Le consulat de Narbonne: probleme des origines". 18 J. Caille, Dictionnaire du Mqyen -Age, 337—8, adverbum "consul".

I 10

Historical Overview

power and rights over justice as well as financial and economic prerogatives, they enjoyed a real authority that was nonetheless restrained by the viscount and the archbishop who retained rights of high justice and the most remunerative privileges, notably the right to mint money.19 Managers of the economic life of the town, they supervised the trades as well as commercial exchange. The responsibility for public works fell on them: upkeep of the streets; maintenance and construction of the bridges in the town as well as in its territory;20 and surveillance of the flow of the River Aude by regulating its use by mills and by artisans who employed water in their industrial activities (dyers, fullers, tanners, butchers and the like). Also within their purview were matters of public charity and education, two domains where they occupied a growing role alongside ecclesiastical authorities. With regard to hospitals and charitable institutions, the town experienced a progressive municipalization, along with laicization.21 Education remained a monopoly of the church, although the studium generate of Narbonne, which had received privileges and recognition from Pope Innocent IV in the years 1243—1245, had fallen into decline by the second half of the thirteenth century.22 It was only in the fourteenth century, it seems, that the consuls took the initiative to create public schools (two are known by the end of the century). From the last third of the thirteenth century, the consuls found it useful to appeal to royal protection against the archbishop and the viscount. Preferring a master they imagined more distant over these local lords, the consuls made an effort to attach themselves directly to the Capetian ruler, on the basis of the oath of fidelity that they pledged to him as all subjects to their sovereign. In 1338, the union of the two consulates was proclaimed with the approval of the king and in spite of the opposition of the lords. 19

The consuls of Narbonne would never attain the autonomy and the power of those of Montpellier. See no. II: "Urban Expansion in the Region of Languedoc from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century: the Examples of Narbonne and Montpellier", especially 67-8. 20 J. Caille, "Les nouveaux ponts de Narbonne (fin XHIe — milieu XlVe siecle). Problemes topographiques et economiques", Etudes medievales languedociennes (Hommage a Andre Dupont) (Montpellier, 1974), 25-38. 21 See nos. XII and XIII: "Hospices et assistance a Narbonne (Xlle—XlVe siecles)", and "Hospitals, Charity, and Urban Life in the Middle Ages: The Case of Narbonne 'Revisited'", as well as J. Caille, Hopitaux et charite publique a Narbonne au Mqyen Age (fin Xle-fin XVe siecle) (Toulouse, 1978). 22 See no. XIV: "Le studium de Narbonne", and on the existence of legal education at Narbonne, A. Gouron, "Canonistes et civilistes des ecoles de Narbonne et de Beziers", La Science du droit dans le Midi de la ¥ ranee au Mqyen Age (London, Variorum Reprints, 1984), no. VI, 523-36.

I Narbonne from Roman foundations to the 15th Century

11

Henceforth, Narbonne had only one administration for the whole of the town on which royal control weighed heavily, as the king interfered more and more in municipal management. There opened thus a new stage in the history of the town with the progressive disappearance, first of seigneurial power, then of consular power (in spite of a brief resurgence of the latter at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries). A "bonne vill^ of the kingdom of France It was in the person of Louis VII that the Capetians, with little power in the Midi at the moment of their accession to royal power in 987, made contact with Narbonne. On his return trip from a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella (1154-1155), Louis is thought to have passed through Narbonne. Thereafter he had a sustained correspondence with the archbishop on the one hand and, on the other, with the viscountess Ermengarde, in favour of whom he took sides in a lawsuit that opposed her to one of her vassals who was supported by the count of Toulouse, brother-in-law of the sovereign.23 But it was with the Albigensian Crusade that the monarchy came to play a leading role in the Midi in general and at Narbonne in particular. In the treaty of Paris-Meaux (1229), the title of duke of Narbonne was removed definitively from the count of Toulouse and conferred on the king of France. The count of Toulouse had been compelled as early as 1215 to cede the title to Simon de Montfort, after a brief dispute with the leader of the papal crusade, Arnaud-Amalric, former abbot of Citeaux, then archbishop of Narbonne. The town was thus integrated into the senechaussee of Carcassonne-Beziers with royal power represented by a simple bailiff (^bayle" or "bajulus"), then by a "viguier" from 1368 (the end result of a decision taken in 1347). In the interim, Philip the Fair and Amalric II, both possessing rights over the Cite, had attempted to conclude in 1309 an act of pariage to manage them together with the aid of a common court. But, in the face of the opposition of both the consuls and the archbishop, the accord was finally broken in 1322. The centralizing mission of the monarchy continued nonetheless. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, the Capetians, then the Valois, considered Narbonne as one of the "bonnes villei' of the kingdom of France, following the example of its rival Montpellier, the highest category 23

See no. X: "Ermengarde, viscountess", note 75, as well as F. Cheyette, Ermengard, 214-19, 268-9, 288.

I 12

Historical Overview

of urban status.24 When in 1342 the consuls began efforts to convince the king that Narbonne become the seat of a viguerie, separate from that of Beziers, they justified their request by the fact that their town was "the oldest, the most noteworthy, the largest, and the most populated... of the senechaussee of Carcassonne".25 This opinion was confirmed, in 1355, by the more impartial testimony of John of Wingfield, counsellor of the prince of Wales, who affirmed that Narbonne was "poi meyndre de Loundres" ("a little smaller than London"), the principal city of England which had a population estimated at between 40,000 and 80,000, or maybe even 100,000, inhabitants at its medieval peak.26 During the last two centuries of the Middle Ages (fourteenth—fifteenth centuries), the history of Narbonne merged more and more with that of the kingdom of France with which it shared successes and concerns. The town furnished men of arms for the crusade against Aragon (1285), the wars of Gascony (1295 and 1297), and even that of Flanders (early fourteenth century). From 1337 Narbonne participated like the rest of the kingdom in the Hundred Years War, even if the battles themselves did not really have a direct impact on the town, except when the troops of the son of Edward III of England, the prince of Wales (whom history calls the Black Prince), besieged it during the great march, undertaken in 1355, across Languedoc. In the fifteenth century, when civil war broke out, Narbonne rallied definitively to the Armagnacs and the "little king of Bourges", the future Charles VII, after a moment of hesitation in favour of the Burgundians. Narbonnais knights served in the royal armies and shared the suffering (payment of ransoms, even death). The viscounts themselves suffered: Aymeric VI was made prisoner twice (1345, and 1356 at the famous battle of Poitiers); Charles V recompensed him for his services by naming him admiral of France. Guillaume II, present at Azincourt in 1415, died at the battle of Verneuil in 1424. Close to the kings of France, the viscounts also entertained relationships of a political and familial nature with the Iberian peninsula, papal Avignon, 24

See no. II, "Urban Expansion", 68 and note 23. These two appeared in the records of "bonnes villes" of 1314, 1317, and 1324. The designation was for the "most notable of the notable towns", according to Th. Dutour,~Laville medievale (Paris, 2003), 63. 25 Note that Montpellier, less old, it is true, than Narbonne, was located in the senechaussee of Beaucaire-Nimes. 26 J. Caille, "Narbonne au XlVe siecle: une histoire pleine de contrastes", Le Grand retable de Narbonne\ A^ctes du 1er colloque d'histoire de Fart meridional au Mojen Age (Narbonne, Palais des archeveques, 1988), Connaissance de Narbonne, no. 2 (Narbonne 1990), 15—22, especially 17, notes 20-21. David Nicholas, Urban Europe, 1100-1700 (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, 2003), 13, gives London a population of about 80,000.

I Narbonnefrom Roman Foundations to the 15th Century

13

and Italy. As a good example, Guillaume II went campaigning in Sardinia at the beginning of the fifteenth century to claim the inheritance of the nephew of the fourth spouse of Aymeric VI, Beatrix, the oldest daughter of the "judge" of Arboree.27 Zealous servants of the realm like the viscounts, the archbishops of the fourteenth century were also closely tied to the pontifical court of Avignon, some of them even related to the popes (Bernard de Fargues, nephew of Clement V, Pierre de la Jugie, nephew of Clement VI, as was Jean I Roger, who was also the brother of Gregory XI). Narbonne emerges thus as a crossroads of influences, particularly in the religious and cultural domains.28 In the fifteenth century a decline set in.29 It is true that members of the high nobility of the realm occupied the episcopal see — Louis d'Harcourt (1436-1452), Renault de Bourbon (1472-1482), and Georges d'Amboise (1492—1494) — but they were often absentee prelates. On the other hand, in 1415 the town was the setting for several weeks (from mid-August to midDecember) of important deliberations that would result in the composition of articles of the "capitulation of Narbonne", signed on 13 December in the new chapter hall of the cathedral chapter in the presence of Archbishop Francois de Conzie. This act restored "the peace of the sainted union of the Church",30 in detaching the last partisans of Benedict XIII, and essentially brought to an end the Great Schism of the West. On this occasion Sigismond of Luxembourg, king of the Romans, made two stays in the town (15 August/18 September, then 7 November/ 17 December). Present there at the same time, in addition to the counsellors of the future emperor, were ambassadors of the council of Constance, who accompanied Sigismond, as well as the ambassador of the king of France (the archbishop of Reims), representatives of the kings of Castille, Aragon, and Navarre, envoys of the counts of Foix and Armagnac, to mention only the most important. Also passing through were ambassadors of the king of France to the king of Castille or to the king of Aragon. In all, there was a great deal of 27

Viscount of Narbonne from 1397 to 1424, he held the title of judge of Arboree (province of Oristano) from 1409 to 1420. He led several expeditions to Sardinia, among them that of 1416—1417. See L. Gallinari, "Guglielmo III (sic) di Narbona, ultimo sovrano di Arborea e la guerra dei Cent'Anni", Medioevo. Saggie e rassegne 18 (Cagliari, 1993), 91—121. 28 Caille, "Narbonne au XlVe siecle", 19-21. 29 See no. XV: "Narbonne au debut du XVe siecle...", 81 and note 56. 30 According to the expression employed in the book of the "clavaire" of 1415 (A. M. Narbonne, CC 2424) a "criee" was made in the Cite and the Bourg to announce the good news. See J. Caille, "La conclusion des accords de Narbonne", Le Midi et le Grand Schisme d'Occident, Cahiers de Fanjeaux 39 (Toulouse, 2004), 487-516.

