The irresistible rise of Foix - Beam
Michel Begon September 2002
Having reigned four centuries in the countries of Ariege, from Roger I "the Old" (957 - 1012) until Gaston III Phoebus, the long line of direct counts of Foix was always identified by its spirit of independence, dynastic ambition and ability manoeuvrist. It retains most intervention in the war or religious strife, but because she always knew how to use new ideas, to better withstand or more necessary. Finally, his footprint in both separatist and anti-clerical remained significant even today the valley of the Ariege, especially compared with the more disciplined policy of the bishops of Saint - Lizier and counts of Couserans.
independence movement Pyrenean
The religious and political unity of the French state has made on behalf of dual heritage of Gaul and Rome, but also although the omission of minority cultures. Somewhat bewildered, historians, linguists and archaeologists are now discovering, even in detail, neither the Gallic invasion, nor the Roman conquest, nor the Germanic settlements, nor the Arab breakthroughs will invest the Pyrenees, where the same population, we calls to taste Iberian, Basque, Basques, or Gascon Aquitaine remained in place for several millennia. From across the Pyrenees, he remained the spirit of independence, which coexist in the 13th century was no less than nine states in the Pyrenees, is from east to west, the Kingdom of Aragon, the Andorra County of Foix, Couserans County, the County of Comminges, the county of Bigorre, the Viscount of Bearn, the county of Armagnac, the kingdom of Navarre.
However, he came upon a small antique dissimilarity, which should over time lead to very different developments of these states and especially the religious gap between the county and the county of Foix Couserans. If countries in Ariege, as the high Pyrenees and the Basque country, n'acceptèrent belatedly Christianization, not before the 7th or 8th centuries, it seems, the city of "Consorani, alias Couserans, acquired his early local homogeneity, perhaps initially under the authority of the Roman people Valeriana, which would have given St. Valier, founder of the Church couseranaise, and the name of Mont Valier, then under the ecclesiastical authority of the Bishop of St. Lizier, who managed to create around him a sort of episcopal principality of a type more familiar in Germany or Italy. A traditional anticlericalism of the counts of Foix was still an obstacle to the fidelity of Couserans Rome.
While obviously that's entourage Counts spoke in Occitan, the court of the Bishop of St. Lizier practiced the Latin Middle Ages, which separated two worlds rivals.
Obscure premises
Instead therefore valleys Couserans member of the Roman civilization, the high and low valleys of Ariege it maintained almost completely away, in stagnant in what might be called under - development. No Gallo-Roman site there is known. The oppidum of La Tour d'Opio, near Saint Jean de Verges, even declined from 1 century BCE. There was no church there paleo-Christian nor a martyr to the faith or pilgrimage "ad sanctos. Both the region rose Does the diocese of Toulouse, to the Cathar Wars, and the County of Foix, it only took shape in 1002, with the will of Roger de Carcassonne. No city or town enlivened the mountains of Soulan, streams and rocks. The castle of Foix, attested from 1002, was at first a humble wooden fortress, perched on a ledge moraine of the Ariege, among the wild bushes.
There was no more clerk, scribe, nor historiographer. Both for lack of documents, do not we know almost all of the counts of Foix, who first inhabited the castle with their family and a few men at arms: Bernard, attested from 1012 to 1034, Roger I, known from 1034 to 1067, Roger II , documented from 1067 to 1124, Roger III, dated 1124 to 1148, and Roger - Bernard I, illustrated from 1148 to 1188. After that, the story illuminates a little bit, thanks, unfortunately, wars Cathars.
What were the earls and their people in mountain regions as poor, except hunting, waging war, the squeeze peasants or go to the Crusade? Roger II and he said the siege of Toledo and the Crusade of the East, but under conditions which we know nothing.
