5

State-Making: The Prince-Bishops of Maguelone and Papal Overlordship in Southern France

We have now seen how feudal language spread into papal–royal relationships in the early thirteenth century. At this time, the Mediterranean county of Melgueil, in the far south of modern-day France, also became a papal ‘fief’ (feudum). The bishop of Maguelone persuaded the pope to grant him the county as a papal fief—thus legitimizing his title to it—and then used this feudal relationship to strengthen his own power and authority within the county. Melgueil, in the thirteenth century, is a case-study of using papal overlordship to build a state—a political unit.

From the first chapter, we know that the county of Melgueil participated in the language of papal investiture. The county was, in theory, given to the pope by its count, Peter, in 1085, and then returned to the count. Pope Urban II had confirmed this arrangement in 1088. But the papal lordship of Melgueil did not clearly distinguish between the spiritual aspects—the count’s renunciation of his role in appointing the local bishop (the bishop of Maguelone)—and a seemingly temporal aspect—the count’s promise to hold the county ‘through the hand of the Roman Pontiff’. In the thirteenth century, under Pope Innocent III, the relationship between the counts of Melgueil and the papacy changed. The earlier relationship—between Urban II and the eleventh-century counts—was of little importance to this new formal relationship, which arose from the horrors of the Albigensian Crusade. Indeed, it was not just the county of Melgueil which forged a new alliance with the papacy at this time; the claimants to the neighbouring county of Toulouse sought to create a very similar relationship with Pope Innocent III: probably, in fact, exactly the same relationship. This new relationship between the county of Melgueil and the pope was feudal: the county was now called a ‘fief’ (feudum) of the Roman Church. However, as with King John of England in the previous chapter, the impetus and much of the detail—though not all of it—came from below, from the people seeking to hold this ‘fief’ from Innocent III, and not from the pope himself.¹

During the initial phases of the Albigensian Crusade, 1209–11, the pope’s lordship over Melgueil was recalled hesitantly. Count Raymond of Toulouse, the target of the Crusade, offered to swear fidelity to the pope, and to forfeit his right to the county if he failed to root out heresy. In 1211, when Raymond was excommunicated, the papal legates claimed that Raymond had consequently lost the county. Over the next four years the bishop of Maguelone and a local family, the Pelet-Anduze, appealed to the pope in the hope of gaining possession of Melgueil. In the process, they established through their petitions and legal arguments that Melgueil was a ‘fief’ (feudum) of the pope and that, if the count of Melgueil failed to pay an annual census to the pope, he was at risk of losing the county. In 1215 the bishop of Maguelone finally succeeded in achieving papal confirmation of his possession of the county, and Pope Innocent III granted Melgueil to him as a ‘fief’. As part of this grant, the bishop was limited in which parts of the county he could alienate or grant away. The bishop proceeded to use this stipulation to regain castles given away by Raymond of Toulouse, thus reading the new feudal relationship back into the past. In Melgueil, papal overlordship was a tool of the new count.

The Twelfth Century

The language of ‘investiture’ and ‘accepting the county through the hands’ of the pope—which we saw was widespread in the eleventh century—faded in the twelfth century.² Pope Paschal II (1099–1114) had acknowledged that the bishop of Maguelone had a right to take over the government of the county of Melgueil if the line of counts died out (a promise originally made by Count Peter in 1085). Paschal had committed the collection of the annual census-tribute of an ounce of gold (also promised by Count Peter) to the bishop of Maguelone, and had even referred to the ‘hands of the Roman Pontiff’. He did not, however, say that the counts received the county from the hands of the Roman Pontiff, but that Count Peter—through his donation—had ‘returned the bishopric into the hand of the Roman Pontiff, through the sending of a ring’.³ Paschal appears to have been more concerned about the freedom Count Peter gave to the church than the land he gave to the papacy. Pope Calixtus II (1119–24), in a privilege for the bishop of Maguelone from 1119, confirmed that ‘according to the testament of Count Peter, of pious memory, the Church of Maguelone should always be free from the chains and exactions of secular servitude and power’, and confirmed that the bishops should hold the county, if Count Peter’s heirs died out.⁴ Again, it was the episcopal freedom which was most important. At some point during his pontificate, Bishop Walter of Maguelone appealed to Calixtus II to appoint arbiters in a conflict between Bernard IV of Melgueil (Count Peter’s grandson) and William VI, lord of Montpellier. Calixtus consequently appointed four churchmen to decide the matter (the archbishops of Vienne and Tarragona, and the bishops of Carpentras and Grenoble). Whether Bishop Walter used Count Peter’s testament to justify papal involvement in this conflict is unknown, but it is certain that the bishop initiated the papal intervention, by appealing to Calixtus.⁵

Pope Anastasius IV, in 1153, confirmed the freedom of the bishops from the lay power yet again, although he also mentioned the annual census which Count Peter had promised to pay, and even that the counts should ‘hold the county through the hand of the Roman pontiff’, comments which had not appeared in Calixtus’ or Paschal’s privileges.⁶ Anastasius’ additions did not last long: two years later, Pope Adrian IV confirmed that the bishop should hold the county if Peter’s heirs died out, but did not mention holding the county ‘through the hand of the Roman Pontiff’. Nor did Adrian mention the annual census owed by the county to the pope.⁷ Adrian, interestingly, had begun his ecclesiastical career in Melgueil, as a poor clerk in the church of Saint-Jacques according to the later historian-inquisitor Bernard Gui.⁸ Pope Urban III, in 1187, renewed the privileges of the bishop of Maguelone and, again, mentioned only that the county of Melgueil should be held ‘with the counsel and assent of the Roman Church’ if the line of counts died out.⁹

There is thus little concrete evidence of any formalized special relationship between the papacy and the counts of Melgueil in the twelfth century. The only evidence that anyone remembered Count Peter’s donation of his lands to the pope is from privileges granted to the bishops of Maguelone. The census owed by the counts was probably rarely, if ever, paid: it was only mentioned in Anastasius’ privilege because the pope was ordering it to be paid to the bishop. Presumably the bishops had wanted this included in order to try and get money from the counts. It seems unlikely this income often made it to Rome. The additions in Anastasius’ privilege—mention of the annual census and holding the county ‘through the hand of the pope’—can only have come from the 1088 privilege of Pope Urban II which confirmed Count Peter’s original donation. Perhaps these additions were inserted at the specific request of the bishop of Maguelone’s nuncios (who must have been petitioning for the privilege). Or perhaps whichever papal official drafted Anastasius’ privilege paid more attention to the text of Urban’s privilege than whoever drafted the privileges of Calixtus II or Adrian IV. In the case of the census, it seems possible that the bishop wanted it mentioned in order to increase his own income. Although, if this was the case, why was the census left unmentioned in Adrian IV’s privilege?

The surviving evidence indicates that, in the twelfth century, the only person who remembered Count Peter’s donation of his county to the pope was the bishop of Maguelone.¹⁰ One suspects that the elephantine episcopal memory was primarily interested in the advantages which accrued to the bishop from the grant, rather than the advantages which accrued to the papacy. This might, of course, be a trick of the sources—documents from the bishopric of Maguelone survive, but the papal registers, and documents for the count of Melgueil do not. Even Johannes Fried, however, who certainly thought that Melgueil was a ‘fief’ of the pope from the eleventh century onwards, could only describe the twelfth century as a time of ‘sleeping overlordship’.¹¹ I suspect that we might just as well say ‘non-existent overlordship’.

Although Melgueil was not a papal fief, the county was—undoubtedly—a fief of someone else by 1172. In December 1172 the Countess of Melgueil, Beatrice, acknowledged that she, and all her successors, should hold the whole county (totum comitatum Melgorii) from the Count of Toulouse, Raymond V, and his successors, ‘under the name of fief (titulo feodi)’.¹² This agreement was part of a marriage alliance contracted between Raymond V and Beatrice: Raymond’s son was to marry Beatrice’s daughter, Ermessind, and the county of Melgueil was the dowry (half of which was returnable if Ermessind died childless from Raymond’s son).¹³ This marriage alliance was contracted because, some short time earlier, Beatrice’s husband (Bernard Pelet of Alès) had died and his and Beatrice’s son (Bertrand Pelet) was seeking to take over the county.¹⁴ This marriage alliance disinherited Bertrand. In December 1172—presumably in response to Beatrice’s contract with Raymond of Toulouse and the disinheritance of Bertrand—Bertrand allied himself with King Alfonso II of Aragon. Bertrand ‘gave, transferred and conceded for ever […] the castle of Melgueil and all the county of Melgueil with all its appurtenances’ to the king of Aragon. In return Alfonso had ‘conceded forever to you Bertrand and your heirs, the castle of Melgueil and all the county of Melgueil and all its appurtenances, as an honourable fief (ad feudum honoratum)’.¹⁵ In 1172, no matter who you thought was the true count of Melgueil—Beatrice or Bertrand—it was definitely a fief of someone. The only question was whether it was a fief of the count of Toulouse or the king of Aragon. The pope was not considered.

As an aside, we should note that when Ermessind died in 1176, under the terms of the 1172 agreement she could dispose of half the county of Melgueil as she wished (the other half had to go to Raymond V of Toulouse). Nonetheless, she also granted her half to Raymond V of Toulouse. This was witnessed by a cardinal: Raymond of Arènes, cardinal-deacon of S. Maria in Via Lata.¹⁶ This, of course, is not firm evidence of papal approval: Cardinal Raymond seems to have ‘retired’ to the south of France after he had supported the antipope Victor IV. Ermessind and Raymond V may well have considered Raymond of Arènes’ status as ‘one of the best iurisperiti [lawyers] in Montpellier/Provence’, a master of Roman law and a glosser of Gratian’s Decretum as more important than his status as an exiled cardinal.¹⁷ There does not appear to have been any suggestion, in the 1170s, that the papacy held any kind of particular rights in Melgueil.