Benedetta(tl383)

Ugone III (t 1383) juge d'Arboree

GUILLAUME II vicomte de Narbonne (1397-1424) juge d'Arboree (1409-1410/1420) 1

Pierre de Tiniere — • • • vicomte de Narbonne (1424-1447) sous le nom de Guillaume III

Guillaume Ier (1388-1397) vicomte de Narbonne ep. Guerine de Beaufort-Sanilhac qui epouse en 2e noces Guillaume de Tiniere

Beatrice (|1377) (1363) ep. Aymeric VI, vicomte de Narbonne

Mariano IV (f 1376)

Ugone II de Bas-Serra juge d'Arboree (t 1335)

Frederick 1387)

I

Mariano V ( t 1407) juge d'Arboree

Eleonore (1384-1404) e"p. Brancaleone Doria (tl409)

VICOMTES DE NARBONNE ET JUGES D'ARBOREE

Leonardo Cubello marquis d'Oristano (1410-1427)

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I Narbonnefrom Roman Foundations to the 15th Century

15

activity that undoubtedly contributed to the renown of Narbonne, still an important town in spite of its difficulties. It was no surprise that King Louis XII profited from the opportunity to integrate directly into his own domain both the urban centre and the viscounty of Narbonne, in purchasing it in 1507 from the heir of the younger son of Gaston IV of Foix. There is no doubt, too, that the walled town of Narbonne was once again an important military site after the 1493 restoration of Roussillon to Aragon, following its brief occupation by Louis XL Narbonne once again appeared as one of the "capitals" of the Midi.

II. A N ECONOMIC METROPOLIS OF LANGUEDOC

It was not just within the political, military, and religious domains that Narbonne could claim a privileged place among southern towns. The economic realm was also one where Narbonne excelled. From one apogee to another: Antiquity and the early Middle Ages From its origins, Narbonne was the site of marked economic activity. Despite the vicissitudes of its history, the town consistently played an important economic role from antiquity onwards. Early on, Narbonne emerged as a "large industrious town" where artisanal trades were numerous. It was also an "active centre of exchange", a reputation recognized in the early Roman Empire by Strabo in his Geography where he called the town "the greatest commercial port of the region... of which it would be more accurate to say that it was the port of the whole Celtic world, so much did it surpass the others by the number of its enterprises for which it served as the commercial entrepot."31 This initial apogee persisted throughout the first two centuries CE, with the town recovering quickly from the risk of recession perceptible at the transition from the first century to the second century. With the third and fourth centuries the alteration of the great commercial itineraries, added to the general stagnation of the western empire, and the fact that its port sanded up in the same period, caused Narbonne, to decline incontestably, until a certain stabilization took over in the fifth century. When the western empire fell to the barbarians at the end of the fifth century (476), Narbonne was no longer the great commercial See M. Gayraud, Histoire de Narbonne, 66—72.

I 16

Historical Overview

centre that it had been. Nonetheless, it survived as a cosmopolitan centre with Gallo-Romans, Goths, Greeks, Syrians, and Jews, persisting in longdistance trade in luxury goods throughout the difficult period of the early Middle Ages (late fifth — late tenth century), although eventually, in the Carolingian period, only the Jewish colony remained from the eastern elements of its population. Within its ranks, in all likelihood, were members of the Rhadanite Jews whose commercial sphere stretched "from the land of the Franks on the western sea" (that is, the Mediterranean) to Egypt or Asia Minor, regions from which they obtained spices, aromatic herbs, and precious cloths (certain of them with a far-eastern provenance), exchanged for Slavic slaves (women, young men, eunuchs) and Frankish swords, according to a Muslim geographer, native of Persia (Ibn Khurdadhbeh). The prosperity of the Jews of Narbonne served as a rallying point for continued mercantile activity, assuring the persistence of the town's commercial function; this also included an important trade in salt and in the diffusion of sarcophagi of the Aquitanian type and later that of altar tables.32 From the end of the tenth century, as soon as the first signs of economic revival appeared, Narbonne, situated at the heart of a rich hinterland, capitalized on agricultural productivity that soon produced marketable surpluses. The town quickly played a role in the rejuvenation of local commerce that in turn opened to larger horizons. As early as 1079, the lords of Narbonne signed a pact with the "men of Montpellier" (^'homines de Montepistillario"), desirous of trading in Narbonnais territory "on land and on sea"; these were the beginnings of commercial relations between the two localities soon to become the two principal commercial entrepots for medieval trade of the Languedoc.33 In sum, from the twilight of antiquity to the dawn of "the European spring", never had Narbonne's economy completely collapsed, in spite of the wide ranges of difficulties experienced (including the plague of 589-590). The medieval apogee (13th — mid-14th c.) It was not unexpected, therefore, that Narbonne again became a major economic centre, for all of the thirteenth century and at least until the mid32 J. Caille, "Narbonne, grand port mediterranean au Moyen Age", Narbonne et la mer de rAntiquite a nos jours, Catalogue de ['exposition du Musee archeologique de Narbonne (Narbonne, 1990), 43-5. 33 J. Caille, "Les marchands de Montpellier et la leude de Narbonne dans le dernier quart du Xle siecle", bulletin historique de la ville de Montpellier 5 (1985): 3—5.

I Narbonnefrom Roman Foundations to the 15th Century

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fourteenth century, driven by the wave of European growth, recovering "an activity comparable to that of the best Roman days", according to Philippe Wolff.34 Narbonne was first of all a town of diverse artisan industries, among which two in particular attained prominence: leather work and hides (various operations turning tanned leather into finished leather), on the one hand, and on the other, the cloth industry, with the wholesale production of large pieces of wool fabric (as big as 22 metres by 2 metres wide) from the spinning stage to the finished cloth (pare), dyed, and ready to be sold.35 Products of these two artisan industries (particularly the second), played a vital role as a medium of exchange, especially within the context of Mediterranean commerce where this type of merchandise filled the outgoing cargo holds on the spice route. These activities were all the more prosperous because the surrounding region and those nearby furnished the basic necessities: wool or leather of quality coming from the important flocks of sheep of the Corbieres, the Razes, the Minervois, and the Lauragais; dyestuffs (the grana, scarlet grain, because of its appearance, also called kermes from the Arabic word of Persian origin that designated a small 34

O n t h e p r o b l e m s o f e c o n o m i c history: J. Caille, Histoire de Narbonne, 141—72; E . Baratier, "Marseille et Narbonne au XlVe siecle d'apres les sources marseillaises", XLVe Congres de la Federation historique du Languedoc mediterraneen et du Roussillon (Narbonne 1972) (Montpellier, 1973), 86-92; H. Bresc, "Marchands de Narbonne et du Midi en Sicile (13001460); ibidem, 93—9; D. Abulafia, "Narbonne, the Lands of the Crown of Aragon and the Levant Trade (1187—1400)", Montpellier, la Couronne d'slmgon et les pays de langue d'oc (1204— 1349), slctes du Congres d'histoire de la Couronne d'slmgon (Montpellier, 1985), Memoires de la Societe archeologique de Montpellier XV(Montpellier, 1987): 189—207, reprinted in Commerce and Conquest in the Mediterranean (1100-1500) (London: Variorum Reprints, 1993), no. XIV; G. Romestan, "Le commerce a Narbonne dans le second quart du XlVe siecle", Etudes languedociennes (Hommage a Jean Combes), Memoires de la Societe archeologique de Montpellier XIX (Montpellier, 1991), 47—60; G. Larguier, Le Drop et le grain en Languedoc. Narbonne et le Narbonnais (1300—1789) (Perpignan, 1996; 2nd ed. revised and augmented, Perpignan, 1999), I: 25—247, first part, Ruptures, 1300—milieu XVe siecle; K. Reyerson, Society, Law and Trade in Medieval Montpellier (London: Variorum Reprints, 1995), index ad verbum "Narbonne"; E. Salvatori, Boni amid et vicini. Le rela^ioni tra Visa e la cittd della Francia meridionale dallXI alia fine delXIII secolo, Picola Biblioteca Gisem 20 (Pisa, 2002), index ad verba "Narbona", "Aimerico", and "Ermengarda", "vicomte de Narbonne" and "vicomtesse de Narbonne". All of these works provide additional bibliography on the subject. 35 On the cloth industry, see especially, G. Romestan, "Draperie roussillonnaise et draperie languedocienne dans la premiere moitie du XlVe siecle", XLIIe Congres de la Federation historique du Languedoc mediterraneen et du Roussillon (Perpignan, 1969) (Montpellier, 1970), 31-59, and "La gabelle des draps en Languedoc (1318-1333)", Etudes medievales languedo ciennes (Hommage a ylndre Duponi) (Montpellier, 1974), 197—237. See also D. Cardon, La Draperie au Moyen Age, Essor d'une grande industrie europeenne (Paris, 1999), index ad verbum

"Narbonne".

I 18

Historical Overview

insect, the cochineal beetle, that lived in the scrub oak trees that were particularly numerous in the garrigues of the Languedoc and from which was extracted the priceless vermilion dye of vivid red; woad or pastel, a plant cultivated in the nearby Lauragais or a bit farther away in the Albigeois that produced a beautiful blue); fuller's earth of which there were deposits on the island of Cauquenne alias Sainte-Lucie that separated the lagoon of Bages-Sigean from that of Gruissan, to the south of Narbonne. The Aude river furnished the water that was indispensable to the various soakings and fashionings of the leathers as well as the multiple washings and dye baths of the cloths. On the banks or the canals that derived from it, fulling mills were installed (molendini draperii). These facilities were necessary for the production of cloths that, about 1330, Narbonne exported in huge quantity: 100,000 to 160,000 pieces. From the significant development of these two industries — cloth and leather — came trade, as soon as their production surpassed local needs, which was the case for Narbonne. Although, as just noted, the immediate conditions were very favourable, sufficient raw materials could not always be procured locally. It was necessary, first, to find additional wool; that could be imported through Roussillon and from other lands of the crown of Aragon. But it was particularly in the domain of dyestuffs that the local supplies were insufficient. For the colour red, in addition to grana, brazilwood was brought in from the East or madder from the north of France where weld, a plant used in making yellow dye, was also produced. For ordinary black, it was possible to use gall of Aleppo or Alexandria, but the best was to use a bath of brazilwood, with the cloth previously dyed blue with the aid of pastel. Alum was also necessary as a fixative for cloth, and indispensable as preparation for dyeing or again for the softening operations for leather in the tanning process. Finally, and especially, cloth and leather were themselves objects of trade on the local level, first, to satisfy the needs of inhabitants of the town and its environs, but also regionally, inter-regionally and even internationally. The Narbonnais were anything but passive in this period that witnessed much commercial exchange. They were not content to await foreign buyers at home. Furnished with prized finished products, they carved out a place for their town in international markets. In bringing these commercial ambitions to fruition, Narbonne benefited from its situation as a crossroads of overland, river, and sea routes. The Roman road system provided a network through the Corbieres, the Minervois, and especially the via Aquitania and the via Domitia, the latter forking into two branches in the immediate area of the Cite; one of these

