Everything about Septimania totally explained
Septimania was the western region of the Roman province of
Gallia Narbonensis that passed under the control of the
Visigoths in 462, when Septimania was ceded to their king,
Theodoric II. Under the Visigoths it was known as simply
Gallia or
Narbonensis. It corresponded roughly with the modern French region of
Languedoc-Roussillon. It passed briefly to the
Emirate of Córdoba in the eighth century before its reconquest by the
Franks, who by the end of the ninth century termed it
Gothia or the
Gothic march (
marca Gothica).
Septimania was a
march of the
Carolingian Empire and then
West Francia down to the thirteenth century, though it was culturally and politically separate from northern France and the central royal government. The region was under the influence of the
Toulousain,
Provence, and
Catalonia. It was part of the cultural and linguistic region named
Occitania that was finally brought within the control of the French kings through the
Albigensian Crusade and it came under French governors. From the end of the thirteenth century it was known as
Languedoc and its history is tied up with that of France.
The name "Septimania" may derive from part of the Roman name of the city of
Béziers,
Colonia Julia Septimanorum Beaterrae, which in turn alludes to the settlement of veterans of the
Roman VII Legion in the city. Another possible derivation of the name is in reference to the seven cities (
civitates) of the territory: Béziers,
Elne,
Agde,
Narbonne,
Lodève,
Maguelonne, and
Nîmes. Septimania extended to a line half-way between the
Mediterranean Sea and the
Garonne River in the northwest; in the east the
Rhône separated it from
Provence; and to the south its boundary was formed by the
Pyrenees.
Visigothic Narbonensis
Gothic acquisition of Septimania
Under Theodoric II, the Visigoths settled in
Aquitaine as
foederati of the
Western Roman Empire (450s).
Sidonius Apollinaris refers to Septimania as "theirs" during the reign of
Avitus (455–456), but Sidonius is probably considering Visigothic settlement of and around
Toulouse. The Visigoths were then holding the Toulousain against the legal claims of the Empire, though they'd more than once offered to exchange it for the
Auvergne.
In 462 the Empire, controlled by
Ricimer in the name of
Libius Severus, granted the Visigoths the western half of the province of Gallia Narbonensis to settle. The Visigoths occupied
Provence (eastern Narbonensis) as well and only in 475 did the Visigothic king,
Euric, cede it to the Empire by a treaty whereby the emperor
Julius Nepos recognised the Visigoths' full independence.
Kingdom of Narbonne
The Visigoths, perhaps because they were
Arian, met with the opposition of the
Catholic Franks in Gaul. The Franks allied with the
Armorici, whose land was under constant threat from the Goths south of the
Loire, and in 507
Clovis I, the Frankish king, invaded the Visigothic kingdom, whose capital lay in Septimania at Toulouse, with the consent of the leading men of the tribe. Clovis defeated the Goths in the
Battle of Vouillé and the child-king
Amalaric was carried for safety into Spain while
Gesalec was elected to replace him and rule from
Narbonne.
Clovis, his son
Theuderic I, and his
Burgundian allies proceeded to conquer most of Visigothic Gaul, including the
Rouergue (507) and Toulouse (508). The attempt to take
Carcassone, a fortified site guarding the Septimanian coast, was defeated by the
Ostrogoths (508) and Septimania thereafter remained in Visigothic hands, though the Burgundians managed to hold Narbonne for a time and drive Gesalec into exile. Border warfare between Gallo-Roman magnates, including bishops, had existed with the Visigoths during the last phase of the Empire and it continued under the Franks.
The Ostrogothic king
Theodoric the Great reconquered Narbonne from the Burgundians and retained it as the provincial capital.
Theudis was appointed regent at Narbonne by Theodoric while Amalaric was still a minor in Spain. When Theodoric died in 526, Amalaric was elected king in his own right and he immediately made his capital in Narbonne. He ceded Provence, which had at some point passed back into Visigothic control, to the Ostrogothic king
Athalaric. The Frankish king of Paris,
Childebert I, invaded Septimania in 531 and chased Amalaric to
Barcelona in response to pleas from his sister,
Chrotilda, that her husband, Amalaric, had been mistreating her. The Franks didn't try to hold the province, however. Under Amalaric's successor, however, the centre of gravity of the kingdom crossed the Pyrenees and Theudis made his capital in Barcelona.