What terms did Beatrice and Raymond V of Toulouse, on the one hand, and Bertrand Pelet and Alfonso of Aragon, on the other, agree on? The counts of Melgueil, according to Beatrice, had to ensure that all the fortresses swore (presumably fidelity) to Raymond, and that the castles of the county should be handed over to Raymond when he ordered (castella et munitiones et fortias […] ad commonitionem vestram reddere).¹⁸ Likewise, when Bertrand and Alfonso agreed on terms, Bertrand and his successors had to perform homage and fidelity (hominium et fidelitatem) to the king, and to give the castrum of Melgueil and the other fortifications of the county to the king within fourteen days of an order to do so (reddere castrum Melgorii et forcias de comitatu […] infra XIIII dies postquam a nobis vel a nuncio nostro ammoniti fueritis).¹⁹ These terms owed nothing to the 1085 grant of the county to Pope Gregory VII, but they might have influenced the future papal–Melgorian relationship.

In 1172 it was established that the county of Melgueil was a fief. It seems that Alfonso of Aragon abandoned Bertrand’s cause fairly quickly, since he and Raymond V made peace in 1173, according to Roger of Howden.²⁰ In 1174 Raymond witnessed a charter of Bertrand Pelet, so they were presumably not in conflict then, and when Ermessind died in 1176 Raymond of Toulouse took control of the county.²¹ That was fine; so long as no one challenged the counts of Toulouse.

Seeking Papal Legitimization

Raymond V of Toulouse was succeeded by his son, Ermessind’s erstwhile husband, Raymond VI, in 1194. Throughout the twelfth century, the south of France had been characterized by a vibrant economy and culture, and an absence of a single central political authority. The Count of Toulouse (also Duke of Narbonne) had often been the most powerful ruler based in the south, but the King of Aragon-Catalonia also had interests in the south, possibly stretching across the Pyrenees (to create the so-called ‘Grand Crown of Aragon’); the King of France had obvious interests (though little power) and the King of England, in his capacity as duke of Aquitaine, was also involved.²² As an example: Roger of Howden, when describing the 1173 peace made between Alfonso of Aragon and Raymond V mentioned above, also explained that Raymond ‘became the man (homo) of the king [Henry II of England] to hold Toulouse in fief and heredity (in feudo et hereditate).²³ Even at the highest levels the political situation was fungible. During the eleventh and twelfth centuries the count of Melgueil was in the strange position of not controlling his largest settlement: the city of Montpellier—probably the most populous city in Occitania by the end of the twelfth century—had been granted to the Guilhem family in 985 by the count and continued to be ruled by them.²⁴ The lords of Montpellier were sometimes allied, sometimes opposed to the counts of Melgueil.²⁵ At the beginning of the thirteenth century the heiress of Montpellier—Maria—was married to the king of Aragon.

Above—or, perhaps one should say below—all of this, however, were the large numbers of smaller lords and castellans whose allegiance to any of these more powerful rulers was permanently open to renegotiation.²⁶ The consequence of all this political confusion was, depending on which historical school of thought one follows, either: to allow the spread of heretical groups (especially the Cathars) in the south; or, to allow the English and French monarchies, and the papacy, to overlay an (entirely non-existent) picture of heresy over the blameless southerners, in order to exert political control over the south.²⁷ Either way, invasion followed.

In response to the murder of a papal nuncio, Peter of Castelnau, in 1208, allegedly by one of Raymond of Toulouse’s followers, Pope Innocent III offered a crusading indulgence—remission of the temporal punishments for their sins—to anyone who travelled to the Languedoc to extirpate the heretical groups there.²⁸ Even before the invasion—the Albigensian Crusade, as the campaign would become known—Innocent, writing to Count Raymond in 1207, threatened the count with confiscation of his possessions: ‘we will take away from you the lands which you know are held (tenere) from the Roman Church.’²⁹ Was Innocent here referring specifically to the County of Melgueil?³⁰ There had not been any suggestion that this county was ‘held’ from the papacy in the twelfth century. Innocent’s letter did not specify any particular land. However, a formal feudal relationship between the county of Melgueil and the papacy would be created over the course of the Crusade. This was the first sign.

Once Innocent had offered a crusading indulgence, a large number of knights—mainly from Northern France—travelled to the south. The campaign began in 1209. Initially Raymond of Toulouse, with the political nous which had steered his family well over the last century of internecine southern strife, was able to redirect the Crusade from his own lands towards those of his regional adversary: Raymond-Roger, viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne.³¹ But, in order to do this, Raymond of Toulouse had to reconcile himself with the Church. In February 1209, before the Crusade got anywhere near the south (the army assembled at Lyon in June), Innocent wrote to Arnold-Amalric, abbot of Citeaux and papal legate. The pope told the legate that Raymond had sent ambassadors who asked Innocent to receive Raymond’s fidelity—probably an oath of fidelity—for the county of Melgueil, ‘which is of the right and property of St Peter’.³² This Innocent was not minded to do. ‘We will seem as though we are confirming it [the county] to him [Raymond]’, and the legate, Arnold-Amalric, had warned the pope that Raymond was still obstinate.

There is no evidence that twelfth-century counts of Melgueil had ever sworn an oath of fidelity to the pope. None of the privileges for the bishop of Maguelone, discussed above, had mentioned fidelity. It is probable that, from 1172, the counts were supposed to swear such oaths to the count of Toulouse (until the count of Toulouse took over Melgueil himself), but not to the pope. Why then did Raymond seek to swear fidelity now? Innocent III had hit on the right answer. If Innocent accepted Raymond’s fidelity, then he recognized that Raymond had been reconciled to the Church, and hence that Raymond was the rightful ruler, not just of Melgueil, but of all his lands. After all, surely the pope would only accept the fidelity of a ruler who was a good Christian. And if Raymond was a good Christian, how could anyone justify his deposition? Raymond was hardly the first to instrumentalize fidelity and homage to the pope to enhance his own legitimacy. We have already seen that the twelfth-century rulers of Norman Sicily, especially King Roger II, wanted the pope to receive their homage and fidelity because it confirmed their rule; the pope was bound thenceforth to recognize their legitimacy.³³ Had Raymond got Innocent to accept his fidelity, then the pope would publicly have confirmed Raymond’s fitness to rule. Thus fidelity, not something which the twelfth-century counts had offered to Rome, was introduced by Raymond as a tool. It confirmed his orthodoxy against accusations that he harboured heretics.

But Innocent did not accept Raymond’s oath. As with his predecessor, Pope Celestine III, and King Tancred of Sicily in 1192, the pope kept his options open by refusing to accept the fidelity (in Raymond’s case) or homage (in Tancred’s case) of a ruler.³⁴ A few months later, therefore, in June, Raymond appeared at Valence, and then at Saint-Gilles, before the legates sent by Innocent. There he was scourged by the legates for his sins and agreed to a series of concessions. Raymond handed seven castles over to the legates as pledges of his loyalty, and agreed that, if he disobeyed the legate or broke the other terms of his concession, the county of Melgueil would be forfeit: ‘and the right which I have in the county of Melgueil would revert entirely to the Roman Church.’³⁵ This is, again, an interesting development. Needless to say, it was not a stipulation found in the eleventh-century donation made by Count Peter. There, although the count had handed the county to the pope and received it back, the penalty if the count or his heirs broke the agreement was a fine (mulcta) and ecclesiastical censure. Count Raymond’s promise that he should lose his right (ius) is perhaps comparable with the promise made by King John in 1213 that if the king or his heirs neglected their relationship with the pope, they would lose their ius regni.³⁶ It was also, however, different: this was not a loss of ius because Raymond had failed to perform stipulated duties—such as paying a census. This was a loss of ius if Raymond did not keep to his promises about getting rid of heretical influence.³⁷ Raymond could just as well have offered to forfeit any of his territories, indeed, he did. The seven castles could also be forfeit if he neglected his promises. The threat of the Crusade was already reshaping papal–Melgorian relations in the Languedoc, and that would continue.