I Narbonnefrom Roman Foundations to the 15th Century

19

crossed the agglomeration from one end to another, bridging the Aude where there had been a bridge in antiquity, while the other branch circled the town to the west, using a ford and rejoining the first one farther south in the direction of Spain. In addition to the old roads, there grew up a network of medieval paths more or less parallel {cami roumieu^ cami salinier, via mercaderid), linked one to the other with transversals.36 Thus the arteries of commerce and communication were readily in place: with the Toulousain and beyond, the Bordelais, with rich Catalonia, and beyond with the Muslim world (then, with the Reconquista, the diverse Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula), with eastern Languedoc and, finally, with Provence. Departing from the via Domitia at Saint-Thibery and passing through Lodeve, Millau, and the Massif Central, it was possible to connect with the "voie regordane" that led from Montpellier or from Nimes through Ales, Le Puy, and Montferrand to the Champagne fairs. From Millau, via Rodez, Figeac, or Cahors, one reached Aquitaine and the port of La Rochelle with its opening to the Atlantic sea route to England, without passing via the sill of Naurouze that the Roman road {via Aquitanid) followed. The overland route reinforced the maritime route linking Narbonne to cities of Provence and Italy, the source of merchandise of the Levant before the Narbonnais themselves went in search of these products. In fact, the geographic situation of Narbonne made it a crossroads of important maritime routes that regained an intense activity in this period. As in antiquity, the port complex at Narbonne comprised a river port in the town and several outer harbours in the lagoons. The first was located in the 600-metre zone where the Aude was protected by the Gallo-Roman fortification of the Cite, to which was added from the end of the eleventh century the walls of the Bourg on the right bank, then those of the suburbs of Coyran-Belveze and Villeneuve upstream and downstream on the left bank. The principal unloading docks were downstream from the PontVieux, at the site called Les Barques (las Naus). From there lighter craft (alleges or capols) navigated the smaller channel of the river to the lagoons that communicated one with another via canalized passages and opened into the sea through the gram or streams piercing the ribbon shoreline. There the transhipments were from boat to boat on maritime craft (links) that made their way to the merchant vessels anchored at Leucate (at the site 36

On the "merchant road" that would have been constructed on the order of the viscountess Ermengarde, see no. X: "Ermengarde, Viscountess", 20 and note 89. On the road network of the Middle Ages, see K. Reyerson. The Art of the Deal. Intermediaries of Trade in Medieval'Montpellier'(Leiden, 2002), 160-1, 194-6.

i 20

Historical Overview

Narbonne: the Aude, the 'etangs' and the Mediterranean (conjectural reconstruction).

I Narbonnefrom Roman Foundations to the 15th Century

21

called ha Franqui) or at Collioure, Lattes, Aigues-Mortes, or even Marseille. Normally the seagoing ships did not tie up in the Narbonnais lagoons, although they could have sought refuge there in big storms or if damaged. In sum, though the site was not of the first order, medieval Narbonne offered many possibilities for commercial mooring: in town, in the north cove of the lagoon of Bages (galley port alias Capelles), or even at the south of the island of the Aute (Port-Mahon). In all cases temporary installations were sufficient, leaving no archeological remains. The French royal fleet was several times stationed off Narbonne: in 1291, 1323, 1325, and 1373. Moreover, in the absence of a permanent arsenal, the harbours of Narbonne sheltered periodic naval construction; called the "escar", these were situated in various places, notably in the Bourg "between the garden of the Dominicans and the Aude" (1285), or to the north of the lagoon of Bages at Cape las (1319).37 In spite of its capricious flow, the Aude upstream from Narbonne seems to have been navigable, starting from Limoux, though perhaps for hauling and floating operations only. With a flourishing community of artisans and as the crossroads of a transport network, at its apogee Narbonne could again claim the rank of an international centre of commerce. And the town did not confine its export activities to local products; beyond the raw materials necessary for local industries, there was also a trade in luxury merchandise from distant lands. After the channelling of some of these goods to local consumption, most were re-exported regionally and internationally. Thus the cloth and linen of Flanders and "France" (the heart of the kingdom) were sent throughout the eastern and western Mediterranean basins. The riches of Romania (Byzantine Empire), the Levant, and Egypt (certain of Asian provenance), the spices and aromatic plants (pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves), sugar, textiles (cotton and silk), dyestuffs (indigo, brazilwood), alum, wax, exotic fruits, precious stones were sold in the Narbonnais but also re-exported over long distances. The same was true of merchandise coming from the Iberian Peninsula and through it from Berber North Africa (untreated and semi-treated leather, pack animals and saddle animals, paper, mercury, pitch, tar, soap, wax, fruits and more). Thus functioned a continuous cycle of exportation, importation, and redistribution. Depending on the period, cereals, including wheat, were shipped from Sicily and even from Constantinople or sold in these same countries or in Iberian lands. Honey, 37 J.-P. Sosson, "Un compte inedit de construction de galeres a Narbonne (1318-1320), " Bulletin de linstitut historique beige de Rome, XXIV (1962), 57-318, and F. P. Caselli, Un cantiere navale del trecento (Milan, 1984).

Principal commercial routes, end of 13th-start of 14th century.

EPICES

PRINCIPAUXITINERAIRES COMMERCIAUX (fin XIIIe siecle - debut XIVe siecle)

o

I

to to

)—\

I Narbonnefrom Roman Foundations to the 15th Century

23

harvested throughout the Narbonnais, was sent to the Near East, as was wine. There was also a traffic in slaves (Saracens, Africans, Tatars and others). Finally, yet another trade, the commerce in salt, occupying a certain number of Narbonnais, rounded out the picture. A whole diplomatic effort was mustered to organize these diverse commercial relations. There was the early accord with Montpellier (1079). Then, throughout the twelfth century Narbonne profited skilfully from the rivalry among Italian cities that were disputing the hegemony of the Mediterranean, to carve out a place alongside them. Narbonne made agreements with Genoa (1132, 1166, 1181), with Pisa (1167 and 1174), while at the same time making overtures in Catalonia where ties with Tortosa emerged in 1148. In the thirteenth century the first order of business was to solidify a position in the western Mediterranean. Rejection of the tutelage of the Italian mercantile powers did not mean the abandonment of contacts; the old treaties were revised in 1224, 1278, 1279, and 1306 to permit greater reciprocity between Narbonne and Genoa, on the one hand, and Pisa on the other. New accords were made in the years 1224-1225 with Vintimille, Savona, and Nice, Hyeres, Toulon, and especially Marseille. These agreements were renewed several times, and extended to Sicily in 1331 and in 1339 to Morocco (Maghreb-el-Aksa). Very much a presence in the western Mediterranean, Narbonne also sought to assure the expansion of its trade in the eastern basin. Thus in 1340 Narbonne signed commercial treaties with the Emperor of Constantinople, Andronicus III Paleologus, with his successor John V Paleologus (1341— 1390), and in 1356 with the Grand Master of the Order of the Knights of Saint-John of Jerusalem at Rhodes. Narbonnais ships could be seen passing by Messina or Tunis and making for Romania, Crete, Rhodes, Cyprus, then also Egypt, Syria, or Lesser Armenia, Anatolia, and the Black Sea. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Narbonnais merchants appeared in person in the various commercial zones with which the town had developed ties.38 With the complexity of business on the rise, they formed associations or partnerships (generally familial), uniting a small number of individuals temporarily; in this case, only a few associates travelled, playing the role of factors, while the rest stayed at home. Muleteers called "aventureriP provided overland transport. For maritime 38 Notably the Iberian Peninsula. See G. Romestan, "Les marchands languedociens dans le royaume de Valence pendant la premiere moitie du XlVe siecle", Bulletin philologique et historique du Comite des travaux historiques et scientifiques (C. T. H.S.), annee 1969 (Paris, 1972), I: 115—92. Also the Levant, often in association with Montpellierains. See Reyerson, The A^rt of the Deal, 41.

I 24

Historical Overview

traffic, merchants filled the cargo holds of ships (galleys or nefs for the high sea; links, tarides, or simple uncovered barques, of limited tonnage, for coastal commerce). The Narbonnnais readily made contracts with boats of Italian, Catalan, Provencal, or Languedocian flags. Inhabitants of Narbonne possessed some vessels that they hired out, without discrimination, to their fellow citizens and to other Mediterranean merchants. There was thus an active trade of which the most brilliant period fell in the years from the mid-thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century.39 Thereafter, trade weakened, and although commercial exchanges recovered real vigour in the last quarter of the fourteenth century,40 Narbonne became more and more "passive" in that foreigners often came to Narbonne itself or to the fairs of the region in search of local artisanal products, and these encountered growing competition from those of the Iberian Peninsula. While there was still cloth of Narbonne in Italy in this era, this trade was in the hands of Italian merchants installed at Montpellier. It was to Montpellier that the most important of the Narbonnais merchants of the fourteenth century, Ramon Serralher, transferred his residence. Without denying his fatherland (he continued to call himself a "citizen of Narbonne"), he also went by the designation of "inhabitant of Montpellier", and "bourgeois of Cyprus". He did considerable business in the Levant, which enabled him, before his death in 1363, to buy from the viscount of Narbonne the chateau of Coursan for 5,000 gold florins. At this date, James Olivier (alias Jaume Olivier), another Narbonnais merchant (the town archives have preserved his account book for the years 1381-1392),41 commenced a career that was

