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Languedoc
The Province of Languedoc (; , ; oc, Lengadòc ) is a former province of France. Most of its territory is now contained in the modern-day region of Occitanie in Southern France. Its capital city was Toulouse. It had an area of approximately 42,700 square kilometers (16,490 square miles). History The Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis fell to the Visigothic Kingdom from the 5th to the 8th centuries. Occupied briefly by the Emirate of Córdoba between 719 and 759, it was conquered and incorporated into the Kingdom of the Franks by Pippin the Short in 759 following the Siege of Narbonne. Under the Carolingians, the counts of Toulouse were appointed by the royal court. Later, this office became hereditary. Part of the territory where Occitan was spoken came to be called '' langue d'oc'', ''Lengadòc'' or Languedoc. In the 13th century, the spiritual beliefs of the area were challenged by the See of Rome and the region became attached to the Kingdom of France following t ...
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Albigensian Crusade
The Albigensian Crusade or the Cathar Crusade (; 1209–1229) was a military and ideological campaign initiated by Pope Innocent III to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc, southern France. The Crusade was prosecuted primarily by the French crown and promptly took on a political aspect. It resulted in the significant reduction of practicing Cathars and a realignment of the County of Toulouse with the French crown. The distinct regional culture of Languedoc was also diminished. The Cathars originated from an anti-materialist reform movement within the Bogomil churches of the Balkans calling for what they saw as a return to the Christian message of perfection, poverty and preaching, combined with a rejection of the physical to the point of starvation. The reforms were a reaction against the often perceived scandalous and dissolute lifestyles of the Catholic clergy in southern France. Their theology, neo-Gnostic in many ways, was basically dualist. Several of their practices, esp ...
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Occitan Language
Occitan (; oc, occitan, link=no ), also known as ''lenga d'òc'' (; french: langue d'oc) by its native speakers, and sometimes also referred to as ''Provençal'', is a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valleys, as well as Spain's Val d'Aran; collectively, these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitània. It is also spoken in Calabria ( Southern Italy) in a linguistic enclave of Cosenza area (mostly Guardia Piemontese). Some include Catalan in Occitan, as the distance between this language and some Occitan dialects (such as the Gascon language) is similar to the distance between different Occitan dialects. Catalan was considered a dialect of Occitan until the end of the 19th century and still today remains its closest relative. Occitan is an official language of Catalonia, where a subdialect of Gascon known as Aranese is spoken in the Val d'Aran. Since September 2010, the Parliament of Catalonia has considered Aranese Occitan to ...
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Catharism
Catharism (; from the grc, καθαροί, katharoi, "the pure ones") was a Christian dualist or Gnostic movement between the 12th and 14th centuries which thrived in Southern Europe, particularly in northern Italy and southern France. Followers were described as Cathars and referred to themselves as Good Christians; in modern times, they are mainly remembered for a prolonged period of religious persecution by the Catholic Church, which did not recognize their unorthodox Christianity. Catharism emerged in Western Europe in the Languedoc region of southern France in the 11th century. Adherents were sometimes referred to as Albigensians, after the French city Albi where the movement first took hold. Catharism was initially taught by ascetic leaders who set few guidelines, leading some Catharist practices and beliefs to vary by region and over time. The movement was greatly influenced by the Bogomils of the First Bulgarian Empire, and may have originated in the Byzantin ...
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Occitania (administrative Region)
Occitania ( ; french: Occitanie ; oc, Occitània ; ca, Occitània ) is the southernmost administrative region of metropolitan France excluding Corsica, created on 1 January 2016 from the former regions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées. The Council of State approved Occitania as the new name of the region on 28 September 2016, coming into effect on 30 September 2016. The modern administrative region is named after the larger cultural and historical region of Occitania, which corresponds with the southern third of France. The region of Occitania as it is today covers a territory similar to that ruled by the Counts of Toulouse in the 12th and 13th centuries. The banner of arms of the Counts of Toulouse, known colloquially as the Occitan cross, is used by the modern region and is also a popular cultural symbol. In 2015, Occitania had a population of 5,839,867. Toponymy Enacted in 2014, the territorial reform of French regions had been subject to debate for many y ...
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Béziers
Béziers (; oc, Besièrs) is a subprefecture of the Hérault department in the Occitanie region of Southern France. Every August Béziers hosts the famous ''Feria de Béziers'', which is centred on bullfighting. A million visitors are attracted to the five-day event. The town is located on a small bluff above the river Orb, about from the Mediterranean coast and southwest of Montpellier. At Béziers, the Canal du Midi passes over the river Orb by means of the '' Pont-canal de l'Orb'', an aqueduct claimed to be the first of its kind. History Béziers is one of the oldest cities in France. Research published in March 2013 shows that Béziers dates from 575 BC, making it older than Agde (Greek Agathe Tyche, founded in 525 BC) and a bit younger than Marseille (Greek Massalia, founded in 600 BC). The site has been occupied since Neolithic times, before the influx of Celts. Roman ''Betarra'' was on the road that linked Provence with Iberia. The Romans refoun ...