Shortly after the reconciliation of June 1209, Raymond declared himself to be a Crusader, and hence under the protection which the pope offered to Crusaders. John of England and his son Henry III did exactly the same thing.³⁸ These efforts were sufficient, in the short term, to redirect the Crusaders to the lands of Viscount Raymond-Roger of Beziers and Carcassonne. Those cities were captured and Simon de Montfort, one the Crusaders, was chosen as the new viscount.³⁹ Montfort was chosen (‘elected’) by the Crusaders and the papal legate, who had apparently already been licensed to choose a new viscount by the king of France.⁴⁰ Nonetheless, Montfort, upon his election, sought papal confirmation.⁴¹ There was, as yet, no hint in Montfort’s letter that he sought anything more than papal confirmation of the election made by the Crusaders. Montfort did not, at this stage, seek a special relationship—any kind of overlordship—between his newly won territory and the papacy.⁴² Nor was the pope the only authority Montfort looked to for confirmation of his titles; he sought, and eventually received, recognition from King Peter II of Aragon.⁴³

Raymond of Toulouse’s reconciliation did not last. Soon after the 1209 reconciliation—probably around December 1209/January 1210—Raymond went to Rome.⁴⁴ The southern French bishops, and probably the legates too, feared that Raymond would use this visit to persuade the pope that he had met the terms of the 1209 Valence/Saint-Gilles meeting and hence that the pope should absolve him and order his castles returned to him. The bishops and legates therefore sent a series of instructions to their representatives at the curia, telling them how to counter Raymond’s arguments.⁴⁵ These counterarguments range from the reasonable (that Raymond had invaded the episcopal rights of Rodez) to the downright libellous (‘He declares publicly that he bought his marriage from the Roman Church—which he calls a whore—for two hundred marks of silver’). The instructions claimed that, since Raymond had not done all which he had promised in June 1209 at Valence/Saint-Gilles: ‘You should say that the rights (iura) which he has in the county of Melgueil have ceased.’ The bishops and legates, such was their antagonism towards Raymond, were pushing for Melgueil to be forfeited, according to Raymond’s promise. The form of words they used gives away their motivation. Although Raymond had promised that his ius would ‘revert to the Roman Church’, the legates simply instructed their envoys to say that Raymond had lost his rights. They did not suggest what would happen to the county now. Their prime concern was not that the papacy got the county, but that Raymond lost it.

In 1209/10 neither Raymond of Toulouse nor the legates shifted Innocent off his papal fence. In 1211, however, as part of a series of meetings where Simon de Montfort finally got recognition from Peter of Aragon, Raymond refused a further agreement with Montfort and the papal legates. He was re-excommunicated by them in February, at Montpellier (in the county of Melgueil), in the presence of the bishop of Maguelone.⁴⁶ On 15 April, probably at the behest of Arnold-Amalric and Bishop Raymond of Uzès (the papal legates) Innocent confirmed the sentence of excommunication against Raymond of Toulouse, ordered the archbishop of Auch and the bishop of Carcassonne to resign and instructed the legates that they should receive the county of Melgueil—‘which is of the right of blessed Peter’—into their hands and guard it faithfully until Innocent wrote to them again.⁴⁷ This series of letters was clearly a response to the re-excommunication of Raymond of Toulouse in February. The papal letters, therefore, would have been issued in response to letters from Arnold-Amalric and the bishop of Uzès. The description of Melgueil as ‘of the right of blessed Peter’, and the instruction that the legates should take possession of it, clearly came from Raymond of Toulouse’s promises of 1209: if Raymond did not cease aiding heretics, he lost his right in Melgueil. We have already seen that, in late 1209, the legates were keen to remind Innocent of this promise, since they mentioned it in their instructions to their envoys at the curia. When, in 1211, the legates decided that Raymond had not kept his side of the bargain, they petitioned Innocent to declare that Raymond had lost Melgueil, at the same time as confirming the count’s excommunication. The politics of the Crusade, and Raymond’s promise of 1209, had left the papacy—at least in theory—with the custody of the county.

That was all well and good, but it left open the question of who the new count would be. The position was a tempting one. In addition to the ‘Melgueil-question’, the question of the county of Toulouse also arose in 1211. Raymond of Toulouse had aided Simon de Montfort’s military opponents, leading, in Summer 1211, to Montfort’s first siege of Toulouse itself.⁴⁸ Over the course of 1211–12, Montfort would take effective control of almost the entire county of Toulouse. Needless to say, in addition to real control of the county of Toulouse, Montfort also sought recognition as count. From 1212 onwards we can see the ‘Melgueil-question’—who would be the new count of Melgueil—went hand in hand with the ‘Toulouse-question’: who would be the new count of Toulouse. In both cases, the claimants chose to look to the pope.

As early as September 1212 we find the first hints that Montfort and his ally, the bishop of Maguelone, had adopted a policy aimed at securing new possessions through papal approval.⁴⁹ A series of letters, sent out by Innocent III’s chancery, told the bishops of southern France that the pope was sending Peter Marc, a papal subdeacon and chancery official (native to Nîmes) to the Languedoc to collect census payments from protected and exempt monasteries. In one of these letters—to Montfort—the pope also explained that one ‘Brother Constantine’, a Cistercian conversus, had told Innocent that Montfort had offered a thousand marks of silver to the pope. The money was to be paid to Peter Marc. In a separate letter (of the same day) to the bishop of Maguelone, the pope explained that Brother Constantine had also told Innocent that the bishop was offering the pope five hundred marks, and an annual census of twenty marks, if the pope assigned the county of Melgueil to the bishop. Peter Marc, the pope went on, was coming with a special mandate to discuss the matter with the bishop.⁵⁰

There is a further hint that this was not the first approach to the pope: a surviving episcopal account attests that, in the year preceding 1 April 1212, the bishop of Maguelone had sent one hundred pounds to the pope, and had promised four hundred solidi (of which only one hundred had been paid) to ‘Master Tedigius and Marc, when they were handling the matter of Melgueil’ (cum tractarentur de facto Melgorii).⁵¹ Marc was clearly Peter Marc and Master Tedigius was presumably Master Thedisius, papal legate in the south from 1209, and bishop of Agde from 1215.⁵² The factum Melgorii must refer either to attempts by the bishop to get the county ceded to him—after Innocent ordered Raymond of Toulouse to be deprived of it in April 1211, but before September 1212 when the bishop offered the pope five hundred marks for the county—or it could actually refer to the petitions from the papal legates in 1211 which resulted in Innocent’s letters of April 1211 (ordering the legates to take possession of Melgueil). If the latter, then the bishop had been playing a very long game: he must have had his eye on Melgueil from at least early 1211. In June 1212, the people of Melgueil had apparently asked the pope ‘not to subject [them] to the jurisdiction of another’.⁵³ This request might have been a reaction to the bishop’s attempts to gain control of the county.

In September 1212, the bishop of Maguelone and Montfort used the same envoy—Brother Constantine—for their dealings with the pope, and both offered a generous monetary gift to Innocent. In the case of the bishop we know that the money was a quid pro quo for Melgueil, but in Montfort’s case we do not know why he offered a thousand marks to the pope. There are, of course, many possibilities but Montfort was probably asking for papal approval for his new conquests.

The bishop of Maguelone’s offer of a census for Melgueil is worth noting. Although Count Peter had offered an annual census in his 1085 donation of the county to Pope Gregory VII, it had been for a different amount. The bishop seems to have been envisaging a new relationship, where the pope would grant the county to the bishop with few or no stipulations other than an annual census. In return the pope would get a block of hard cash. Importantly the words ‘fief’ or ‘vassal’ have yet to make an appearance in the papal–Melgorian relationship. That would shortly change.

The appeal from Maguelone and Montfort, and the mission of Peter Marc, elicited an unexpected reaction. The evidence for this reaction comes from two letters, both recorded in the papal registers, but not both from the pope.

On 23 May 1213, a short letter was written by Innocent’s chancery to one Raymond Pelet of Alès:

Coming into our presence you humbly told us that we should make the county of Melgueil (which you assert pertains to you through hereditary succession to your grandmother) be assigned entirely to you, under an annual census, to be held in fief (in feudum) from the Roman Church.

Since, concerning this, you could not make faith with us, we reply to your nobility that, because we propose to send a legate from our side (de latere nostro) to those parts soon, you, going into his presence, should present your reasons to him, and he will make full justice be done to you.⁵⁴

The first part of a papal letter—the narratio—was simply a rewording of the petition received by the pope.⁵⁵ The papal chancery would not have checked to make sure the petition was accurate; the chancery would simply repeat the petition in the narratio and, if the petition was later found to be false, the letter would be invalid. The narratio of this letter asked the pope to give Melgueil, as a fief, to Raymond Pelet. Therefore, Pelet probably said that Melgueil was a papal fief in his petition. The papacy had not previously classified Melgueil as a papal fief. It had not done so in the twelfth century; it had not done so eight months earlier when the bishop of Maguelone had asked Innocent to assign the county to him. It is plausible, however, that Raymond Pelet would think in such terms. Raymond Pelet was the son of Bertrand Pelet who, in 1172, had tried to claim Melgueil, and had given the county to Alfonso II of Aragon and received it back ‘in honourable fief’. Here, forty years later, was his son doing exactly the same thing, but this time with the pope. Raymond Pelet’s grandmother, whom he claimed he ought to succeed, was Countess Beatrice, who had disinherited her son, Bertrand Pelet, in 1172. The struggle for succession in the south continued to change the papacy’s relationship with the county of Melgueil. Melgueil was, Raymond Pelet asserted, a papal fief (feudum). More to the point, it was rightfully Raymond’s, not the bishop of Maguelone’s.