However, weak economic and population of the county could only be the envy of conquest from its more powerful neighbors. The Val d'Ariege was therefore the object of rival ambitions of the counts of Toulouse, Carcassonne and Barcelona, among which the lords of Foix knew happily play a role in balance, to preserve their freedom. Especially, the all-powerful Burgundian monastery of Cluny, whose moral and political authority dominated the 10th century, interfered very early in their possessions, obtaining the grant from 1060 to the abbey of Saint Antonin Fredel for Hugues de Cluny, from 1062 the appointment of a monk as abbot of Cluny from 1075 Lézat and real rights on the high Ariege, the massive Tabe and even Castle Lordat. Was it tactically to bend not break? Subsequent events would believe it.
burst authority
The growing population of the country, began shortly before the year thousand and that was to culminate in 1846, was the huge wave whose ascending counts and their vassals were able to get the most out methodically to organize independent principality in the Val d'Ariege, the foothills of the Pyrenees, the Massif Plantaurel (except Séronais), the valleys of the Lèze and Arize and even Volvestre within borders that will remain until the Revolution and the reshaping of Marc Vadier. To this end, the policy said the count's stratagems ordinary French feudalism, but giving them a force more systematic and more especially by meeting with happiness.
It was, bluntly said, to keep the peasantry in check by armed force, for the clergy to his boot to be used at best to round up her possessions by fraud and robbery, finally pay tribute to several overlords so they compete with each other. How is this offensive program was completed, the facts are better known than before.
At that time, the count, his family, his entourage and vassals had on the county's suzerainty, called by historians the "eminent property, and levied on landowners, communities, businesses or travelers all the rights and feudal lords, the economists of the 18th century subsumed under the generic name of "land rent and subsurface. These abuses were forced their fear of resistance or rebellion subject, as evidenced by the numerous peasant uprisings in the Middle Ages, the county was not immune. This is to guard against incursions by farmers, especially at night, much to guarantee that military aggression from outside, which were rarer and respected the rules of chivalry, that the kingdom of France was covered with castles. The case of Val d'Ariege is the best evidence on this point, since the mountainous relief already formed a natural defense enough, but thought it appropriate that the counts have it develop a good forty great fortresses, most of which remain to state remains intensely poetic. Include in-Foix, and Castelpenent Queille, from 1002; Lordat, Dun and Roquemaure in 1034; Usson to 1047; Mirepoix in 1063; Roquefixade Durban and in 1067, Ax 1095; Pamiers 1111; Caralp in 1112; Saverdun in 1120 etc..
For comparison, note that the Bishop of St. Lizier needed to do better with his body couseranaise population, although it should raise the tithe and applicant receive a time domain, since it is mainly to guard hostilities Bernard IV Comte de Comminges (1176 - 1225) and his brother Roger of Comminges, Viscount of Couserans (1176 - 1211), both sympathetic to the Cathars, it was erected in 1195 north of Saint Girons five castles of Cérisoles , Bédeille, Tourtouse, and Saint Montardit Lizier.
against feudal exactions, the episcopate was, there as elsewhere, the protector of small freeholders and owners of village communities. To the clergy devoted to him, the Count of Foix installed on his land as many as he could of monastic orders, which of course he called abbots, where he placed his own and whose rents at the occasion, he seized. No doubt the fact he was usually in the kingdom
"In feudal times, the fragmentation of sovereign power was to multiply the monasteries. Every lord, whenever he had the means, based on one's spiritual needs and those of his subjects. It was the natural complement to the castle. "
Georges Duby
Art and Society in the Middle Ages
Editions du Seuil 1997 Page 42
A Foix Similarly, the operation of taxation took a somewhat caricatured, Roger II since rebuilt the Abbey of Saint Volusien at the foot of the rock where he erected towers, still existing, and chose himself to submit to the rule of the Canons of St. Augustine. At least the town fuxéenne she took shape around the two-storey complex, superimposing the counts to the monks. As for the pressure and seigneurial diversion to the detriment of the abbeys of Pamiers or Lézat they made at the time scandal. Too powerful, depending only on the pope, the abbey of Cluny is lived elsewhere eliminated.
comparison again, note that the Bishop of St. Lizier Couserans Never insert any monastic order. Its historical legitimacy, and spiritual ultramontane enough for him to assert his authority. And widened between the Couserans and County of Foix a disparate cleric who was later to bring serious consequences.