Gothic province of Gallia
In the Visigothic kingdom, which became centred on
Toledo by the end of the reign of
Leovigild, the province of Gallia Narbonensis, usually shortened to just Gallia or Narbonensis and never called Septimania, was both an administrative province of the central royal government and an ecclesiastical province whose
metropolitan was the
Archbishop of Narbonne. Originally, the Goths may have maintained their hold on the
Albigeois, but if so it was conquered by the time of
Chilperic I. There is archaeological evidence that some enclaves of Visigothic population remained in Frankish Gaul, near the Septimanian border, after 507. Liuva granted Iberia to his son Leovigild and took Septimania to himself. Alternately, the invasion may have occurred in response to Hermenegild's death. Reccared meanwhile took
Beaucaire (Ugernum) on the
Rhône near
Tarascon and
Cabaret (a fort called Ram's Head), both of which lay in Guntram's kingdom. It is clear that the Franks, throughout the sixth century, had coveted Septimania, but were unable to take it and the invasion of 589 was the last attempt.
In the seventh century Gallia often had its own governors or
duces (dukes), who were typically Visigoths. Most public offices were also held by Goths, far out of proportion to their part of the population.
Culture of Gothic Septimania
The native population of Gallia was referred to by Visigothic and Spanish writers as the "Gauls" and there's a well-attested hatred between the Goths and the Gaul which was atypical for the kingdom as a whole.
Thanks to the preserved canons of the
Council of Narbonne of 590, a good deal can be known about surviving pagan practices in Visigothic Septimania. The Council may have been responding in part to the orders of the
Third Council of Toledo, which found "the sacrilege of idolatry [tobe] firmly implanted throughout almost the whole of Spain and Septimania." The Roman pagan practice of not working Thursdays in honour of
Jupiter was still prevalent. The council set down penance to be done for not working on Thursday save for church festivals and commanded the practice of
Martin of Braga, rest from rural work on Sundays, to be adopted. but the level of trading activity has been disputed. There have been few to no objects of
Neustrian,
Austrasian, or
Burgundian provenance discovered in Septimania. However, a series of
sarcophagi of a unique regional style, variously laballed Visigothic, Aquitainian, or south-west Gallic, are prevalent on both sides of the Septimania border. These sarcophagi are made of locally quarried marble from
Saint-Béat and are of varied design, but with generally flat relief which distinguishes them from Roman sarcophagi. However, if they were made in the 5th century, while both Aquitaine and Septimani were in Visigothic hands, their existence provides no evidence for a cultural osmosis across the Gothic-Frankish frontier. A unique style of orange pottery was common in the 4th and 5th centuries in southern Gaul, but the later (6th century) examples culled from Septimania are more orange than their cousins from Aquitaine and Provence and are not found commonly outside of Septimania, a strong indicator that there was little commerce over the frontier or at its ports. In fact, Septimania helped to isolate both Aquitaine and Spain from the rest of the Mediterranean world.
Visigothic coinage didn't circulate in Gaul outside of Septimania and Frankish coinage didn't circulate in Spain or Septimania. If there had been a significant amount of commerce over the frontier, the monies paid had to have been melted down immediately and re-minted for foreign coins have not been preserved across the frontier.
Moorish Septimania
The
Moors, under
Al-Samh ibn Malik the governor-general of
al-Andalus, sweeping up the Iberian peninsula, by 719 overran Septimania; al-Samh set up his capital from 720 at Narbonne, which the Moors called Arbuna, offering the still largely Arian inhabitants generous terms and quickly pacifying the other cities. With Narbonne secure, and equally important, its port, for the Arab mariners were masters now of the Western Mediterranean, he swiftly subdued the largely unresisting cities, still controlled by their Visigoth counts: taking Alet and Béziers, Agde, Lodève, Maguelonne and Nîmes. By 721 he was reinforced and ready to lay siege to Toulouse, a possession that would open up Aquitaine to him on the same terms as Septimania. But his plans were overthrown in the disastrous
Battle of Toulouse (721), with immense losses, in which al-Samh was so seriously wounded that he soon died at Narbonne. Arab forces soundly based in Narbonne and easily resupplied by sea, struck eastwards in the 720s, penetrating as far as
Autun (725). But in 731, the
Berber wali of Narbonne and the region of
Cerdagne,
Uthman ibn Naissa, called "Munuza" by the Franks, who was recently linked by marriage to duke Eudes (also called Odo) of Aquitaine, revolted against Córdoba, and was defeated and killed. In October of 732, a relatively small Arab force under
Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi encountered
Charles Martel between Tours and Poitiers, and was defeated. This "
Battle of Tours" (also called the Battle of Poitiers) is celebrated in popular history and traditionally credited with stopping the Moorish advance in Europe.