The second letter is one which was sent to the pope, but copied into the papal registers. It was a petition, but a petition in letter form, asking the pope to do something.⁵⁶ This letter was written on 20 December 1212 from Anduze, a lordship in southern France some forty kilometres north of Melgueil, ten kilometres south-west of Alès, and ten kilometres north-east of Sauve.⁵⁷ The opening section should be quoted in full:

To the most Holy Father in Christ Innocent […] Peter-Bermond, lord of Sauve, son of Bernard of Anduze, his most obedient and devoted knight, greeting and the love of all devotion. Because we and our forefathers are special men of the Holy Roman Church, and we hold (teneamus) our land (for the greater part) from it, paying a fixed census, and we have always been obedient and devoted to it, we firmly believe and hope […] that your holiness wishes to preserve all our rights unharmed.⁵⁸

This is a fascinating opening. It reads like the arenga—the initial justificatory section—of a papal letter. Compare it with this arenga from a letter of Innocent III to the King of Portugal:

From the tenor of your letters we have accepted manifestly that because the Apostolic See decorated your father Afonso with the royal name and royal insignia, adopting him and his successors as special sons of St Peter, and fortifying them and the kingdom of Portugal with its protection and special privileges, you—by God’s will succeeding him in the kingdom—hasten back to its mercy with special confidence, not uncertain in any way that you will be heard favourably by it in your just petitions.⁵⁹

Because a particular ruler is especially close to the papacy, the pope should defend the rights of that ruler and hark to the ruler’s petitions; the papal ideology of service. As an aside, such a justificatory section—more a captatio benevolentiae than an arenga in Peter-Bermond’s case because he gave the justification by which the pope ought to act—indicates that the petitioner could and did play a role in the composition of arengae in papal letters. The papal arenga quoted above began ‘From the tenor of your letters we have accepted […]’. Normally this is taken to mean that a request was given to the pope in a petition, and the petition would then be used in the composition of the narratio of the papal letter. But it might also indicate that the petitioner suggested the justification by which the pope should act. This is what Peter-Bermond did, and his captatio benevolentiae was very similar to that found in the letter of Innocent III for the king of Portugal, quoted above. The captationes benevolentiae of petition-letters to the pope could be used by the papal notaries and abbreviatores when drafting a letter issued in response.⁶⁰

Peter-Bermond’s claim probably came as something of a surprise to Innocent III, although he was not—or not entirely—making it up. When Albinus, cardinal-bishop of Albano, included a list of those who paid census to the papacy in the second recension of his Digesta pauperis scholaris (c.1185–9) he included, under the diocese of Carcassonne, Bernardus de Andusia—II morabutinos: ‘Bernard of Anduze—two gold coins’.⁶¹ We do not know which of the (many) Bernards of Anduze this was; we do not know when this census was promised and we do not know why it was promised. Albinus probably knew as little as we do: Anduze was not in the diocese of Carcassonne but the diocese of Nîmes.⁶² When, in 1192, Cardinal Cencius came to compose his authoritative list of papal census-payers, he did not include Bernard of Anduze at all.⁶³ We can conclude fairly safely that, by 1212–13, the papal court had no idea that they ought to receive a census from the Anduze family.

Peter-Bermond claimed that his family had a long-standing relationship with Rome (of which the pope was ignorant). The description of Melgueil as a feudum in the papal letter to Raymond Pelet came from Raymond Pelet’s own petition. This relationship too was probably a surprise to the papacy. Albinus had noted, in c.1185–9, that a Comes Merguriensis owed one ounce of gold annually to Rome—which must refer to Count Peter’s 1085 grant—but, again, Albinus clearly did not know where this was since he put it in the diocese of Carcassonne.⁶⁴ Cencius, in 1192, recorded a census of one ounce of gold from the Church of Maguelone, but nothing from the count.⁶⁵ Raymond Pelet knew that Melgueil had been a feudum of the count of Toulouse or the King of Aragon from 1172, and so he simply applied the same term to the putative papal relationship with the county when writing his petition.

Peter-Bermond’s letter went on to tell the pope that Raymond of Toulouse’s son (predictably also called Raymond) was illegitimate and hence he, Peter-Bermond, was the rightful heir to Toulouse since he was married to the only daughter of Count Raymond. As with Raymond Pelet’s petition, this was an attempt to gain control of the lands of Raymond of Toulouse: Pelet wanted Melgueil; Peter-Bermond wanted Toulouse. Gregory Lippiatt has recently suggested that Peter-Bermond’s appeal was undertaken with Montfort’s support: Montfort was putting Peter-Bermond forward as a front to take control of Raymond of Toulouse’s territory (while Montfort himself would be the real power).⁶⁶ That is possible: Peter-Bermond ended his supplication with a comment on his friendship with Montfort. But it is more important to recognize that Peter-Bermond’s appeal was surely undertaken in conjunction with Raymond Pelet.

First, there is the similarity in timing: Peter-Bermond’s petition-letter was written in late December; Raymond Pelet received a response to his petition in May. The timing—time taken to travel to Rome, waiting for the curial bureaucracy and so on—is about right. The two petitions were probably presented to the curia at the same time.

Then there is the seigneurial relationship between Peter-Bermond and Raymond Pelet: in 1174 Raymond’s father, Bertrand Pelet, and one Bernard of Anduze—probably Peter-Bermond’s great-grandfather—had jointly granted the castle of Peyrelade in fief to Guy of Severac.⁶⁷ In 1220, Peter-Bermond’s brother swore fidelity for the medietatem villae de Alesto quae fuit Petri Bermundi—‘the half of the village of Alès which was Peter-Bermond’s’. The person who owned the other half of Alès in 1220, the co-seigneur (who had sworn fidelity ten days earlier) was Raymond Pelet, compartiarius meus.⁶⁸ Raymond Pelet and Peter-Bermond had, prior to Peter-Bermond’s death in 1215, been co-seigneurs of Alès.⁶⁹ When, in 1209, the papal legates and Crusaders had forced Raymond of Toulouse to terms at Valence and Saint-Gilles, pledges of good faith had also been taken from other barons and lords of the south. One of these—a pledge of the castles of Greffuelhe, Roque-Forcade, and Saze—was given jointly by ‘P. Bermundi de Salve et R. Peleti’ and three other lords.⁷⁰ Peter-Bermond and Raymond Pelet were fellow-lords of Alès, and they were already acting in concert in 1209.

Finally, and most importantly, in 1257 Sybilla, Raymond Pelet’s widow, renounced any rights she might have over her father’s goods in return for a cash settlement.⁷¹ Who was her father? ‘The Lord B. of Anduze’: Bernard of Anduze, Peter-Bermond’s father. Raymond Pelet and Peter-Bermond were brothers-in-law.⁷²

The familial and seigneurial relationship is vital. Considering that Raymond Pelet and Peter-Bermond were family, and that (at the same time) they both petitioned the pope to be given the territories of Raymond of Toulouse, it seems very likely that this was a concerted campaign. Peter-Bermond apparently wrote to the pope from Anduze, and Raymond Pelet was—judging by Innocent’s letter—present in Rome. Therefore, Raymond Pelet probably bore both appeals to Rome. It may even be the case that Raymond’s own appeal to be given the county of Melgueil had not been agreed in advance, and he simply tacked it on to the request from Peter-Bermond. Was Montfort behind this scheme, as Lippiatt thought? Possibly. If so, and if Montfort knew in advance about Raymond Pelet’s claim to Melgueil, then it is interesting that Montfort had abandoned his support for the bishop of Maguelone’s attempt to get the county (which we saw in the letters of September 1212, above). I am not certain that we should see Montfort as the éminence grise.⁷³ More likely, Peter-Bermond’s father, Bernard of Anduze, was acting through his son and son-in-law (Raymond Pelet). Perhaps the family had seen that a second-rank French count—Simon de Montfort—was poised to become the most powerful man in the Languedoc. The mission of Peter Marc, and the parliament which Montfort held in Pamiers in November 1212, perhaps made such a possibility more concrete in their minds. In such circumstances these Occitan lords might have been tempted to try their luck. Another possibility is that Pelet and Peter-Bermond knew that Raymond of Toulouse, Montfort, the bishop of Maguelone and perhaps others were all trying to get their titles to these lands recognized. Under these circumstances, our two Occitan nobles might have thought that, if it was known that the pope was considering their claims, they would be able to squeeze lands or rights out of Montfort or Maguelone or Count Raymond in return for abandoning their claims.

We do not know what happened in response to Peter-Bermond’s appeal. No known papal letter was issued in response, although the fact that Peter-Bermond’s petition was copied into the papal registers tells us that the appeal was taken seriously. It was unusual for incoming correspondence to be registered: letters received by the pope which were copied into the registers included King John’s surrender of his realms to the pope in 1213, and King Rǫgnvaldr of Man’s surrender of the Isle of Man to the papacy in 1219.⁷⁴ It might even be the case that the ‘Toulouse-question’ was thought so febrile that no letter was issued (in order to avoid offending Montfort or Raymond of Toulouse), but Innocent promised orally to take Peter-Bermond’s claim into consideration when the issue was to be settled. Raymond Pelet, however, did get a letter—the one discussed above suggesting the county of Melgueil should be given to him in fief. The letter instructed Raymond to approach a future papal legate who would consider his case, and that is exactly what Raymond Pelet did.

Raymond Pelet approached Peter of Benevento, the cardinal-legate whom Innocent had dispatched to the south in order to free the young king of Aragon, James I, from Simon de Montfort. Pelet gave a carta libelli to the cardinal alleging that the bishop of Maguelone ‘detains the county of Melgueil, which pertains to me by right of lordship’.⁷⁵ Peter of Benevento presided over a council in Montpellier in January 1215 and, during this council, the cardinal delegated the case to the bishop of Nîmes.⁷⁶ On 27 January 1215, in the house of the Knights Hospitaller in Montpellier, the bishop began to hear the parties’ arguments. We know this because an account of the initial positions put by the two parties—and whether the other side agreed with them—is preserved, along with an account of some of the witness testimonies.⁷⁷

Raymond Pelet began by noting that the bishop of Maguelone held the county of Melgueil in the name of the lord pope, with which the bishop concurred. Presumably the point of this was to show that, first, the pope could take it away from the bishop (and give it to Raymond), and, secondly, that the bishop had no intrinsic claim to the county. He held it purely on papal sufferance. Raymond then went through a series of further claims, aimed at showing that his father, grandfather and grandmother had all held the county and, since they were all dead, the county was his by right. The bishop began from similar premises to Raymond Pelet: first, he noted that the county of Melgueil was held in fief from the lord pope, which Raymond confirmed. This was subtly different to how Raymond had begun; Raymond had noted that the bishop currently held the county in the pope’s name (tenet); the bishop was claiming that, in general, the county ought to be held as a papal fief. Hence, the pope could just as well give it to the bishop as to Raymond Pelet. The bishop then introduced another clever point: that the county owed the pope an ounce of gold every year, as a census—which Raymond Pelet agreed with—but that for forty-five years and more neither Countess Beatrice (Raymond Pelet’s grandmother) nor anyone else had paid the owed census for the county. At this, Raymond Pelet was silent: ad quod non respondit.

