Viscounty of Béarn
Viscounty of Béarn | |||||||
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9th century–1620 | |||||||
Louis I | |||||||
Historical era | King of France | 27 February 1594 | |||||
• Incorporated into France | October 1620 | ||||||
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The Viscounty, later Principality of Béarn (
First dynasty
The citation of a certain "Gaston [son] of Centule, viscount of Béarn" (Gasto Centuli vicecomes Bearnensis) is the first attestation of a specific regional organization in the late 860s/early 870s. The viscounty was named after Lescar, former Benearnum, last cited in 673. Its first parliamentary body, the Cour Major, was formed in 1080.
A mint was established at
Under Aquitaine
Gascony was united to the
While nominally part of the Duchy of Aquitaine, the Viscounts of Béarn frequently joined Aragonese military campaigns between the 10th and 12th centuries. In 1170, the viscounty passed to the Catalan House of Montcada who paid homage to the kings of Aragon.[3][4] Under Aragonese influence, the legal charters in Béarn were further developed into the Fors de Bearn.[5]
Sovereign principality
The independence of Béarn from France and
For the next decade, he successfully resisted the efforts of the
The official language of the sovereign principality was the local vernacular Bearnès dialect of Old Occitan. It was the spoken language of law courts and of business and it was the written language of customary law. Although vernacular languages were increasingly preferred to Latin in western Europe in the late Middle Ages, the status of Occitan in Béarn was unusual because its use was required by law: "lawyers will draft their petitions and pleas in the vernacular language of the present country, both in speech and in writing".[10]
Sovereign under the Foix-Albret
In 1479, the Lord of Béarn, Francis Phoebus, inherited the Kingdom of Navarre, across the Pyrenees to the southwest. The two sovereign entities would from then on remain in personal union. In 1512, the Kingdom of Navarre was almost entirely occupied by Spain; only Lower Navarre, north of the Pyrenees, escaped Spanish permanent occupation. In 1517, Henry I (II of Navarre) inherited it, as well as Béarn, from his mother. The Bearnese monarchs extended the use of Occitan to Navarre after 1512, despite the fact that it was not the vernacular language there, where Basque was the tongue of the people. The Estates of Navarre convoked in 1522 (or in 1523, according to other sources) kept records in Occitan, as did the Chancery of Navarre created in 1524. When Henry II revised the Fueros of Navarre in 1530, he had them translated from Castilian into Occitan.[10]
In 1564, Henry's daughter,
However, he refused the Parlement's demand that he unite Béarn and Lower Navarre with the French crown, since these territories were not French estates, but separate realms. Had these principalities been united with France, the Edict of Nantes (1598) would have applied to them and Catholic property would have had to have been restored. Nonetheless, Henry, now a Catholic, consented to restore Catholic rights of worship in certain towns. The estates of Béarn continued to conduct business in Occitan and laws were enacted in the same.[10] Prior to the 1601, the Duc de Rohan was the heir to Navarre and Béarn, since the Salic law of France did not apply there.[11]
After Henry IV's death, Calvinists from Béarn attended the Huguenot conference at
Incorporation into France
On 3 May 1616, the
Louis preserved the freedom of worship of the Calvinists, the right of the estates to negotiate their taxes and the obligation of the king of France to swear to uphold the customary law of Béarn on his accession. He also united Béarn and Navarre: thenceforth the
See also
- Viscounts of Béarn
- Fors de Béarn
References
- ^ Robert Sabatino Lopez, "An Aristocracy of Money in the Early Middle Ages", Speculum, 28:1 (1953), pp. 1–43, at 12.
- ^ John Porteous, "Crusader Coinage with Greek or Latin Inscriptions", A History of the Crusades, Volume VI: The Impact of the Crusades on Europe, N. P. Zacour and H. W. Hazard, eds. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), pp. 354–87, at 357.
- ^ John Jr. Bell Henneman, et al., Medieval France: An Encyclopedia (Taylor & Francis, 1995), pp. 102–103.
- ^ Claire Taylor, Heresy in Medieval France: Dualism in Aquitaine and the Agenais, 1000–1249 (Boydell & Brewer, 2005), p. 147.
- ^ E. Michael Gerli, Medieval Iberia: An Encyclopedia (Routledge, 2013), p. 153.
- ^ John F. Le Patourel, et al., Feudal Empires: Norman and Plantagenet (Bloomsbury Academic, 1984), pp. 180, XV.
- ^ Andrew Spencer, et al., Thirteenth Century England XVII: Proceedings of the Cambridge Conference, 2017 (Boydell & Brewer, 2021), pp. 83.
- ^ Richard Vernier, "Lord of the Pyrenees: Gaston Fébus, Count of Foix (1331–1391)", "Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2008", pp. 13.
- ^ John Hine Mundy, [Review of Pierre Tucoo-Chala (1959), Gaston Fébus et la vicomté de Béarn, 1343–1391 (Bordeaux: Birère)], Speculum, 36:2 (1961), pp. 354–56.
- ^ a b c d Paul Cohen, "Linguistic Politics on the Periphery: Louis XIII, Béarn, and the Making of French as an Official Language in Early Modern France", When Languages Collide: Perspectives on Language Conflict, Language Competition, and Language Coexistence (Ohio State University Press, 2003), pp. 165–200.
- ^ A. D. Lublinskaya, French Absolutism: The Crucial Phase, 1620–1629 (Cambridge University Press, 1968), pp. 170–73.