This quarrel
European clergy and feudalism had two first-reaching effects. The Cluniac monk Hildebrand, when he was elected pope under the name of Gregory VII, took the "Dictatus daddy" of 1075, forbidding lay people to give and sell the priestly office. But this "Gregorian reform" remain poorly implemented, as it only attest the brutal attitude of the Counts of Foix. In the opposite direction and cons Cluny, Robert Molesme created in 1075 Molesme Abbey in 1098 and that of Citeaux, both in Burgundy, to renounce the pomp and arrogance of Cluniacs waive the annuity Church and dedicating the monks to manual labor, implement the abbeys, nor the heart of the richest vineyards, but in the deserted forests and swamps unhealthy. The Cistercian order in all of Europe knew the tremendous support that deserved its values of courage and humility. In an effort to lower the episcopate and the former Carolingian monasteries and rich, or as Lézat Mas d'Azil, the counts of Foix installed a Cistercian abbey in the forest of Boulbonne, east of Pamiers. From 1188, they chose the Abbey Boulbonne to be the burial place of their dynasty. Next door Roger-Bernard I built his residence at Mazeres, in a castle which historians tell us the primitive splendor.
To humiliate the abbey of Saint Antoine Fredel, to which he had to make his belongings extorted, Roger II had built the castle of Castella in 1111, and especially changed the name of the city, he Pamiers named in memory of his Crusade in the Holy Land and his visit to Apamea in Phrygia, he mingled with the Apamea in Syria (adjacent Zeugma). Does he claim to have brought this Apamea the real relics of St. Anthony the Great, Egyptian anchorite and founder of the Christian hermit?
More significant still was the policy of matrimonial alliances and military expeditions, which earned the counts gradually expand their possessions Pyrenees in Cerdanya, Andorra and Catalonia. Towards the east, the county of Carcassonne opposed their expansion, to the north, they encountered their suzerain, the powerful Count Raymond of Toulouse to the west, the bishop of St. Lizier kept their head, and he remained the other side of the Pyrenees, where the King of Aragon accepted them even better than their alliance was useful against the Saracens and that it expected to impose its suzerainty. In the 12th century, the County of Foix fell about the King of France and the King of Aragon? Ambiguity preserved feudal local freedoms.
Cathar Wars
the late 12th century, such was the animosity between the nobles and the Church as the bursting of the wars of religion could or should be predictable. One mole of stability, the bishopric Couserans, who had not received the monastic orders, was not affected by the Cathars, or later by Protestantism. But the counts of Foix, hostile to the episcopate, did come on their land so many orders rivals, not least a dozen until 1200, and these orders proved so greedy real rights, donations and paréages that the population of the Val d'Ariege adopted anti-clericalism of the time. Cathar and Waldensian communities settled more easily in the county that the counts of Foix, playing a double game, were not unhappy to weaken further clerical power and rely on the heretics. It must be noted that many monastic orders settled took account of the new balance of forces and, in contrast to the episcopate, made no obstacle to the heresies of the century. They were later supplanted by the mendicant orders, dedicated to the pope, it is their moderation they had this setback.
The Cathars were a Christian sect, a European scale, whose theology differed little when all of the Roman doctrine, but repudiated the installation of Church in the opulence of the rent, waiving any ecclesiastical hierarchy, admitted a certain equality among the faithful, even women, and rejected for its consideration any land. The Counts of Foix and resented their vassals there any prejudice against the nobility and there first saw that the amplification of the Cistercian reform. A big difference, it does not stress it enough, insisted on the abandonment of Latin in use amongst the Catholic clergy, learned language, incomprehensible to the ordinary, and adoption of Occitan by priests and manuals Cathars, which could only flatter the independent spirit of modernism and the valleys of the bourgeois. But probably the decisive advantage of the Cathars, the eyes of the counts, he was to deny the church any land ownership and to reserve the property rights to the nobility and its vassals.
If the count himself retained the clear confessional, not without being excommunicated several times, the ladies of the court of Foix proved more supportive of the new Christianity. Philippa Countess of Foix, wife of Raymond-Roger of Foix and Esclarmonde, sister of Earl, were admitted among the perfect. This court cultivated, who spoke Latin as well qu'occitan, listened, read and sang the ballads of troubadours traveling, whose pungent poetry marry courtly love to hate clerics:
"Clergue getOne riders has Carnatge
That quantity lor year donnat pan and formatge
Las Meton have lai om los encairelo. "
(Clerics knights throw the carnage, because after giving them bread and cheese they send them where they spit).