This was a brilliant argument. Implicitly, the bishop’s point was that Raymond Pelet—even if he had any right to inherit the county—should not have it because he and his predecessors had failed to pay their census to the pope. The penalty for non-payment of census should be forfeiture, in the bishop’s argument. This was a novel suggestion: it does not appear in the eleventh- or twelfth-century papal–Melgorian documentation. Two years before, in 1213, King John of England had promised that if he or his heirs did not keep to their agreement with Pope Innocent—which included paying a census—then they should lose their ‘right to the kingdom (ius regni)’ but that is unlikely to have influenced the Melgueil case. Some ten years before King John’s surrender to Innocent (1202), King Philip Augustus of France had used this principle—confiscation in retaliation for failure to perform feudal duties—as justification for seizing John’s duchy of Normandy.⁷⁸ It is possible that the bishop was inspired by that precedent. Certainly, the English (or Anglo-Norman) idea of confiscation spread to the Capetian monarchy and doubtless elsewhere in the early years of the thirteenth century.⁷⁹ It cannot be proven, however, that the bishop of Maguelone was directly influenced by any particular precedent in his use of this principle.

Raymond Pelet had first suggested that Melgueil was a papal feudum in his petition to Innocent in 1213. Now, in 1215, that had become the orthodoxy—both Raymond and the bishop of Maguelone agreed—but the bishop was going further, suggesting that failure to pay the annual census should prevent Raymond’s family holding Melgueil. We can see here one of the central dynamics of papal lordship: that the terms of such a relationship could be used as a tool by petitioners. The bishop of Maguelone had brilliantly instrumentalized the census to argue that Raymond Pelet should be denied the county. Incidentally, as we have seen, it was the bishop of Maguelone whom the twelfth-century popes had mandated to collect the census from the counts of Melgueil. If the counts had not paid for forty-five years, then it was partially the fault of the bishops of Maguelone for not collecting the census. How peculiar it is that the bishop did not mention this. Nonetheless, the bishop had introduced a new norm—that forfeiture followed non-payment—and turned it against Raymond Pelet.

Raymond Pelet and the bishop put forward various other statements—some agreed by the other; some denied—whose purpose was to decide whether Countess Beatrice had granted Melgueil to Raymond of Toulouse in 1172 or not. After these statements were agreed or denied, Pelet petitioned for a delay to produce witnesses. The twenty-sixth of February was assigned as the day to hear Pelet’s witnesses. Pelet’s witnesses mostly gave testimony about whether the Count of Toulouse had promised to return Melgueil to Pelet or his father (Bertrand Pelet), or whether Countess Beatrice had really left the county to her son (the same Bertrand Pelet). At the end of this testimony, another day—19 March—was given for the bishop to reply to Pelet’s witnesses and for Pelet to produce any further witnesses. Raymond Pelet did produce a further witness. The bishop of Nîmes then wished to assign a day for the bishop of Maguelone’s lawyers to produce witnesses ‘without the counsel and assent of the lord cardinal’ (this may simply mean that the cardinal had left Montpellier by this time). The account ends here. We do not, therefore, know what decision the bishop of Nîmes came to. The account probably ends here because this case was never resolved: on 14 April 1215, the bishop of Maguelone was able to pre-empt the bishop’s decision by getting Pope Innocent to confirm him as the count of Melgueil. Of course, a consequence of this is that the clever arguments which the bishop of Maguelone made before the bishop of Nîmes did not matter; the case before Nîmes must have been abandoned when Maguelone decided that he would simply rely on his emissaries to Rome to get the county granted to him and he did not need to pay attention to Raymond Pelet’s accusations.

The embassy which the bishop of Maguelone had sent to Rome to get the confirmation from Innocent in April 1215 must have been part of a larger group. At the council of Montpellier in January 1215—while the bishop of Nîmes had been listening to the bishop of Maguelone and Raymond Pelet argue over Melgueil in the house of the Hospitallers—the other bishops of Occitania had decided that Simon de Montfort should be the ‘prince’ of the land captured from Raymond of Toulouse.⁸⁰ A mission was sent to Innocent III to confirm this, and on 2 April 1215, the papal chancery issued a series of letters confirming that Simon should hold the lands captured from Raymond of Toulouse until the upcoming council at the Lateran ruled on the matter definitively.⁸¹ Twelve days later, the papal chancery issued a letter of concession, granting Melgueil to the bishop of Maguelone, which will be examined below. Between these two letters—on 10 April 1215—Innocent took the city of Montpellier under papal protection.⁸² It seems very likely that this was all one mission. This, in turn, means that Simon de Montfort and the bishop were still acting in concert. Tentative—though convincing—confirmation of this comes from the chronicle of Peter of les-Vaux-de-Cerney. During the council of Montpellier, when the bishops were deciding to confirm Montfort as ruler of the territories of the count of Toulouse, and while Maguelone and Pelet were debating in the house of the Hospitallers, Montfort was banned from entering Montpellier by the Montpelliérains. The council, therefore—whenever they had to consult with Montfort—left the city so that they could convene in the house of the Templars, which was outside the walls. Montfort was not staying with the Templars, however. He was staying in a nearby castle ‘which belonged to the bishop of Maguelone’.⁸³

The bishop of Maguelone must, in fact, have been a major player at the council: it was held in his diocese; the ‘house’ where the legate was staying and where the council took place may have been the episcopal palace;⁸⁴ and Montfort was staying in another of the bishop’s castles nearby. The bishop of Maguelone—if, as it seems, he and Montfort were allies—was probably instrumental in persuading the council to support Montfort’s claim to Toulouse. Les-Vaux-de-Cerney records that it was the archbishop of Embrun, along with ‘certain clerics’, who were sent to Rome to get confirmation of the decisions of the council of Montpellier. Some of those ‘certain clerics’ must have been the men of the bishop of Maguelone, present to get the pope to confirm the county to him.

On 14 April 1215, Pope Innocent III granted the county of Melgueil in fief to the bishop of Maguelone.⁸⁵ Unlike the case of King John, Innocent did not do so in a solemn privilege, but in a simple letter wherein the terms of the new relationship were set out.⁸⁶ First, the county was unequivocally a feudum of the pope. This is not surprising. Raymond Pelet had used this term in his petition of 1213, and then both he and the bishop of Maguelone had accepted it as an accurate description of the relationship in the 1215 legal proceedings. In just two years it become a fact. Secondly, an annual census was payable from the bishop to the pope: this was twenty marks of silver a year, payable at Easter. That, of course, is not the amount which had been promised in 1085. Back then, Count Peter had promised an ounce of gold every year—this was the census which the bishop had so brilliantly instrumentalized against Raymond Pelet in 1215. Twenty marks of silver was, however, the amount which the bishop of Maguelone had offered as an annual census when he had asked the pope to grant him the county in 1212. Interestingly, the 1215 grant did not stipulate that forfeiture would be the penalty for non-payment of the census, which is what the bishop had suggested in the 1215 legal proceedings. It is almost as though the bishop was in favour of confiscation being the penalty for non-payment when the county was held by someone else, but not so positive towards the idea when he was the count.

Next, the bishops should ‘make fidelity’ to the pope (homage was not mentioned). Again, this is not a surprise. Although the twelfth-century counts had not, so far as we can tell, sworn fidelity to the pope, Raymond of Toulouse had tried (unsuccessfully) to get the pope to accept his fidelity for the county in 1209, probably because he wished to show that the pope recognized him as a faithful Christian. Also when the county had been described as a fief of the Count of Toulouse and the King of Aragon in 1172, swearing fidelity to the overlord had been envisaged. We can see how fidelity made it into the 1215 grant.

Then came some more specific, and novel, terms:

You shall recognize and hold the county through the Roman Church, and concerning it [the county] you shall make war and peace at its [the Roman Church’s] order; you shall not presume to infeudinate (infeudare) or in any way alienate the castle of Melgueil or the castle of Montferrand, without special licence of the Apostolic See, because they are the head of that county. You shall not concede smaller fiefs—which pertain to that county—to anyone living outside the diocese of Maguelone.

These terms are completely new, at least in the papal–Melgueil relationship. It is difficult to say whether they came from the curia or the bishop. There is a possible source of influence from a grant made in the papal patrimony some fifty years before:

You and your children should make war or peace through your own persons and land at the order of the Roman Pontiff and the Roman Church. Your sons and descendants, who will hold those lands or part of them, should make homage and fidelity to us and our Catholic successors, and [they should make] war and peace at our order or the order of our successors.⁸⁷

The stipulation to make war and peace at the pope’s command (mandatum) is nearly identical to that found in the 1215 grant of Melgueil to the bishop of Maguelone.