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Counts Of Toulouse
The count of Toulouse ( oc, comte de Tolosa, french: comte de Toulouse) was the ruler of Toulouse during the 8th to 13th centuries. Originating as vassals of the Frankish kings, the hereditary counts ruled the city of Toulouse and its surrounding county from the late 9th century until 1270. The counts and other family members were also at various times counts of Quercy, Rouergue, Albi, and Nîmes, and sometimes margraves (military defenders of the Holy Roman Empire) of Septimania and Provence. Count Raymond IV founded the Crusader state of Tripoli, and his descendants were also counts there. They reached the zenith of their power during the 11th and 12th centuries, but after the Albigensian Crusade the county fell to the kingdom of France, nominally in 1229 and ''de facto'' in 1271. Later the title was revived for Louis Alexandre, Count of Toulouse, a bastard of Louis XIV (1678–1737). History Carolingian era During the youth of young Louis the Pious his tutor, Torson ...
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Regions Of France
France is divided into eighteen administrative regions (french: régions, singular ), of which thirteen are located in metropolitan France (in Europe), while the other five are overseas regions (not to be confused with the overseas collectivities, which have a semi-autonomous status). All of the thirteen metropolitan administrative regions (including Corsica ) are further subdivided into two to thirteen administrative departments, with the prefect of each region's administrative centre's department also acting as the regional prefect. The overseas regions administratively consist of only one department each and hence also have the status of overseas departments. Most administrative regions also have the status of regional territorial collectivities, which comes with a local government, with departmental and communal collectivities below the region level. The exceptions are Corsica, French Guiana, Mayotte and Martinique, where region and department functions are mana ...
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Toulouse
Toulouse ( , ; oc, Tolosa ) is the prefecture of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the larger region of Occitania. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Paris. It is the fourth-largest city in France after Paris, Marseille and Lyon, with 493,465 inhabitants within its municipal boundaries (2019 census); its metropolitan area has a population of 1,454,158 inhabitants (2019 census). Toulouse is the central city of one of the 20 French Métropoles, with one of the three strongest demographic growth (2013-2019). Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, the SPOT satellite system, ATR and the Aerospace Valley. It hosts the CNES's Toulouse Space Centre (CST) which is the largest national space centre in Europe, but also, on the military side, the newly created NATO space centre of excellence and the French Space Command and Space Acad ...
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Carcassonne
Carcassonne (, also , , ; ; la, Carcaso) is a French fortified city in the department of Aude, in the region of Occitanie. It is the prefecture of the department. Inhabited since the Neolithic, Carcassonne is located in the plain of the Aude between historic trade routes, linking the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea and the Massif Central to the Pyrénées. Its strategic importance was quickly recognized by the Romans, who occupied its hilltop until the demise of the Western Roman Empire. In the fifth century, it was taken over by the Visigoths, who founded the city. Within three centuries, it briefly came under Islamic rule. Its strategic location led successive rulers to expand its fortifications until the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659. Its citadel, known as the Cité de Carcassonne, is a medieval fortress dating back to the Gallo-Roman period and restored by the theorist and architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc in 1853. It was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Site ...
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Provinces Of France
The Kingdom of France was organised into provinces until the National Constituent Assembly adopted a more uniform division into departments (''départements'') and districts in late 1789. The provinces continued to exist administratively until 21 September 1791. The provinces of France were roughly equivalent to the historic counties of England. They came into their final form over the course of many hundreds of years, as many dozens of semi-independent fiefs and former independent countries came to be incorporated into the French royal domain. Because of the manner in which the provinces evolved, each had its own sets of feudal traditions, laws, taxation systems and courts; the system represented an impediment to effective administration of the entire country from Paris. During the early years of the French Revolution, in an attempt to centralise the administration of the whole country and to remove the influence of the French nobility over the country, the entirety of the provi ...
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Trencavel
The Trencavel was an important noble family in Languedoc between the 10th and 13th centuries. The name "Trencavel" began as a nickname and later became the family's surname. The name may derive from the Occitan words for "Nutcracker" (''trenca avelana''). The name was traditionally restricted in actual use only to those family members named Raymond, but the last Trencavel viscount, Raymond II, preferred the surname over his given name and adopted it for his charters. The first well-known member of the family was Ato I, viscount of Albi in the early 10th century. He was followed by five generations of viscounts of Albi in direct father-to-son descent. During this same period the family came to dominate the episcopacy of Languedoc. Each of the viscounts from Ato II on had a younger brother named Frotarius (or Frothaire) who was a bishop, be it of Albi, Cahors, or Nîmes. History In 1069, the three daughters of Peter II of Carcassonne sold the Counties of Carcassonne, Raz ...
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Southern France
Southern France, also known as the South of France or colloquially in French as , is a defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin,Louis Papy, ''Le midi atlantique'', Atlas et géographie de la France moderne, Flammarion, Paris, 1984. Spain, the Mediterranean Sea and Italy. It includes southern Nouvelle-Aquitaine in the west, Occitanie in the centre, the southern parts of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in the northeast, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur in the southeast, as well as the island of Corsica in the southeast. Southern France is generally included into Southern Europe because of its association with the Mediterranean Sea. The term derives from ('middle') and ('day') in Old French, comparable to the term to indicate southern Italy, which is a synonym for south in Romanian, or which is a synonym for the south direction in Spanish. The time of midday was synonymous with south because in France, as in th ...
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