Carolingian Gothia
After the territory round
Toulouse was taken by the
Franks in 732,
Pippin III directed his attention to Narbonne, but the city held firm in 737, defended by its Goths, and Jews under the command of its governor Yusuf, 'Abd er-Rahman's heir. Around 747 the government of the Septimania region (and the Upper Mark, from Pyrénées to Ebro River) was given to
Aumar ben Aumar. In 752 the
Gothic counts of
Nimes,
Melguelh,
Agde and
Beziers refused allegance to the emir at Cordoba and declared their loyalty to the Frankish king—the count of Nimes,
Ansemund, having some authority over the remaining counts. The Gothic counts and the Franks then began to besiege
Narbonne, where
Miló was probably the count (as successor of the count
Gilbert) But Narbonne resisted. In 754 an anti-Frank reaction, led by Ermeniard, killed Ansemund, but the uprising was without success and
Radulf was designated new count by the Frankish court. About 755
Abd al-Rahman ben Uqba replaced Aumar ben Aumar. Narbonne capitulated in 759 and the county was granted to Miló, the Gothic count in Muslim times. The region of
Roussillon was taken by the Franks in 760. In 767, after the fight against
Waifred of Aquitaine,
Albi,
Rouergue,
Gevaudan, and the city of
Toulouse were conquered. In 777 the wali of
Barcelona,
Sulayman al-Arabi, and the wali of
Huesca Abu Taur, offered their sumission to Charlemagne and also the sumission of
Husayn, wali of Zaragoza. When Charlemagne invaded the Upper Mark in 778, Husayn refused allegance and he'd to retire. In the Pyrenees, the Basques defeated themselves in Roncesvalles (
August 15, 778).
The Frankish king found Septimania and the borderlands so devastated and depopulated by warfare, with the inhabitants hiding among the mountains, that he made grants of land that were some of the earliest identifiable
fiefs to Visigothic and other refugees. Charlemagne also founded several monasteries in Septimania, around which the people gathered for protection. Beyond Septimania to the south Charlemagne established the
Spanish Marches in the borderlands of his empire.
The territory passed to Louis, king in Aquitaine, but it was governed by Frankish margraves and then dukes (from 817) of Septimania.
The Frankish noble
Bernat of Gothia (also, Bernat of Septimania) was the ruler of these lands from 826 to 832. His career (he was beheaded in 844) characterized the turbulent 9th century in Septimania. His appointment as
Count of Barcelona in 826 occasioned a general uprising of the Catalan lords at this intrusion of Frankish power. For suppressing
Berenguer of Toulouse and the Catalans,
Louis the Pious rewarded Bernat with a series of counties, which roughly delimit 9th century Septimania: Narbonne, Béziers, Agde, Magalona, Nimes and Uzés. Rising against Charles the Bald in 843, Bernard was apprehended at Toulouse and beheaded.
Septimania became known as
Gothia after the reign of
Charlemagne. It retained these two names while it was ruled by the
counts of Toulouse during early part of the
Middle Ages, but the southern part became more familiar as
Roussillon and the west became known as
Foix, and the name "Gothia" (along with the older name "Septimania") faded away during the 10th century, except as a traditional designation as the region fractured into smaller feudal entities, which sometimes retained Carolingian titles, but lost their Carolingian character, as the culture of Septimania evolved into the culture of
Languedoc.
The name was used because the area was populated by a higher concentration of
Goths than in surrounding regions. The rulers of this area, when joined with several counties, were titled the
Marquesses of Gothia (and, also, the
Dukes of Septimania).
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