The other new section of the 1215 grant—that the bishop could not infeudinate or alienate the castles of Melgueil or Montferrand without the pope’s permission, or concede fiefs to non-Melgorians—probably comes from a different source: the final clause of the oath sworn to the pope by bishops who were immediately subject to him (that is, all metropolitan archbishops, the Italian bishops and exempt bishops in other parts of Europe):

I will not sell or give or mortgage or infeudinate (infeudare) anew or in any way alienate the possessions pertaining to my archiepiscopal table (mensa) without having consulted the Roman pontiff.⁸⁸

This clause seems to have been added to the oath sworn to the pope by archbishops and exempt bishops around the year 1200.⁸⁹ The bishop of Maguelone, however, was not an archbishop or an exempt bishop; Maguelone was a suffragan of the archbishop of Narbonne.⁹⁰ Although the bishop of Maguelone was not immediately subject to the pope spiritually—as bishop—he was immediately subject to the pope temporally—as count of Melgueil. It was presumably thought appropriate to apply the clause from the episcopal oath about non-alienation of property. The inclusion of a clause against alienation in the Melgueil grant adds further weight to the belief that, when Henry III of England swore fidelity to the pope the next year, in 1216, he too swore not to alienate the royal rights.⁹¹ Bishops, kings, and counts who were immediately subject to the pope—whether in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, or feudally—were not to alienate property without the pope’s approval.

It is worth remembering that, when the county of Melgueil was granted to the bishop of Maguelone, the war in the south against the heretics was not over. The stipulations about war and peace, and not granting land to anyone outside the diocese, might have been thought necessary to allow the bishop to prevent heresy taking root again.⁹² Whatever their origin, these stipulations were at the service of the bishop—the fief-holder—not the pope, as we shall see.

There was one other new development: the names had changed. In the grant of the county to the bishop, the papal chancery had consistently called the county ‘the county of Melgueil or Montferrand’ (comitatum Melgorii siue Montisferrandi). Where had this addition come from? The castle of Montferrand had been one of the seven castles which Raymond of Toulouse had surrendered to the papal legate as pledges of good faith in 1209. The papal legate had then assigned the temporary custody of each castle to a different local ecclesiastic (a bishop or an abbot). The castle of Montferrand had been assigned to the bishop of Maguelone.⁹³ Montferrand was in the county of Melgueil, so perhaps we might expect that the bishop would have received a legal title to it when he was granted Melgueil. But, by uniting Melgueil and Montferrand in the 1215 grant, the bishop had managed to get his possession of both made permanent, even though Montferrand had only ever been assigned to him as a surety. Again, we see that the bishop was looking to get his titles legitimized.

The county of Melgueil had been given to the bishop of Maguelone. In the immediate term, the bishop found that many of the people of Melgueil preferred the young son of Raymond of Toulouse as their count.⁹⁴ The letter from Innocent giving Melgueil to the bishop was dated 14 April 1215, but it took a little longer for the bishop to receive it. On the day after the grant was written, Innocent’s chancery issued instructions to a papal familiaris and scribe, Master Raymond of Puéchabon (a settlement thirty kilometres north-west of Melgueil), instructing him to collect 1,200 marks of silver which the bishop of Maguelone had promised to the pope in return for the grant and receive an oath of fidelity from the bishop. Once this had been done, Master Raymond could hand the litterae concessionis—the letter of concession—over to the bishop.⁹⁵ A later bishop of Maguelone, Arnaud of Verdale (d.1352), would claim that the total sum his predecessor had to pay for this grant had actually been 6,600 Melgorian pounds; the 1,200 marks (3,904 Melgorian pounds) had just been the money offered to the pope. Further sums had been given to the cardinals, the papal chamberlain, the chamberlain’s three brothers, the notaries, the chaplains, and so on.⁹⁶ Fortunately, the bishop was able to meet the demands on his purse. On 17 September 1215, Master Raymond issued a receipt from the bishop’s palace in Montpellier for the 1,200 marks, confirming that he and the treasurer of the Paris Temple had received the money from the bishop’s nuncios at the fair in Troyes around a month before.⁹⁷ The bishop, and perhaps Master Raymond, did slightly jump the gun: in June 1215 the bishop granted the consuls of Montpellier rights over minting Melgorian pounds and claimed that Pope Innocent had ‘infeudinated (infeudavit)’ him. Master Raymond was a witness to this act.⁹⁸

The lordship of Melgueil was thus settled. The lordship of Toulouse was not quite settled. A few months after the bishop of Maguelone received his letters of concession, the Fourth Lateran Council met in Rome, in November 1215. Here, according to an eyewitness account written by a German cleric, Simon de Montfort asked to ‘hold’ (tenebit) the county of Toulouse from the pope.⁹⁹ We do not know what sort of relationship Montfort was envisaging here. Perhaps he wished for something along the lines of the new papal–Melgorian relationship, holding the county in fief of the pope. We know that Montfort and the bishop of Maguelone had been acting in concert in 1212—when they had both offered money to the papacy through their agent, Brother Constantine—and probably in early 1215 too. Such a formal relationship did not transpire, although Innocent did confirm Montfort’s possession of Toulouse. Peter-Bermond of Sauve—who had claimed the county of Toulouse in the 1212 letter to Pope Innocent—was also present at Lateran IV and, according to the chronicler William of Puylaurens, he also sought to claim the county of Toulouse.¹⁰⁰ It is perhaps worth noting that Puylaurens seemed to suggest that Raymond of Toulouse, the Count of Foix (a long-standing enemy of Simon de Montfort), and Peter-Bermond were all opposed to Montfort at the council, because, after naming them, he noted that Guy de Montfort—Simon’s brother—was on the ‘other side’ (pro parte altera).¹⁰¹ While Peter-Bermond’s 1212 appeal did mention his long friendship with Montfort—and he was certainly a Crusader alongside Montfort at the very beginning of the Albigensian campaign—it seems quite likely that he and Raymond Pelet were acting on their own behalf when claiming the counties of Toulouse and Melgueil in 1212–15. Peter-Bermond, however, died in 1215, apparently at the council, and so there was nothing to stop Montfort’s claim to Toulouse.¹⁰² The Lateran Council accordingly confirmed that Montfort should be count of Toulouse, but the pope did not take any kind of formal role as a superior. The next year King Philip Augustus confirmed Montfort as the new count of Toulouse.¹⁰³

The story is not quite over. The Pelet family—who had put such effort into claiming the county in 1172 and 1213–15—still did not give up.¹⁰⁴ In 1266 Peter Pelet of Alès—the great-grandson of Raymond Pelet—appealed to Louis IX (whose vassallus he was). Peter Pelet claimed his family had been unjustly deprived of Melgueil. Louis IX brought the matter to the pope, Clement IV. Clement—presumably in consultation with the bishop of Maguelone—then issued a detailed letter which ‘briefly responded’ to the king’s complaints. Clement recalled the complaint of Raymond Pelet and that Peter of Benevento had conceded an auditor to hear his complaint. This obviously referred to the legal case of January 1215, and the auditor—though not named—had been the bishop of Nîmes. The pope went on to note that, when the case was being heard, it was argued that the counts owed an annual census to the papacy which had not been paid for a long time. The actor—Raymond Pelet—had apparently admitted this (although we have already seen that he did not: in 1215 he ‘did not respond’). After this, the pope claimed, the Roman Church saw that Raymond Pelet was not able to secure his claim in justice, but even if he had been able to (quod etiamsi fecisset), the fact that the annual payment (canonis) for the county had not been paid for a long time would have damned his case. Innocent III had therefore granted the county to the bishop of Maguelone in fief.¹⁰⁵

As noted above, there is little evidence that the claim of the bishop in 1215—that non-payment of census merited disinheritance—reached Innocent and papal curia. Confiscation as a penalty was certainly not stipulated in the 1215 grant. However, fifty-one years later, the new bishop brought the January 1215 court case—and the then bishop’s claim—to the attention of the pope and Louis IX of France as the main justification for the Pelet family’s deprivation of the county. By the mid-thirteenth century, disinheritance for failure to perform ‘feudal duties’ (payment of the census) had some traction. It was, in all likelihood, the bishop of Maguelone who constructed the counterargument of this letter: the record of the 1215 court case survived in his cartularies, and the subtle change—that Raymond Pelet admitted the census had not been paid—suggests that the counterargument was not put forward by a totally disinterested party.

Strengthening the Polity

As we have seen, the new feudal relationship between the county of Melgueil and the papacy had several specific stipulations. The count-bishops quickly found that they could use these to their advantage. Already, in January 1216, Innocent was writing to the archbishop of Narbonne that Raymond of Toulouse and ‘certain others’ of the neighbouring dioceses were detaining ‘certain instruments’ which pertained to the county.¹⁰⁶ On the same day the pope wrote to the inhabitants of Melgueil, ordering them to swear fidelity and show due obedience to the new count-bishop.¹⁰⁷ Incidentally, the day before, Innocent had ordered the bishop of Uzès and the archdeacon of Maguelone to force ‘young Bernard of Anduze’ (the brother of the now-deceased Peter-Bermond, and hence brother-in-law of Raymond Pelet) to restore the possessions of the men of Montpellier which he had seized.¹⁰⁸ It seems that neither Raymond of Toulouse nor the Anduze family had taken the failure of their claims to Toulouse and Melgueil particularly well.