39 Caille, "Les ponts de Narbonne", 35-8: study confirming the thesis according to which the decadence of Narbonne should not be dated to the beginning of the fourteenth century. See A. Blanc, "Documents pour servir a l'histoire du commerce et de l'industrie a Narbonne a la fin du XlVe siecle", Bulletin de la Commission archeologique de Narbonne (hereafter B.C.A.N.), II (1892-1893), 96-119, criticizing the work of C. Port, Essai sur Fhistoire du commerce maritime de Narbonne (Paris, 1854), which wrongly situated (p. 190ff) the decline earlier: "au debut du XlVe siecle, et meme a 1320, la decadence commerciale de la ville" although this "decadence n'a pas ete si rapide... et qu'elle n'a pas commence d'aussi bonne heure". Baratier, "Marseille et Narbonne", 92, put forth the same idea according to which "au XlVe siecle, Narbonne jouit encore d'une vitalite economique plus important qu'on ne s'accordait a le dire...". Larguier, Le Drop, takes up this point and expands it. 40 Blanc, "Documents", 97; Baratier, "Marseille et Narbonne", 90-2; Larguier,~LeDrop, 55-75 (end 14th-beginning of the 15th c). 41 A. Blanc, he hivre de compte de Jacme Olivier, marchand narbonnais du XlVe siecle (Paris, 1899), edition of the manuscript of 150 folios, preserved in the A. M. of Narbonne, preceded by an introduction (I—CXVI) and followed by an alphabetized table of names of persons and places (1052—1213). As early as 1893, the author presented the document and

I Narbonnefrom Roman Foundations to the 15th Century

25

less brilliant but nonetheless exemplary. His activities were many; he lent money and food stuffs. He was an estate administrator and managed the succession of one of the wealthiest bourgeois of the town. He took on farm the communal taxes and public works. On several occasions he served as town consul. But, above all, he traded, sending cloth and honey at least once a year to the Middle East (Alexandria, Beirut, Damascus, Rhodes), purchasing spices in return. He also had business relations with other merchants of the Bourg of Narbonne and with those of Montpellier, Perpignan, Barcelona, Mazeres, and elsewhere. He bought raw material for his personal atelier where he had cloth made for his account and that of other merchants or for individuals. Finally, he supervised the exploitation of his lands, in the environs of Narbonne, of which the harvests were essentially destined for the consumption of his domestic household. He also purchased untreated cloth in the region of Narbonne and had it finished or dyed by cloth finishers or dyers of the town. In 1377 the municipal authorities of the town named a local merchant as "consul", dispatched to the "grand soudan" (the sultan) and to the ports of Alexandria, Cyprus, and Rhodes. In the same period, Narbonnais merchants of Famagusta were sufficiently rich to arm a vessel to rescue the viscount Aymeric VI, admiral of France (1369-1373), imprisoned at Beirut following a naval defeat. Once the viscount was freed, the merchants offered him the sum of 500 florins to pay for his return to France. Finally, the travel journal in the Holy Land of Messire Simon de Sarrebruck recounts that, in 1395, among the Christian funduqs of Alexandria, one had a monopoly over the lodging of pilgrims. It was directed by a personage, chosen by the sultan with the title of "official consul of Narbonne and of the pilgrims".42 These figures were among the last representatives of the international long-distance commerce of Narbonne. Later, while a few nefs and some merchants of Narbonne could still be encountered in the eastern Mediterranean (at least before 1420), they were only remnants of a bygone era. Before addressing this period of decline, it would be useful to treat the demography of Narbonne in its best days. The number of hearths, at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, when multiplied by a coefficient of 4.5 to 5 persons, provides a realistic estimate the personage under the same title in the B.C.A.N., II (1892-1893): 273-81. See also Larguier, Le Drop, I: 57-65. 42 At the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth, the Narbonnais were common at Alexandria. See B. Doumerc, "Les marchands du Midi a Alexandrie", Annales du Midi 97 (1985), 272 and 274-8.

I 26

Historical Overview

of population size. To the totals obtained in this fashion, one must add the "non taxable inhabitants" {non taillables)'. numerous ecclesiastics in the town, both regular and secular clergy, Jews who were taxed separately, "the poor" who were exempt from tax (paying nothing, hence the label "nihils" or "nichils"), and finally slaves, who in the view of the time were only objects possessed by rich Narbonnais, including the archbishop. The following figures emerge from these calculations: 1294-1295 from 20,000 to 25,000 souls, and in 1344, from 28,000 to 31,000 inhabitants, making Narbonne "a large town within Languedoc, within France, and even within Europe".43 Narbonne's demographic expansion seems to have continued until the Black Death of 1348. It is not possible to number the victims of this epidemic; some suggest 7,000 to 8,000 deaths; others argue for "much larger" losses.44 After a certain recovery in the second half of the fourteenth century, in spite of a return of the plague in 1360,45 the population continued to shrink, it would seem, in the fifteenth century (at least until the 1460s). By the end of the Middle Ages some places in the region had lost a half to two-thirds of their population. At Narbonne this would have resulted in a population of 6,000 to 10,000 inhabitants in the worst case scenario,46 or 15,000 in the best of cases. Only at the end of the nineteenth century would Narbonne again attain the population levels of its medieval apogee. 43

According to the expression of Larguier, Le Drap, I: 26. Larguier, Le Drap, I: 35 and note 7. There would have only remained from 6 to 7,000 inhabitants in 1352. Basing his conclusions on the same documents, R. Devy, Narbonne au XlVe siecle (1381-1415) (Carcassonne, 1986), 14, reduced his estimate to 5,000 survivors only. It is true that he only credits Narbonne with 20,000 inhabitants at the end of the thirteenth century and with 12,000 in 1343, an inverse evolution from what is noted for the ensemble of the viguerie (Caille, "Narbonne au XlVe siecle", 15 and note 7) and M. Gramain, "Un exemple de demographie medievale: la viguerie de Beziers dans la premiere moitie du X l V e siecle", Congres de la Societe des historiens medievistes (1970), A^nnales de la Faculte des Lettres et Sciences humaines de Nice (special issue) La Demographie medievale (Nice, 1972), 33—8. 45 A recovery described as a "remontee spectaculaire" in R. Devy, Narbonne, 29 and as "recuperation extremement rapide", as "remontee tres vive" in Larguier,~LeDrap, 36-8. It would have lasted until 1381, the year when the first gave a population figure of 8, 635 and the second of 9-10,000 inhabitants. 46 Larguier, Le Drap, 91, opted for the worst case in exaggerating it further. He proposed a figure of 5,000 inhabitants for the years 1460—1465, during which the lowest population level would have been attained for a town that the author estimated had 30,000 to 32,000 inhabitants in 1300, that is, a diminution of greater than five sixths. The author nonetheless imagined (184) "une belle remontee ... depuis 1480... stoppee net..." by the plague of 1502 or 1503. If one multiplies the 975 taxpayers of 1500 by a coefficient of 5.5, one obtains only a little more than 5,300 inhabitants, in basing one's estimates on the registers of the clavaires, an "instrument incommode... qui se revele tout a fait insuffisant", according to the author. 44

I Narbonnefrom Roman Foundations to the 15th Century

27

Whatever the changing size of the town, the Narbonnais population retained its cosmopolitanism. But, however numerous were those who congregated there in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, whether for shorter or longer periods but without acquiring citizenship (Italians, Catalans, Valencians, especially), they were far from forming proper organized colonies, as did then happen at Montpellier, at Nimes (at least fleetingly), or at Aigues-Mortes. This may be a sign that, whatever the renown and the prosperity of Narbonne in these centuries of expansion, it did not recover the position it had occupied in the Midi under the Romans. In the Middle Ages competition came from several other southern towns (Montpellier, Toulouse, Marseille). However, Narbonne could claim the most important and the oldest Jewish community in the region. It is difficult to know how many members there were, given the divergence of information in the sources. An anonymous Hebrew chronicle of the middle of the twelfth century put the number at 2,000; some years later, Benjamin of Tudela, who visited the Narbonnais Jewish community during his famous travels, estimated the size at three hundred, but he would have been counting heads of families only, yielding a total figure of from 1,300 to 1,500 persons; finally, the census of the early fourteenth century recorded 165 Jewish hearths (or about 825 individuals).47 The Jews of Narbonne were grouped in two quarters, which were not enclosed and had nothing of the ghetto about them, since a certain number of Christians lived there too. The principal quarter, situated at the southeast angle of the Cite inside the walls, was under the jurisdiction of the viscount; the second, less important, was located in the suburb of Belveze under the jurisdiction of the archbishop. The two lords were moreover full of solicitude for "their Jews", respectively, each according them in the course of the thirteenth century a charter to establish their own organization. Inside the vicecomital Jewish community there were several buildings belonging to the community: the Old Synagogue or Synagogue-Vieille, dating from the Carolingian era, the New Synagogue or Synagogue-Neuve, dating from the years 1239—1240; a hospital; an institution of good works (called "alms" of the Jews); finally, a "public bath". Outside the walls, to the west of the Cite, in the neighbourhood of the Belveze quarter, there was the cemetery known by the name of "Mont-Judaique". Richly endowed with possessions in the town and the surrounding area, where they held lands 47 Caille, Histoire de Narbonne, 164-6 and here no. VIII: "Une manifestation narbonnaise des persecutions antisemites du Xle siecle?" The answer is no; in the twelfth century (1156— 1157) the viscountess Ermengarde had a Jewish bailiff named Mosse.

I 28

Historical Overview

and salt pans, the members of the Jewish community had a great diversity of occupations. However, they were essentially involved in the money trade, on a greater or lesser level, in particular from the middle of the thirteenth century, when the most eminent members divested themselves of their rural property, thereby augmenting the proportion of moveable property in their fortune that was at that time better adapted to the "new economy" where the role of cash (coin) had grown. Thus, the banishment of the Jews of France in 1306, by royal decree, was incontestably a rude blow to the Narbonnais economy, all the more so since this industrious population found refuge in the neighbouring regions of Roussillon and Catalonia, then in full expansion. Some returned in 1315, more in 1359, during the suspension of exile, but they were the most impoverished, and the economic damage to Narbonne had been done. As urban functions diversified more and more within the expanding population, juridical, social, and economic relations evolved constantly. The clergy no longer had the dominant role in Narbonne that it had enjoyed in the early Middle Ages. However, it retained considerable temporal power, especially in the person of the metropolitan bishop, along with an undeniable moral force.48 The numerous nobility of the town (knights or damoiseaux) were vassals of the viscount or the archbishop; residing more often in the Cite, within which they held the towers and the fortified houses, they were also lords of villages in the Narbonnais. From the end of the thirteenth century, enriched bourgeois mixed with them, through marriage or the acquisition of lordships. These bourgeois, also called "placier£\ had often separated themselves thanks to long-distance trade from the "people", that is, those who worked. There remained the world of small merchants and artisans, reflecting an extraordinary economic and social medley. The latter, along with inhabitants whose occupation was to work the land inside and outside the walls — intra or extra-muros (gardeners, ploughmen, manual labourers), formed the mass of the population. Also present were a few "intellectual" professions (legal specialists, jurisperiti, and notaries; doctors and apothecaries). Rich and poor jostled each other in a town with few amenities. Thus, water for drinking and for the washing of vegetables came from the Aude while at certain hours of the night the dyers and the leather artisans were authorized to dump their industrial waters 48 This was in spite of the redrawing of the ecclesiastical map by Pope John XXII in 1317—1318; the diocese of Toulouse, itself raised to an archbishopric, was severed at that time from the ecclesiastical province of Narbonne. The archdiocese of Narbonne was broken into three parts by the creation of two new bishoprics (Alet and Saint-Pons) and had its territory correspondingly reduced. See article no. II, the map on p. 51, in this volume.