Peire Cardenal (1205 - 1272)
Cistercian Abbey Boulbonne react sympathetically to heresy, long since received the graves of the lords of the house of Foix, whether they were suspects or even excommunicated. However the Bishop of St. Lizier and Father of St. Anthony of Pamiers called to their aid Simon de Montfort, that he deliver them heretics. His aversion to the new faith as against the count's family earned Pamiers, not only to be erected into a bishopric from 1295 and to welcome the southern center of the anti-Cathar Inquisition, but also to give the Church a pope, Jacques Fournier, under the name of Benedict XII (1334-1342). Benedictine abbeys Lézat and Mas d'Azil, cautious, but orthodox, knew about them or the Cathars or its enforcement, or promotion.
Raimond-Roger, seventh earl of Foix from 1183 to 1223, displayed his valor and military talents against the crusade of the Barons of the North, which opened in 1204. His first victory was in Montjoie, near Toulouse, where he defeated a force of 6,000 Germans, who went to besiege Lavaur. In 1211, in Castelnaudary, he routed the army of Marshal Guy de Lévis. He even appealed to King of Aragon, which could reach the plain of Toulouse by the Val d'Ariege, but was killed in September 1213 to the Battle of Muret.
Roger-Bernard II, eighth earl of Foix (1223-1241) was nicknamed the Great for his victories over the Crusaders, for the protection it gave to the Cathars and constancy of mind, since it was twice excommunicated. Like his father, he was buried at Boulbonne.
Roger IV, ninth Earl of Foix (1241-1265), was forced, as his overlord Count Raymond of Toulouse, to pay homage liege to the King of France Louis IX, St. Louis, but could not prevent the siege of Montsegur in 1244. At least he secretly allowed the Cathar faith to remain high throughout the Ariege.
Roger-Bernard III, tenth Earl of Foix (1265-1302), was the author of last change of fortune which was to reach its lineage to a national destiny. Things had started badly when, in May 1272 King Philip III Hardi laid siege on the castle of Foix and imprisoned him in Carcassonne. His stroke of genius was to enter complicity in the King of France Philip IV the Fair, whose anticlericalism and even the anti distinguished themselves particularly by the destruction of the Templars, by the attack at Anagni and the deportation of the Popes in Avignon. The old distrust of the house of Foix to Rome pleaded for it now! Both Roger-Bernard III, in the fight against the English, you live it be called "president, governor and commander of the dioceses of Auch, Ain, Dax and Bayonne, so he forced the King's Bishop Bernard Pamiers Saisset to lift the excommunication pronounced against him and thus lose face, especially as he could marry Marguerite de Moncada, Viscountess of Béarn in 1290, and right itself become Viscount of Bearn.
Local history then invades the general history. The fierce hostility of Bishop Bernard theocratic Pamiers Saisset to the Count of Foix earned him in 1301 and imprisoned in Paris convened by the king, perhaps the Pope Boniface VIII, he replied to his imprisonment by a letter to the king of unprecedented violence and the excommunication of Philip the Fair in 1303, but took it badly, since the king was excommunicated stop the pontiff at his residence in Anagni (Lazio), with such violence that he died and then Philip the Fair was elected pope a Bordeaux, under the name of Clement V, and urged him to carry the Holy See in Avignon , since 1309. This incident provoked Ariège, the Italians say, "a captive of Babylon," which was to follow the Great Western Schism, after 1378. Small cause, big effect! We then took the habit of saying that "the city of Pamiers is in the county of Foix, but not the county of Foix.
Out of sight, out of the heart
From 1290, the County of Foix belonged to the house of Foix-Béarn. Foix Castle was deserted for that of Orthez. Without doubt, the counts of Foix-Béarn they felt for a long time, Ariégeois First, they kept the habit of frequenting the castle and Mazeres to be buried in Boulbonne. But gradually the link is weakening.