From 1222 the bishop found that the people of Melgueil were more inclined to support the young Raymond of Toulouse than to support himself, the bishop. In December 1223 the bishop of Maguelone got Pope Honorius to send letters to the knights and people of Melgueil ‘in a spirit of saner counsel’ (an address used for excommunicates). The men of Melgueil had apparently handed themselves over to Raymond of Toulouse, to whom they had sworn obedience. The pope ordered them to remain obedient to the bishop of Maguelone, notwithstanding any such oath.¹⁰⁹

Then, from the pontificate of Gregory IX (1227–41), we have a series of petitions (dating to early 1229) which the bishop of Maguelone sent to the pope.¹¹⁰

Your devoted bishop of Maguelone signifies to your holiness that Raymond, formerly count of Toulouse, holding the county of Melgueil-Montferrand in fief from the Roman Church (to which it belongs) was holding and presumed to alienate (without the consent of the Roman pontiffs) the castles of Laroque-Aynier,¹¹¹ Montredon [and] Balazuc, the castles of Exunatis with others in Arisde¹¹² (by [his right] to the county of Melgueil-Montferrand) and certain others of the dioceses of Maguelone and Nîmes which belong to that county, in grave damage of that county.

Whence Pope Honorius, your predecessor […] ordered Cardinal Romanus, legate of the Apostolic See, that he should find those [lands] which had been illicitly alienated or borne away from the goods of the aforesaid county, and legitimately return them to it [the county], and make them be assigned to the aforesaid bishop […].¹¹³

Honorius III had, indeed, done this. A papal letter of 26 February 1225 had told Cardinal Romanus:

Our venerable brother the bishop of Maguelone has cared to tell us that Raymond, formerly count of Toulouse, holding the county of Melgueil-Montferrand in fief from the Roman Church (to which it belongs) presumed to alienate the castles of Laroque-Aynier, Balazuc, Montredon and certain others of the dioceses of Maguelone and Nîmes which belong to that county.

Whence that bishop has petitioned that, because the Apostolic See has conceded the aforesaid county to him in fief, we should make such alienations be revoked, and these castles pertaining to that fief be returned to him.

Therefore we order your discretion […] that you should find those which have been illicitly alienated from the possessions of the county, and you should return them legitimately to it and assign them to the aforesaid bishop […].¹¹⁴

The 1229 petition was clearly based on this letter which would, in turn, have been a response to a petition sent by the bishop of Maguelone. Of course, when Raymond of Toulouse had owned the county of Melgueil, it had not been a fief of the papacy. That—as we have seen—was a development of the period 1209–15, when the ownership of the county was under dispute. The stipulations about whether the count could alienate fiefs, recorded in the 1215 grant of the county to the bishop, had not existed when Raymond owned Melgueil. Raymond of Toulouse had been able to do what he wanted. However, the bishop was now applying his new feudal relationship into the past, and, in so doing, he wanted the pope to order fortresses held by other lords to be given to him. The bishop was using the stipulations of the 1215 grant to get fortresses conceded by Raymond of Toulouse (hence before 1211) given to him.

How Gregory IX responded to these 1229 petitions is unknown. Although in mid-1229 there were several papal letters issued at the request of the bishop of Maguelone, none of them named the same fortresses as in the petition. One, however—dated 6 July 1229—told the archbishop of Narbonne that the bishop of Maguelone had complained that the bailiffs of the king of France ‘were occupying and aiming to detain certain castles and villages of the county of Melgueil which is held in fief under an annual census from the Roman Church’.¹¹⁵ The archbishop should ensure they were returned to the bishop. A letter of 24 June had told the King of France exactly the same, adding that the bailiffs were extorting oaths of fidelity from those castles, and asserting that the king could not possibly know what his officers were doing in his name.¹¹⁶

The bishops of Maguelone continued to petition the pope in this vein. In 1236, Gregory IX again wrote to the king of France, and the archbishops of Vienne and Sens, telling them that Raymond of Toulouse had alienated various fortresses ‘without the consent of the Apostolic See, from which the said count held the county in fief’, and that the French royal seneschals were refusing to return the castles to the bishop.¹¹⁷ The next year, 1237, yet more papal letters were issued complaining that the king of France’s seneschals were refusing to return castles to the bishop of Maguelone. Now, however, the reason these castles had been alienated illicitly was not because Raymond of Toulouse had given them away without consulting the Roman pontiff, but because he had granted them away during the period (c.1222–c.1225) when he seized the county back from the bishop by force.¹¹⁸

What these letters show is how the bishop was instrumentalizing papal authority, and the stipulations of the 1215 grant, for his own ends. In all of these petitions and letters (except the 1237 letter) the castles should be returned to the bishop because Raymond of Toulouse—when count of Melgueil—had alienated them without the permission of the Roman Pontiff. This argument was clearly based on the stipulation of the 1215 grant that papal consent was needed for the alienation of the castle of Melgueil-Montferrand, and that smaller fiefs should only be granted to Melgorians. The 1215 grant had not actually banned all alienation undertaken without the pope’s consent, but the bishop interpreted it thus in an attempt to gain control of fortresses outside his power.

Raymond of Toulouse had not held the county as a papal fief and the stipulations of the 1215 grant had not applied to him (or, indeed, existed) when he was count. To say that ‘when he held the county as a fief’, Raymond alienated lands ‘without the consent of the Apostolic See’ was to apply feudal norms to Raymond that had not been applicable at that time. The bishop of Maguelone was overlaying the post–1215 relationship onto the period before 1215. He was changing the past in order to increase his own power, and strengthen his hold over the county.

The bishop was probably aware of what he was doing. Another of the petitions which the bishop sent to Gregory IX in early 1229 asked the pope to send a copy of the original 1085 grant of the county to the papacy by Count Peter.¹¹⁹ Had the pope done so—had anyone at the papal curia even seen a copy of that original grant—they might have noticed that there had been no mention in it of not alienating fiefs without the pope’s consent. Fortunately for the bishop, there is no reason to believe that the papacy had a copy of the 1085 grant. Our text of the 1085 grant comes from the bishop of Maguelone’s own cartularies, not the papal court.¹²⁰

Conclusion

The bishop of Maguelone put his feudal relationship with the papacy to work against an impressive range of opponents. The bishop used the feudal relationship to get the pope to order the people of Melgueil to be loyal to him and to get castles held by local lords returned to him—thus using it to strengthen the bishop’s own ‘central’ power—but the bishop also used his feudal relationship against the king of France—requesting papal letters ordering the king’s seneschals to surrender castles to the bishop. Here papal overlordship strengthened the bishop’s ‘peripheral’ power relative to the central authority of the French king.¹²¹ The suggestion—made by Susan Reynolds—that the formalized feudal relationships of the thirteenth century were primarily a tool of the developing centralized state both does and does not fit Melgueil and the papacy. The bishop was able to use the relationship to strengthen his own power, but also to weaken the power of the French king. It was still possible for non-royal aristocrats and ecclesiastics to try to build a polity, even in a period characterized by increasing regnal authority.¹²² More than a century ago, Julien Rouquette pointed out that King Louis IX had been forced to build the port of Aigues-Mortes because he did not have access to the ports of Melgueil, since they were controlled by the independent—and papally defended—bishop of Maguelone.¹²³ As we have come to expect, the pope was not always the most effective or desired authority figure; in 1255 the bishop of Maguelone apparently looked to Louis IX for support instead. But the bishop always had the option—which he took up—of appealing to the pope against the king’s agents when the situation changed.¹²⁴

The instrumentalization of papal authority by vassals and protégés was a feature of papal overlordship and protection. But what we will see in the following chapter on England, Aragon, and Sicily was that kings and their advisors tended to get most out of such relationships. The Melgueil situation—because the papal fief-holder was a bishop, not a king—allows us to draw a distinction between a vassal-king’s kingship and his vassalage. Even though he was not a king, and did not have the same resources as a king, the bishop was still able to instrumentalize papal authority against his opponents. In general, the relationships of overlordship and protectio studied here show how papal authority was integral to the development of regnal power and authority in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: counter-intuitively, a pan-European institution (the papacy) was useful to the increasing centralization of territorial kingdoms (because kings could instrumentalize papal authority for their own ends). But Melgueil shows that it did not have to be that way. Had more counts or dukes been able to construct a relationship with the pope, they too might have been able to use papal authority against the centralizing ‘nation states’ (if we may use the term) of the kings of France or England. Melgueil was a rare case, however.

We can see how the pope’s formal lordship of Melgueil was created. In the twelfth century the pope had not really had any special authority in the county. During the period between 1209 and 1215, the pope’s lordship was created, formalized, and recorded. It was a piecemeal process: Raymond of Toulouse offered an oath of fidelity in early 1209. He then promised to forfeit his right to the county if he did not root out heresy in mid-1209, and for the next two years the bishops and legates remembered this promise. In 1211, the papal legates excommunicated Raymond of Toulouse and successfully petitioned Pope Innocent to declare Melgueil forfeit to the papacy. In 1212, the bishop of Maguelone offered money to Innocent if the pope granted the county to the bishop. Then, in 1212–13, the Pelet-Anduze family (Raymond Pelet and Peter-Bermond) appealed to the pope to grant them the counties of Melgueil and Toulouse. In early 1215, Raymond Pelet sued the bishop of Maguelone before the bishop of Nîmes (delegated by the papal legate). During this process the county was called a fief (feudum) of the pope—a description with which both parties concurred—and it was first suggested that the county might be forfeited by its holder if he did not pay his annual census to the pope. In 1215, the county was granted in fief to the bishop of Maguelone under a new annual census and with two entirely new stipulations: that the bishop was limited in the lands he could alienate from the county, and that the bishop should only make war at the pope’s command. Over the next twenty years, the bishop then applied these stipulations—the feudal norms of this new relationship—back into the period before 1215 in order to justify demanding the return of castles given away by Raymond of Toulouse.