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there. Opulence existed alongside misery, giving rise to social tensions at the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century, announcing "the time of troubles". The time of troubles (14th—15th centuries) With the fourteenth century Narbonne and southern Europe experienced a period full of contrasts.49 Early on, signs foreshadowing the reversal of the century-long period of growth that had brought the town to its economic apogee were evident. One after another, numerous difficulties affected Narbonne and its region. First, famines multiplied throughout Languedoc. Then, the monarchy imposed fiscal demands to support various military operations in Flanders (1319), in Gascony (1325), and, especially, from 1337 for the Hundred Years War. To these were added continual monetary changes, particularly devastating for a town for which commerce was one of the essential activities. Certain disasters struck Narbonne very directly: in 1306 the departure of the rich Jewish community came on the heels of the royal expulsion; maritime piracy (Genoese and Catalan) was on the increase, with serious repercussions; finally, linked to the deterioration of the climate, the Aude repeatedly flooded. In fact, high water, already frequent in the thirteenth century, became catastrophic in the fourteenth. In 1316, furious flooding destroyed three hundred houses and drowned fifty persons in one night, shaking the Pont-Vieux and the Pont-Neuf, only recently constructed (after 1275). The urban community undertook expensive repairs to stabilize the course of the river (notably with the elevation of a dam upstream from the town at Moussolens). The aim was not only to avoid the river flooding, but also to maintain it in its old bed as it had a tendency in periods of peak flow to take a new course situated about a league to the northeast of the town.50 The town and its hinterland suffered the effects of these calamities. The impoverishment of the countryside brought about an inevitable urban stagnation. Economic growth continued nonetheless; the population expanded as did trade, particularly in the Mediterranean. The building sector was par49

Caille, "Narbonne au XlVe siecle". J. Caille, "Les nouveaux ponts de Narbonne", 33 and note 53, and "Moulins urbains et periurbains a Narbonne au Moyen Age (Xe—XVe siecles). Aspects chronologiques et topographiques", Actes du congres des federations historiques languedociennes (CasteInaudary, 1997), special issue of the publications of the Societe d'Etudes scientifiques de I'Aude, le canal du Midi et les voies navigables dans le Midi de la France (Carcassonne, 1998), 111—21, and especially, 119—20 o n the wanderings of the Aude and the fact that it never completely abandoned its urban flow. 50

I 30

Historical Overview

ticularly active during all these years. Notably, about 1343—1344 the town constructed a third bridge, rebuilt in stone (1326—1331) the more recent of the other two (the Pont-Neuf), and constantly restored the oldest (the Pont-Vieux) that dated from Roman times. In the years 1339—1343 the urban community was thrice capable of contributing very large sums to the king: for the price of the revocation of the cloth gabelle (tax); for the authorization to join together the two consulates; and to make Narbonne a viguerie, separated from that of Beziers. But at mid-century, new reverses appeared. First, in 1348 the Black Death raged from March to June. Other "mortalities" succeeded in 1361 and in 1377, notably; the actual impact of these demographic blows cannot be calculated with any accuracy. It is impossible to say whether these epidemics broke the reign of prosperity or brought a drastic solution to problems of overpopulation that had marked the previous era. The "Grande Chevauchee" (raid) of the Black Prince in Languedoc reached Narbonne on 8 November 1355, and Edward moved into the convent of the Carmelites. Failing to take the Cite, the English raised the siege on 10 November, not without having ravaged the Bourg (that seems not to have been taken, nonetheless),51 and the right bank of the Aude, as well as the suburbs of the left bank, especially that of Villeneuve, downstream, and, upstream, the unwalled zone to the west of the Cite defences and to the north of those of the suburb of Coyran-Belveze (barri of the Minorettes, terson Saint-Felix).52 The sources do not permit a precise estimate of damages from this attack. Rumour had it that after the passage of the Prince of Wales there remained only ruins outside the ramparts. 53 The English seem to have respected religious establishments, in any case (churches, convents of Mendicants, hospitals). Without denying the devastation caused by the plague and the

51

The enemy set fires in several places (probably with flaming arrows), but they did not gain entry, it seems. 52 Archeological digs recently uncovered in this zone traces of a "generalized fire", datable to the "middle of the fourteenth century". See Ph. Mellinand and E. Leal, Une occupation suburbaine antique et medievale a Narbonne (fouille archeologique: document final de syn these:

La mediatheque) (Montpellier, 2002), 159. A disaster provoked "la desertion du site dont seules les rues conservent un temps leur fonctionnalite". 53 The outskirts of the town suffered nonetheless (see the above note) and were depopulated. R. Devy, Narbonne au X.IVe siecle, 119, emphasized that several "tersons" (names of fiscal circumscriptions), those of "Villeneuve" and "Saint-Felix", disappeared from the books of the clavaires (where taxpayers were inventoried) after 1355; the same for the "tenon Ma/bec", also extra-mums, but on the side of the Bourg, to the west.

I Narbonne from Roman foundations to the 15th Century

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English attack, one must resist exaggerating their dire results.54 It is certain, nonetheless, that the recurrence of old scourges created a heavy burden for Narbonne: famine, the spectre of which never disappeared; the growing weight of royal taxation linked to war; the incessant repairs to keep the Aude within its urban bed. To all of this was added the burden of financing the reinforcement of the fortifications, decided by 1341 and accelerating after 1355. To the dangers of piracy, increasingly frequent on the seas, came those of the "routiers" rampaging throughout the countryside. And then a new stroke of fate created a grave situation in Narbonne; a veritable civil war set the Narbonnais against their viscount during the years 1381-1382, devastating the surrounding countryside. Windmills and watermills were sacked, and the dam at Moussoulens, constructed at great cost upstream from the town to control the waters of the Aude, was destroyed. This episode was part of the conflict dividing the count of Foix and the duke of Berry, who were disputing the lieutenancy of the king in Languedoc, Aymeric VI having chosen Berry. The southern provinces, disrupted by other rebellions, were soon slapped with a heavy fine of 800,000 gold francs. Narbonne had to pay its part, in spite of its noted impoverishment, with a significant decrease in the number of fiscal hearths. In spite of these challenges, the economy of Narbonne, shaken by an accumulation of disasters and in decline, saw the resumption of commerce, notably long-distance trade, with some real vigour in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. Though fewer in number, Narbonnais merchants were always present, as noted earlier, in the whole of the Mediterranean basin, some few until the 1420s. Moreover, the building industry continued to thrive, as noted below. These elements aside, an undeniable decline had set in by the fifteenth century. In 1404 the report of the vicar general of the archbishop, following a pastoral visit of the diocese of Narbonne, made clear the profound degradation of the economic situation of both town and countryside.55 In the following years the stagnation worsened, with continuing population decline and a commercial recession on land and sea. Narbonne experienced the countrywide reversal of a century of growth.

54

Caille, "Moulins urbains et periurbains", 121. The examination, about 1352—1355, of the material state of the said mills, a good indication (among others) of the economic situation of the town, reinforces this view. 55 See no. XV: "Narbonne au debut du XVe siecle".

I 32

Historical Overview

Adding to problems linked to a general economic downturn, there was for Narbonne an internal structural crisis.56 The town had built its fortune on the marketing of artisanal production at an international level, notably that of quality woollen cloth. However, by the middle of the fourteenth century (with the trend accentuating in the fifteenth century) the drapery of Narbonne was equalled and then surpassed by that of the lands of the Crown of Aragon (the urban cloth industry and then also the rural). The great cloth town thereby lost its principal market. Worse, it experienced serious competition in all its Mediterranean markets, including those of Languedoc. To this Iberian competition, from the 1430s was added that of little rural Languedocian centres of production, making a more ordinary cloth at lower cost. At the same time, the take-off of cane sugar in Sicily dealt a fatal blow to another of the foundations of Narbonnais commerce, the long-distance export of honey which ceased to be an object of trade on the spice route. Even more serious for the role of Narbonne, in the second half of the fifteenth century the great currents of trade changed, and the Narbonnais crossroads found itself outside the principal axes of circulation. Maritime trade was dominated by the Italians and, secondarily, by the Catalans. Already in the thirteenth century, the creation by Louis IX of the privileged port of Aigues-Mortes, quickly dominated by the Italians, caused Narbonne harm. It was in vain that the sovereigns themselves, with the support of the Narbonnais, attempted on several occasions in the fourteenth century to create a second royal port on the Mediterranean, near Narbonne, at the site of Leucate, the best natural shelter of this part of the coast (that was the main reason for the pariage of 1308, dissolved in 1322). Then the development of Montpellier, accelerated by the favour of the kings of France who acquired the whole of the town in 1349, increased the drain of commercial activities in this direction, all the more since it was at Montpellier that Jacques Coeur decided to establish himself from 1440.57 His interest in connections to the Rhone basin privileged this route, which had already benefited from the reunion of Lyon with the kingdom in 1312, over those roads through the Massif Central that had been so active earlier in the

56

Caille, Histoire de Narbonne, 170—2, and Larguier, Le Drop, I: 179—247, "La rupture du systeme medieval". 57 K. Reyerson, "Jacques Coeur. French Trade in the Mediterranean World in the MidFifteenth Century", Proceedings of the Western Society for French History 28, Selected papers of the 2000 Annual Meeting, ed. B. Rothaus: 99—112, and Jacques Coeur. Entrepreneur and King's Bursar (New York, 2004).

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Middle Ages.58 Again Narbonne found itself marginalized, this time in regard to overland transport. Indeed, Narbonne did not fare well in competition with Montpellier, but neither town could in the end resist the prominence of Marseille when Provence was attached to the realm in 1481.59 A downturn in industry and trade, the sources of prosperity in Narbonne, combined with war and plague to cause urban decline. Yet, however undeniable and severe the decadence of the town, it was less rapid than some have affirmed and probably less irredeemable. It is a fact that in the last fifteen years of the fifteenth century, Narbonne enjoyed a late moment of recovery, if not without some sluggishness.60 Building began anew, with military construction (the beginnings of a new unified fortification) and civil building (improvement of the heart of the town, on the Cite side, on the banks of the Aude upstream from the Pont-Vieux; installation in the same zone of mills, "moulins d'entre-deux-villes", serving both grain and cloth).61 Nonetheless, even though this renewal was prolonged in a remarkable manner throughout the sixteenth century, Narbonne never became again the great metropolis it had been, first in antiquity and then in the Middle Ages.62

III.