III said Gaston Phoebus (or Phoebus for his blond hair) was born in 1334 the marriage of Gaston II of Foix and Comminges Eleonora, becoming, in 1343, the death of his father in Seville Alfonso XI, who had joined the siege of Algeciras for not only the thirteenth count of Foix, but both the Viscount of Bearn, Marsan Gavardan and the lord of Nébouzan (country of Saint Gaudens). His possessions were so much of it already one of the principal vassals of the kingdom of France, he could marry soon 1353 Agnes of Navarre, sister of King Charles II of Navarre said the Bad, the same one that was beat Bertrand du Guesclin in 1364 at the Battle of Cocherel, and he received was very young at the courtyard of the Louvre by King John II, who wanted him to take sides against the English. Between the two men, reports were so violent that the king shut Gaston III Châtelet! In fact, Gaston Phoebus wanted to take advantage of the Hundred Years War (1137 - 1453) to ensure political independence and thus achieve the dream of the counts of Foix monarchy. Just John II was captured there by the Black Prince to the humiliating defeat of Poitiers in 1356, Gaston Phoebus urgent thought to rally the Teutonic Knights and reclaim East Prussia on the Slavs. It turned its back on Languedoc, whose loyalty to the king was finally secure the victory of Valois against the Plantagenets.
If returned glorious Gaston III of Prussia it was to defeat Jacques Ile de France, then the Armagnacs in the battle of Launac (1362), finally and above the Duke of Berry, governor of Languedoc for the king in battle of Revel (1381). Now independent, not paying more homage to anyone except God, forcibly controlling the trade route from Bayonne to Toulouse, and became even more powerful and rich prince from across Occitan, Gaston III of Foix set himself up as an Italian nobleman, on the model of Anjou in Sicily, the Visconti of Milan and the Malatesta of Romagna. Condottiere, he created a standing army of 6,000 men, with whom he ransomed the whole feudal Gascon. Modernist, he legalized usury, protected the Jews, limited the prerogatives of the nobility, whom he had in 1380 to severely punish the conspiracy. Writer and artist, he wrote a treatise on hunting, the "Mirror of Phoebus, still admired today, and hundreds of songs Occitan, inspired by the courtly love. Was not the contemporary of Petrarch (1304-1374), whose glory he irritated the ears?
Gaston III had founded a powerful dynasty, if misfortune had not overwhelmed. Son of his two, one was legitimate, he killed with his hand in a fit of anger, the other bastard who perished burned alive at the famous Burning Ball. At his death in 1391 ended the direct branch of Foix - Beam.
This thirteenth count of Foix (1334 - 1391) was therefore the statesman and writer on a European scale, whose fame has survived and is still calling for tourists. But the European left there a ariégeois? We keep him a few letters signed and dated Mazères castle, so he sometimes lived. We know he was confined to the gentlemen prisoners Castle Foix to ransom. But his rides until Prussia and Flanders they left him the leisure to enjoy the wild nature of the Val d'Ariege, the charm of its Romanesque churches and the emotions of the bear hunt? Of the two hundred songs and poems he left, the most famous was, they say, "Cursed Mountin '(cursed mountains!), Which does not show an extreme attachment, nor the massive Tabe, nor Montcalm, nor for peak Carlit. In this time and until the 19th century, it was decided to hate the mountain, which does not produce cash, but rebels.
Unless the castle of Foix, now a museum, memories of the counts have disappeared from the Ariege. Still Gaston de Foix, the illustrious captain of the Italian wars, was born December 12, 1489 at Castle Mazères but in 1492 a fire destroyed the building, which was not rebuilt. As for Abbey Boulbonne, ruined by Protestants, displaced and abandoned during the Revolution, its ruins now the department of Haute Garonne.
It is true that with Gaston Phoebus had ended the direct line of the counts of Foix, whose extension to 1610 will be several times by women. The title of Count of Foix therefore no longer be a carrier for its prestigious title of glory.
Bibliography
Duclos MH - History of Ariège - 1882
Claudine Pailhès - Ariège Counts and Cathars - Milan 1992
Editor Claudine Pailhès - History of Upper Foix and Ariege - Editions Privat 1996
Adelin Moulis - If the Counts of Foix Tales - Lacour Rediviva 1998
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