TOPOGRAPHY AND URBAN LANDSCAPES (FROM ROME TO THE E N D OF THE MIDDLE AGES)

Whatever the vicissitudes of its history, it seems that contemporaries always admired Narbonne. Rising from the ashes after each period of difficulty, Narbonne often surpassed other towns in its class. 58 It is worth noting that the expansion of the French kingdom toward the east continued throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 59 This idea was refuted by Larguier, Le Drap, II: 420, arguing that "contrairement a l'idee qui a cours, l'entree de Marseille dans le royaume a peut-etre constitue une chance pour Narbonne", (at least in the sixteenth century that witnessed "the agony of AiguesMortes" and the "renaissance of Narbonne"). 60 Larguier, Le Drap, I: 251—325: "Retard narbonnais. Lenteurs et hesitations du redemarrage" ... dans un "Midi mediterranean qui n'en finit pas de sortir de son engourdissement". 61 Caille, "Moulins urbains", 120-1. Designed to mill grain and to full cloth, these new mills, projected in 1503, were finished in 1508. On mills as indicators of the economic situation, see above note 54. 62 This failed to occur in spite of the fact that the town saw its port life revive. According to Larguier, Le Drap, II, the town recovered "une authentique vie portuaire" (760) and became again "le premier port languedocien" (419).

I 34

Historical Overview

Under the Romans (from its origins to the end of the 3rd c.)63 The first Roman colony founded in Gaul in 118 BCE, Narbonne was still at the end of the Republic a modest agglomeration. It was in the era of Augustus that the town experienced important development. At the end of the first century, Narbonne attained its maximum surface area, covering eighty to one hundred hectares (some 200 to 250 acres) on the left bank of the Aude, encircled by a man-made (at least in part) channel of the river. Up to the mid-second century Narbonne enjoyed many embellishments, until a large fire destroyed most of the town between 145 and 161 CE. Quickly, nonetheless, the traces of the disaster were erased and the town became again "the very beautiful Narbonne" of which the poet Martial sang at the end of the first century {Epigrams, VIII, 72, 3-6: 93 CE); Narbonne remained so, at least until the second third of the third century. The monumental centre was surrounded by a residential periphery containing villas; beyond stretched vast necropolises along the side of the roads; notably toward the north, on both sides of the via Domitia, in the direction of Beziers; to the east, in the vicinity of the path leading to the lagoons and the sea; on the other bank of the Aude, bordering the via Domitia and the via Aquitania that met at this spot. Although none of this survives, the literary sources and epigraphical and archeological remains prove that Roman Narbonne offered the spectacle of an imposing set of monuments: a forum, decorated with statues on pedestals and dominated by an imposing marble temple (very likely a Capitol); to the east of the colony an amphitheatre and the sanctuary of the imperial cult (porticos and basilicas); in the centre of the town, a network of subterranean passages, the lower levels of market buildings and entrepots {mercatus, macellum, horreum)', finally, a bridge enabling the via Domitia to cross

the Aude (undoubtedly the site of the medieval Pont-Vieux). Also attested, though their location is unknown, were other temples beyond the Capitol, a theatre, baths, an aqueduct, and more. This was the provincial Roman capital at the time of its splendour.

63

For bibliographical background see note 2 above. For the following period, see J. Caille, "Narbonne au Moyen Age. Evolution de la topographie et du paysage urbain", 110e Congres national des Societes savantes (Montpellier, 1985), Histoire medievale, II: Kecherches sur rhistoire de Montpellier et du l^anguedoc (Paris, 1986), 57-96.

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The town of the Late Empire and the Early Middle Ages: Roman heritage, the first Christian monuments From the middle of the third century, with the decadence of the Roman empire, began (as noted earlier) a period of difficulties that should not, nonetheless, be exaggerated. The accentuating climate of insecurity caused the need for fortification of a town that was hitherto "open". Between the last quarter of the third century (ca. 286—310) and the first third of the fifth century (before 436-437), Narbonne built a rampart that reduced its surface area to seventeen to eighteen hectares (42 to 45 acres), leaving outside the walls the residential villas, the amphitheatre, and the sanctuary of the imperial cult, but sheltering the monumental centre of town, in spite of the blows received from the siege of the Visigoths in 436-437. 64 The preservation of these prestigious remains enabled the town to retain a certain allure in spite of the tragedy of the times. Sidonius Apollinaris65 had great admiration for Narbonne in his vibrant homage of 465—466: Hello, Narbonne, rich in health, beautiful to see in the city and the countryside, with your walls, your citizens, your fortification, your shops, your gates, your porticos, your forum, your theatre, your sanctuaries, your capitols, your exchanges (or your money changes — the Latin is monetis), your baths, your arches, your storehouses, your markets, your meadows, your fountains, your islands, your salt-pans, your lagoons, your river, your merchandise, your bridge, your high seas. You are the only one who can, justly, venerate as your gods Bacchus, Ceres, Pales, Minerva, thanks to your ears of grain, your vines, your pastures, your olive presses....66 Outside the walls of the shrunken city, emptiness reigned, probably from the early fourth century, the most likely date for construction of the fortification that remained in place, not without transformation, until the end of the Middle Ages. In this outlying zone buildings were demolished to furnish the necessary material to be reemployed for the building of the wall.

64

See note 3 above and no. Ill: "Les remparts de Narbonne". Born in 431 at Lyon, the former capital of Gaul, he was educated there and at Aries, the site of the pretorian prefecture of Gaul; he had also visited Rome, in decline it is true, where he accompanied his father-in-law who became emperor (ca. 455-456). Sidonius was thus a seasoned observer of the urban life of his time. 66 Carmen XXIII, 37-68 (to the Narbonnais noble Consenting. See A. Lqyen, Sidoine Appollinaire, Carmine, Edition and translation (Paris, 1960), 146—7. Note that the amphitheatre was not listed, suggesting that it had already disappeared. 65

I 36

Historical Overview

It was in these open areas, cleared early in the immediate vicinity of the old castrum, that Christian cult sites grew up, churches and cemeteries: from the fourth century the basilica with cemetery called du Clos de la Lombarde, installed in the ruins of a beautiful villa of the early empire, to the right of the via Domitia in the direction of Beziers; in the fifth century, Saint-Felix to the northwest, and to the east, probably Saint-Etienne and surely SaintVincent (later Saint-Loup) where Bishop Rusticus was buried in 461 while the "Lombarde" was abandoned. On the right bank, an uninhabited zone under the empire, but occupied by a vast necropolis, new religious buildings grew up: on the one hand, to the right of the via Domitia in the direction of Spain, the church of Saint-Paul (fourth-century), dedicated to the first bishop of the town, on his burial site; on the other hand, not far from the Aude, downstream from the Roman bridge, the basilica of Saint-Marcel (fifth-century). Near four of these six suburban churches archeologists have unearthed vestiges of a Christian necropolis, that is, at the "l^ombardi\ Saint-Felix, Saint-Vincent, and Saint-Paul. Intra-muros, also, the new religion soon marked the urban topography. From the fourth century, it seems, profiting from the peace of Constantine, a cathedral was built at the southwest angle of the Gallo-Roman fortification, on the site of a simple oratory, founded in the mid-third century by Paul, the evangelist of Narbonne. 67 In the fifth century, this building, already partly in ruins, was destroyed in a few days to make way for a new cathedral, constructed in four years (441—445) under the aegis of Rusticus, bishop of Narbonne from 427 to 461. The prelate also constructed (about 444), not far from his cathedral, a church dedicated to the Virgin, the future Sainte-Marie la Major. He was also undoubtedly responsible for the construction of the suburban basilica of Saint-Felix de Gerone (455—456), mentioned above. There were eight sites of Catholic worship — two intramuros and six extra-muros — when the Arian Visigoths installed themselves in the town. The shrunken Cite, walled, with its crown of encircling suburban basilicas, isolated one from another, evolved little in the two and a half centuries of Visigothic occupation. Conquered for a brief time by the Burgundians after Clovis's defeat of Alaric II (507), recovered promptly by the Ostrogoths in the name of the Visigoths (509), it resisted for a while 67

He was sent by the Holy See to Gaul, at the same time as Saturninus of Toulouse. From the mid-sixth century, there developed the legend of the apostolicity of the first bishop of Narbonne, and in the ninth century, he was even identified with the proconsul of Cyprus, Pau/us-Sergms, disciple of the apostle Paul of Tarsus!

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before succumbing to the Muslims (715-719). The town acted as a shelter, first for the king and then for the Visigothic governor, then for the Arab ivali, at all times for the bishop. The presence of the latter conferred on the site a clerical character. The old castrum may have constituted only a part of Narbonne (Arbuna) at the time of the Muslims, if one believes the description given by the Andalusian compiler, Mohammad Abi Bakr al-Zohri. It was, he wrote, "a large city ... crossed by a large river over which there was a large bridge on which were markets and houses. One takes this bridge to go from one half of the agglomeration to the other. In the centre of the town there were embankments and mills...".68 On the right bank of the Aude, there thus existed, at the beginning of the eighth century, a quarter sufficiently urbanized to be considered the other half of the old city. It would have developed, one may hypothesize, from the head of the Roman bridge, along the via Domitia, either from the fifth century at the time of the builder bishop Rusticus, or during the sixth and seventh centuries, profiting from the Visigothic peace. Whatever the case, this first medieval suburb (if it actually did exist) disappeared completely in the course of the eighth century, in the throes of the Muslim conquest, then of the Christian reconquest. Only the basilicas of Saint-Paul and Saint-Marcel, more or less in ruins, survived in this zone in the midst of a pastoral landscape, similar to that of the hinterland of the left bank of the Aude from the beginning of the fourth century. Narbonne experienced a veritable stagnation, with its military function predominating, given the diminution of religious activities under Islamic rule. With the Carolingian peace the character of the saintly town was once more in evidence for a brief period of urban renewal. Here, as elsewhere, the measures taken by the Frankish kings in favour of the Church translated to the urban topography. The area between the fortification and the south and west branches of the cardo maximus and the most southerly of the decumani, that is the southwest quarter of the Cite, was profoundly changed in the second half of the ninth century. The archbishop constructed an episcopal residence, dominating the "rue Droite" (the medieval name for the cardo maximus, the line of the via Domitia as it crossed the town), situated where the Palais-Vieux is located today. Moreover, between 68

Writing in the twelfth century, he was inspired by works of the early ninth century that, in turn, drew their information from authors of the early eighth century, the era of the conquest of Gaul. See J. Caille, "Narbonne sous l'occupation musulmane (premiere moitie du Vllle siecle): problemes de topographie", Annales du Midi 87 (1975), 97-103.

I 38

Historical Overview

886 and 890, at the initiative of the archbishop Theodard, the cathedral of Rusticus, now four and a half centuries old and in danger of collapse, was restored and transformed. The renovated building was next to the GalloRoman wall to the west and the archiepiscopal palace to the east, while to the north were several ecclesiastical sites. In the vicinity was the church of Saint-Quentin, attested in documents from 919, but probably older. Still mentioned in an act of 1160, it had disappeared a short time later. In the Carolingian era, with the cathedral and the nearby chapel of the palace of the archbishop this church formed a sort of "religious triangle", altogether characteristic of the time. At the same time, intra-muros again, the church of Sainte-Marie la Major was constructed (or transformed if it dated from the era of Rusticus); there are several datable archeological remains from the end of the eighth or the beginning of the ninth century. The Cite remained resilient. Opposite the "ecclesiastical quarter" {claustrum in the texts), to the east of the via Domitia and on the banks of the Aude, arose the lay governor's abode, first that of the count, then of the viscount. Supported by the walls, its round tower, called the "Mauresque", dominated the open space that separated it from that of the archbishop (the future square called La Caularia, that is, the vegetable market). In sum, through this long period of transition from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages, Narbonne appeared both as a fortress and a sacred city. Military and religious functions alternated in dominance. Its essence, the walled classical city, a sort of fortified sanctuary, profited from the Carolingian renaissance. Outside the walls the basilicas remained. They benefited at the most from some restoration, particularly on the right bank with the church of Saint-Paul that was called monasterium from 814. Around it were new buildings to house a community of ecclesiastics living under the direction of an abbot.69 If there were other spurts of growth outside the fortifications in the ninth century, they did not leave a trace. It was only at the very end of the tenth century as the first traces of economic revival made themselves felt that construction occurred again beyond the Roman walls.

69

J. Caille, "Saint-Paul de Narbonne", A^ctes de lAtelier-S eminaire: Carcassonne — Maison des memoires (September 2000), Les Collegiales meridionales (Carcassonne, 2003), 55-77, and O. Ginouvez, "Le site de Saint-Felix a Narbonne", Archeologie du Midi medieval 17 (1999), 25—46 (especially the map of Paleo-Christian sites in the agglomeration of Narbonne).

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Medieval flourishing (late 10th - mid-14th c.) At the end of the tenth century the slow recovery of urban vitality made its mark on the landscape of Narbonne with the appearance of suburbs in three zones. Two of these had acquired names as early as 990: the "Bourg" of Coyran and the "Bourg" of Villeneuve. Located on the left bank of the Aude, the first upstream (to the west) of the classical Cite, the second downstream (to the east), they were both well positioned in relation to the river route, deliberately, as is evident in the case of Villeneuve that soon had a dock, called "ad naves" {las Naus in Languedocian, les Barques in French). These first two suburbs were tightly attached to the Gallo-Roman wall. Mentioned for the first time in a document of 1035, the "Bourg beyond the bridge" developed progressively, throughout the eleventh century, on the right bank of the Aude, at the entrance to the old Roman bridge, close to the junction of the via Domitia, the via Aquitania, and the lagoon road, as well as in proximity to the basilica of Saint-Paul and a new church dedicated to the Virgin (about 1066), Sainte-Marie, later called Lamourguier, while Saint-Marcel disappeared (about 1010).70 At the beginning of the twelfth century, the "Bourg" of the right bank, henceforth walled, constituted a new agglomeration of more than fifteen hectares (37 acres), facing the "Cite" of the left bank of a little more than seventeen hectares (42 acres), closely flanked by the Coyran and Villeneuve suburbs that continued to fill up, probably also acquiring some defences. Narbonne was henceforth a double town, its walls dominating the surrounding countryside that remained free of construction with the exception of the three basilicas located extra-muros (Saint-Felix, Saint-Etienne, SaintVincent). The defensive role remained the primary one for the town during the whole of the eleventh century when danger still lurked, particularly the Muslim threat. On the Cite side, the rise of seigneurial power, vicecomital at first, then archiepiscopal, also served to reinforce the warlike aspect of the town. Milites held the towers and gates in the name of these two rival lords.71 It was then that the north and south entrances of the Roman town, at the two ends of the rue Droite were fortified: the castrum of the Royale gate near the remains of the Capitol and the castrum of the Aiguiere gate. The latter formed a complex ensemble on the banks of the Aude: a central 70

See no. II: "Urban Expansion", especially 54—6 and 61, and no. Ill, "Les remparts de Narbonne", especially 28-31. 71 See no. V: The Origins and Development of the Temporal Lordship of the Archbishop".

I 40

Historical Overview

portal communicating directly with the Roman bridge (of which the head was entirely covered); two lateral entrances, one upstream, protected by a round tower (reworked and enveloped by strong walls at the end of the thirteenth century, it was known as the donjon of Gilles Aycelin), the other downstream, defended by a vicecomital tower called the Mauresque. These two portals provided access to the paths that ran along the river on either side of the bridge, at the foot of the fortifications. About 1066 the archbishop, emboldened by his rights over the walls, had a gate called the "Episcopale" or Bisbale, crowned with a tower, opened on the west (in the direction of the Coyran suburb). The Saint-Etienne gate may have provided access in this era to the Villeneuve suburb to the east, and the postern gate of Laurac to the basilica of Saint-Felix, not far away, to the west. On the Bourg side, the new walls arose a little outside the ditches that surrounded the various burgi making up the new multi-nuclear agglomeration. Four gates, it would seem, were created at the same time. Two opened at the north and south ends of the via Domitia crossing the Bourg. one situated at the head of the Roman bridge that it enveloped (Porte del Cap del Pont), the other giving access to the road toward Spain (Saint-Paul gate, mentioned relatively late, it is true). Upstream or downstream from the first, the Porta de Riparia provided a link with the riverbank. The via Aquitania led out of the town in the direction of Toulouse through the Raymond-Jean gate. A fifth opening, on the lagoon side, the Lamourguier gate, seems to have been made later. To return to the left bank, the two suburbs on the Cite side were probably fortified lightly from their origin. Nothing is known of the Villeneuve defences. In regard to the suburb of Coyran, in the second half of the twelfth century, the villa called Belveder was linked to it. The viscountess Ermengarde authorized the proprietor of this villa to enclose it with walls and ditches, except towards Coyran, the tenthcentury burgus that was apparently protected. All of these settlements formed an irregular polygon of some three hectares (8 plus acres), using the western curtain wall of the Cite as support, between the Aude and the Episcopal gate. Thus, at the end of the twelfth century, there were more than thirty-five hectares in all (nearly ninety acres) enclosed by a more or less powerful wall. This was not a world in isolation, however. Peace and prosperity facilitated further expansion. Gates multiplied; to those already mentioned were added new ones: in the Cite, the gates of Saint-Cosme and Saint-Antoine (alias Brune gate); in the Bourg, the Carmes gate; in the Coyran-Belveze suburb, the gates of Coyran, Saint-Jean de Jerusalem (alias portale Bernardi Mangaudi), of Breuil (alias of the Minorettes), about which little is known.

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In the thirteenth century, while within the protected zone urban density increased, already extra-muros the town acquired, in a first phase, isolated establishments (leprosaria, hospitals, convents) and, in a second phase, new "quarters", veritable urban outgrowths designated with the name barrium (barri in Languedocian) where agricultural and artisanal activities were both present. On the Bourg side, there flourished outside the walls at the exterior of the Saint-Paul gate (toward Spain) the barrium of Saint-Mathieu, the development of which (before 1279) made it necessary to move the leprosarium toward Saint-Crescent, beyond the Veyret;72 at the exit of the Raymond-Jean gate (toward Toulouse and the Minervois), the barrium extra portale Raimundi Johannis (before 1256), later (1301) called the barrium of the Raymond-Jean portal.73 The Cite was also expanding: to the east of the Villeneuve suburb, along the Aude and in the neighbourhood of the road leading to the lagoons the barrium Saint-Martin stretched out (before 1293) near the church of the same name (attested from 1125) and not far from the basilica Saint-Vincent-Saint-Loup; at the west of the Gallo-Roman fortifications, to the north of the wall of the suburb of Coyran-Belveze, and to the south of a line joining the church of Saint-Felix to the Aude River (toward the mills of Gua) the barrium of the Minorettes {barrium sororum Minorum) from the name of the convent of the Claires, installed since 1248 at this spot, was mentioned for the first time in 1307-1308 (though very probably dating from the end of the thirteenth century).74 Already for a time now, on both banks of the Aude, houses, workshops, and various constructions multiplied, making veritable roads of the paths that ran along the feet of the ramparts (for example in the Cite, upstream from the Roman bridge, the street of the "aludieri\ that is, the tanners). It was thus that, at the end of the thirteenth century and the beginning of the fourteenth

72 T h i s w a s m e n t i o n e d i n 1 2 7 9 (^barrium extra portale Sancti Pauli Burgi Narbone"); it w a s called i n 1305 "barrium Sancti Mathei" b e c a u s e it w a s situated "juxta ecclesiam Sancti Mathei" (the former oratory of the leprosarium). 73 To the left, in exiting by this same gate, one found the burgus Saint-Michel, but as it was cited from the mid-twelfth century, it may be that this was one of the primitive burgi of the Bourg that had a polynuclear structure, this one not being included in the fortifications of the beginning of the century. 74 In question were the tenements of le Breuil and Belveze, because it is evident that Belveze was the name given to a larger space than the fortified villa called "Bekeder", or even "Be/vettf", mentioned above. On this quarter, see Ph. Mellinand and E. Leal, Une occupation suburbaine, with pages 14—18 by J. Caille, treating the historical context. In this suburb, the coexistence can be noted "de structures d'habitat et d'espaces artisanaux ou commerciaux...", all organized "autour de voies de circulations".

I 42

Historical Overview

century, the agglomeration reached its greatest topographical extension in the medieval period. During these centuries of growth and blossoming (from the end of the tenth to the mid-fourteenth century) the various functions of the town (religious, economic, and political) shaped its urban topography. From the religious point of view, the organization of the urban space into parishes took place from the middle of the eleventh to the beginning of the thirteenth century.75 It was the formation of the "Bourg beyond the bridge" that brought about the splintering of the original cathedral parish, first with the institution of a parish of Saint-Paul (before 1066), from which the monastic parish of Sainte-Marie-Lamourguier was detached (about 11211131), the one and the other pushing beyond the urbanized zone into the surrounding countryside up to the Veyret. On the other bank of the Aude, the twelfth century witnessed the division of the ancient centre into several parishes: first, the church of Saint-Cosme acceded to the status of parish (before 1126), soon joined (before 1140) by the church of Saint-Sebastien, beside the cathedral of Saint-Just of which the parish can be noted from H44-76 added to these, several years later (before 1185), the parish of Sainte-Marie la Major. Before this date, certainly from 1171-1172, but perhaps as early as 1109 or 1125, the basilica of Saint-Etienne, extra-muros, downstream from the Cite, also became a parish; it served the suburb of Villeneuve and its environs, including the barri Saint-Martin when it developed there. Finally, in 1221 at the latest, the parish of Saint-Felix was organized to the west of the Cite, sharing the zone extra-muros near the ramparts with Saint-Sebastien and engulfing the suburb of Coyran-Belveze, in all likelihood, and surely the whole zone encircled by the Aude. Narbonne then counted eight parishes (six in the Cite and two in the Bourg). Five of them corresponded to sanctuaries that dated from the early Middle Ages: the cathedral and the church of Sainte-Marie la Major (intramuros) and the three ancient suburban basilicas (Saint-Etienne, Saint-Felix, and Saint-Paul, the latter henceforth intra-muros). The three others were created at more recent cult sites: two of the eleventh century (before 1066),

75

See no. IV: "Les paroisses de Narbonne", taking into account the corrections concerning dates and topographic limits. 76 The cathedral parish was endowed with a special altar, dedicated to the Virgin, at least from the beginning of the thirteenth century. In the early fourteenth century, after the transfer into the new Gothic cathedral, this was located in the axial chapel of the choir, devoted to Sainte-Marie-de-Bethleem.

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Sainte-Marie du Bourg77 on the right bank and Saint-Sebastien in the Cite at the foot of the Capitol, the third of the twelfth century (before 1126) at Saint-Cosme.78 All these parish churches, even those situated within the walls, were sooner or later endowed with a cemetery. Finally, one should note that other churches, chapels, and oratories appeared in the town during this period, though these did not gain parish status (notably SaintNazaire in the Bourg and Saint-Martin downstream from the Cite, both of the twelfth century). The multiplication of hospitals and charitable establishments, from the end of the eleventh up to the first third of the fourteenth century, contributed equally to shaping the urban and suburban landscape.79 In the middle of the twelfth century Narbonne had two hospitals for the poor: the hospital of Saint-Just (later that of La Croix) in the Cite and the hospital of Saint-Paul in the Bourg. Outside the walls, on the via Domitia two leprosaria were installed: that of the Bourg (in the direction of Spain), endowed later with a chapel dedicated to Saint-Mathieu; that of the Cite (towards Beziers) for which the cult site was consecrated to Saint-Laurent. These two leper houses developed obscurely at the beginning of the twelfth century, or perhaps even at the end of the eleventh century, and were manifestations, among others, of urban momentum; the first, situated at the opening of the gate of Saint-Paul, had to move out beyond the Veyret at the beginning of the fourteenth century, by reason of the expansion of the town towards the south.80 The military orders also possessed two houses at Narbonne, though whether they offered hospitality or not is unknown. These were the hospital of Saint-Jean de Jerusalem in Coyran (from 1177-1181) and the Temple house in the Cite in the parish of Saint-Sebastien (extreme end of the twelfth century). With the thirteenth century appeared the Saint-Antoine-de-Viennois hospital, as well as the houses of the Trinitarians and the Mercedaires; the first two establishments were located in the eastern part of the Cite, intramuros, the third (hospital of La Merci, alias Sainte-Eulalie) grew up outside 77 It was subordinated, from the end of the eleventh Marseilles of which it was a priory. 78 It was situated intra-muros and not extra-muros as historiography and the view earlier adopted in my work. explanation of my change of opinion. 79 See Caille, Hopitaux et charitepublique and nos. XII and and "Hospitals, Charity, and Urban Life". 80 See note 72 above. See also on the map: Hopital des lepreux (2).

century, to Saint-Victor of generally given in Narbonnais See no. Ill, 11-13, for an XIII: "Hospices et assistance", lepreux (1) and Hopital des

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the walls of the Bourg, on one of the branches of the via Domitia a little before it crossed the Veyret in the direction of the Corbieres. There were two hospitals of the Saint-Esprit; one, belonging to the Montpellier order, to the west of the Cite, extra-muros in the curl of the Aude; the other, inside the Bourg, seemingly a purely Narbonnais institution. Two hospitals of Saint-Jacques were mentioned at the beginning of the fourteenth century; these were above all centres of lodging for pilgrims, reflected in the location of both next to a gate of the city: the gate of Raymond-Jean for that of the Bourg (extra-muros), the Royale gate for that of the Cite (intra-muros). Not far

from the latter the house of the Repenties (Repentants) was founded in the previous century (1272—1287); it was designed to receive prostitutes desirous of escaping their tragic condition. At the beginning the fourteenth century, one can count fifteen hospices operating: five on the side of the Bourg and ten in the Cite, of which the hospital of the Jews and the Temple disappeared respectively in 1306 and 1312. To this were added various charities, founded in the thirteenth century and little by little regrouped in the course of the fourteenth century; at first simple independent foundations, represented by procurators, they gave birth in the fifteenth century to a successful establishment, the Maison de la Charite, first mentioned in 1449. As for the more traditional hospitals, their overall capacity was limited. From the end of the thirteenth century, the consular administration took over from ecclesiastical administration, except in the case of the daughter houses of the hospital orders. It was private charity, nonetheless, that continued to be the essential source of support for these institutions. With the thirteenth century the Mendicant orders arrived at Narbonne; specifically urban, they can be used as criteria for the importance of a town. The Preachers (alias Jacobins or Dominicans) established themselves from 1231 at a site called la Mayole to the east of the Bourg, between the banks of the Aude and the Lamourguier gate. The Minors (alias Cordeliers or Franciscans) settled near the northeast wall of the Cite, between the Royale gate and the gate of Saint-Antoine (alias the Brune gate). About 1261-1262, the Augustinians selected a domicile some nine hundred metres north of the agglomeration, between the two branches of the via Domitia in the direction of Beziers, not far from the leprosarium of the Cite', about 1317, they moved and established themselves to the south of the Bourg, in the area around the Saint-Paul gate. They replaced the Freres de la Penitence, alias Sachets, there; the latter, having arrived here in 1256, saw their Narbonnais holdings sold in 1280 following the suppression of their order by the council of Lyons of 1274. On the side of the Bourg, too, but west of the fortification this time, the Carmelites arrived in turn, about 1261. They

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first occupied a site on the right bank of the Aude, upstream from the ford where the via Domitia (the branch that bypassed the town) crossed the river, at a site called Saut de Na Gauteyra; then (between 1320 and 1330), just like the Augustinians, they moved to a location nearer the agglomeration.81 Their new location was a little downstream from their former site, adjoining the wall of the Bourg, between the Aude and the Raymond-Jean gate. From before 1263 and until their suppression in 1274, Narbonne also had a convent of the freres Pies (also called brothers of Notre-Dame) whose location is unknown. To these male establishments was added in 1248 the convent of religious of Sainte-Claire (of Assisi), alias Sisters of SaintDamien, or Minorettes (the female branch of the Franciscan order); it was situated in the tenement of the Breuil to the west of the Cite. In each case, the urban landscape was enriched by conventual buildings, a cult site, and a cemetery. The presence at Narbonne, from the second half of the thirteenth century, of seven convents of Mendicants, among them those of the four principal orders, marks the importance attained by the "great town" in the Middle Ages.82 The building spree of this period of growth at Narbonne was matched by the development of its economic infrastructure. Markets were organized. That of the Cite was held on the "Caularia", surrounded by atelier-shops, nestled at the foot of the palaces of the viscount and the archbishop; here there also crowded stalls of butchers, fishermen, and vegetable merchants, as well as grain merchants with their measures and changers with their tables. This new market was added in the second half of the twelfth century to the Mercat Vielh (Old Market), situated at the site of the classical forum, near the church of Saint-Sebastian (the actual Place Bistan). On the other bank of the Aude, inside the walls, near the gate del Cap del Pont Vielh, was the market of the Bourg. Shopkeepers and artisans tended to assemble by street or by quarter: in the Cite the tanners gave their name to the rue Aludiere, the carpenters gave theirs to the rue de la Fusteria, the shoemakers theirs to the rue Sabatayre. The cloth finishers had a street in the heart of the Cite but also in the Bourg where in 1300 the rue de la Parerie Neuve succeeded the rue de la Parerie Vieille. It was in this quarter that was 81 On the map: Augustinians (1) and Augustinians (2), on the one hand, and Carmelites (1) and Carmelites (2), on the other. 82 It should be noted that they were all situated extra-muros during the entire Middle Ages. Moreover, not far from the abandoned site of the Augustinians was installed, before 1341, the convent of nuns of Sainte-Marie-de-Bethleem, and finally, about 1343—1344 another female monastery, that of Sainte-Catherine, housing Benedictines, was attested. Its site is unknown.

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located the "Maison des Inquants" (that is, the auction house), a sort of merchants' exchange {loge or bourse). Here was the centre of international trade where rates of exchange were set and where all transactions were consigned to great registers called "livres des inquanti\ A certain number of commercial operations also took place in inns that served as more than just lodgings for travellers. Narbonne posessed more than a few inns, but in the absence of notarial archives they have left little trace.83 It was only in the first quarter of the fourteenth century that the hostellerie de I'Etoile (Inn of the Star) was mentioned, next to the church of Saint-Sebastien (1326), while the inn called "de l'A.ng(?\ (the Angel), situated in the rue Droite, is attested only from 1363. One also learns of the "Logis de la Pomme" (the Apple Lodging) (about 1451), between the Palais-Vieux (Old Palace) of the archbishop and the rue Droite, that served as an inn. Although the register of the clavaire of 1352 noted only four "ostaliers" among the taxpayers of the town (two in the C//