The creation of the lordship of Melgueil was not a teleological process: it seems pretty clear that the no one really envisaged or planned more than one step ahead. The feudal relationship developed out of these local legal and political disputes, and the impetus for change was also local, not top-down from the papal court. The ‘Toulouse-question’ shows this too: there were points where the papal curia had the opportunity to enforce a new relationship—perhaps a feudal relationship—onto the counts of Toulouse (Peter-Bermond’s appeal, for example). But the papacy did not do this, because that was not how these special relationships were created, nor how they were used. As we have seen in Melgueil, they were created by those who were fief-holders (or were trying to be). Florian Mazel, focusing on the oaths and promises made by Raymond of Toulouse and the other southern lords in 1209, has been able to see a policy whereby papal lordship—dominium—was enforced on the south, including on the county of Melgueil.¹²⁵ But that is not the picture which has emerged from this chapter: the papacy did not reduce other rulers to vassalage; other rulers elevated the papacy to overlordship.

Papal Overlordship and European Princes, 1000–1270. Benedict Wiedemann, Oxford University Press. © Benedict Wiedemann 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192855039.003.0006

¹ Several scholars have turned their attention to aspects of the papal–Melgorian relationship: Fried posited an unchanging ‘feudal’ relationship, albeit one which did not function in the twelfth century: päpstlicher Schutz, pp. 86–87, 153–154. Susan Reynolds correctly (in my view) suggested that the nature of the relationship changed between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, but did not go into detail about how and why (other than the general influence of the academic law of fiefs): Fiefs and Vassals, pp. 135–136, 212. Georges Beaume’s ‘Maguelone, Unique fief pontificale en terre de France’, Revue des études historiques 81 (1915), pp. 467–485 has fairly wide-ranging interests, and does not really study the papal–Melgorian relationship beyond the twelfth century. Ursula Vones-Leibenstein has studied the ecclesiastical position of the bishops of Maguelone (who would become counts of Melgueil in 1215) within the province of Narbonne: ‘Narbona metropolis: Grenzen zwischen kirchlichen Interessen und weltlicher Herrschaftsbildung’, Das begrenzte Papsttum, ed. Herbers, López Alsina, Engel, pp. 147–168, at 157–161; Vones-Leibenstein, ‘Zentrum und Peripherie? Das universale Papsttum und die Kirchenprovinz Narbonne im Hochmittelalter: 1050–1215’, Rom und die Regionen. Studien zur Homogenisierung der lateinischen Kirche im Hochmittelalter, ed. J. Johrendt, H. Müller (de Gruyter: Berlin/Boston, 2012), pp. 209–248, at 214, 221–222, 224–225, 231. Henri Vidal has studied one of the twelfth-century bishops of Maguelone: ‘Jean I^er de Montlaur, évêque de Maguelone (1160–1190)’, L’évêché de Maguelone au Moyen Âge: actes de la journée d’études du 13 décember 2001, ed. D. Le Blevec, T. Granier (Paul Valéry University Montpellier 3: Montpellier, 2005), pp. 35–61, at 51–54. Julien Rouquette wrote a brilliant article which presages some of the arguments here: ‘Saint Louis et le comté de Melgueil’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France 5 (1914), pp. 182–199. Most recently see Fabrice Delivré, ‘Le domaine de l’apôtre. Droit de saint Pierre et cens de l’Église romaine dans le provinces d’Aix, Arles et Narbonne (milieu XI^e-fin XII^e siècle)’, La réforme ‘grégorienne’ dans le Midi (milieu XI^e-début XIII^e siècle), ed. Michelle Fournie, Daniel Le Blevec, Florian Mazel (Privat: Toulouse, 2013), Cahiers de Fanjeaux XLVIII, pp. 447–494, at 459–460, 468–469. There are the classic works of Alexandre Germain—e.g. Maguelone sous ses évèques et ses chanoines: étude historique et archéologique (Martel: Montpellier, 1869).

² For the early history of the county of Melgueil, see Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180, 2nd edn. (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2000), pp. 3, 85, 113–114, 121, 160, 172; Archibald Lewis, The Development of Southern French and Catalan Society, 718–1050 (University of Texas Press: Austin, TX, 1965), pp. 62, 110–112, 124, 152, 168–171, 295, 356, 395–396.

³ BAV, Vat. Lat. 1354, f. 141r https://digi.vatlib.it/view/MSS_Vat.lat.1354 (accessed 09/11/2018); Horst Fuhrmann, ‘Zwei Papstbriefe aus der Überlieferung der Rechtssammlung Polycarpus’, Aus Reichsgeschichte und Nordischer Geschichte, ed. H. Fuhrmann, H. E. Mayer, K. Wriedt (Klett: Stuttgart, 1972), pp. 131–140, at no. 2, p. 140. Dated by Fabre to 1105: Liber censuum, i, p. 210 1n.

⁴ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 16, pp. 32–35.

⁵ Liber Instrumentorum Memorialium: cartulaire des Guillems de Montpellier, ed. Alexandre Germain (Martel: Montpellier 1884–6), no. 61, pp. 103–108.

⁶ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 53, pp. 75–77.

⁷ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 56, pp. 80–85.

⁸ Bernardus Guidonis, Vita Adriani Papae IV in Adrian IV, ed. Bolton, Duggan, pp. 304–305.

⁹ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 110, pp. 177–182.

¹⁰ Noted also by Rouquette, ‘Saint Louis et le comté de Melgueil’, p. 184.

¹¹ Fried, päpstlicher Schutz, p. 154.

¹² Layettes du tresor du chartes, ed. Teulet, i, no. 238, pp. 102–104. Earlier in 1172, the plan had been for Beatrice’s granddaughter (Douce) to marry Raymond’s son, and the county to be equally divided between Ermessind and her husband, and Raymond’s son and Douce, but with Ermessind and her husband holding their portion from Raymond titulo feudi. This plan was changed when Ermessind’s husband died and she was free to be married to Raymond’s son herself. Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 155, pp. 282–287.

¹³ Layettes du tresor du Chartes, ed. Teulet, i, no. 238, pp. 102–104.

¹⁴ Fredric Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours (University of Cornell Press: Ithaca, NY, 2001), pp. 265–267; Laurent Macé, Les comtes de Toulouse et leur entourage, XII^e-XIII^e siècles: Rivalités, alliances et jeux de pouvoir (Privat: Toulouse, 2000), pp. 43–45; Dunbabin, France in the Making, p. 303. See also F. Durand-Dol, ‘Innocent III et les Guilhem de Montpellier’, Innocent III et le Midi, ed. Fournié, Le Blévec, Théry, pp. 63–88, at 65 who points out that Beatrice was, in the 1160s, an ally of the emperor and hence of the antipope rather than Alexander III.

¹⁵ Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 157, pp. 288–290. What feudum honoratum might mean here is tricky to say, but see José Maria Lacarra, ‘Honores et tenencias en Aragon (XI^e siècle)’, trans. Pierre Bonnassie, Y. Bonnassie, Annales du Midi 80 (1968), pp. 485–528 for Aragonese usage of honor in a territorial sense.

¹⁶ Layettes du tresor du chartes, ed. Teulet, i, no. 268, pp. 110–111.

¹⁷ Anne Duggan, ‘“Justinian’s Laws, not the Lord’s”: Eugenius III and the learned laws’, Pope Eugenius III (1145–1153): The First Cistercian Pope, ed. Iben Fonnesberg–Schmidt, Andrew Jotischky (Amsterdam University Press: Amsterdam, 2018), pp. 27–68, at 51–54.

¹⁸ Layettes du tresor du chartes, ed. Teulet, i, no. 238, pp. 102–104.

¹⁹ Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 157, pp. 288–290.

²⁰ Gesta regis Henrici secundi, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols. (London, 1867), i, p. 36.

²¹ Histoire générale de Languedoc, ed. Devic, Vaissète, vi, p. 63.

²² Laurence Marvin, The Occitan War: A Military and Political History of the Albigensian Crusade, 1209–1218 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2008), pp. 4–11; Richard Benjamin, ‘A Forty Years War: Toulouse and the Plantagenets, 1156–96’, Historical Research 61 (1988), pp. 270–285; Martin Alvira Cabrer, Laurent Macé, Damian Smith, ‘Le temps de la Grande Couronne d’Aragon du roi Pierre le Catholique. À propos de deux documents relatifs à l’abbaye de Poblet (février et septembre 1213)’, Annales du Midi 121 (2009), pp. 5–22.

²³ Gesta regis Henrici, ed. Stubbs, i, p. 36.

²⁴ Liber Instrumentorum Memorialium, ed. Germain, no. 70, pp. 125–126. Made even more problematic by the fact that the bishops of Maguelone held territory and a court in the city: Archibald Lewis, ‘The Development of Town Government in Twelfth Century Montpellier’, Speculum 22 (1947), pp. 51–67, at 55–58.

²⁵ Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne, pp. 16–21, 265–267, 337. William VII of Montpellier had in fact backed Bertrand Pelet against Countess Beatrice in 1171–1172: Liber Instrumentorum Memorialium, ed. Germain, no. 93, pp. 171–172.

²⁶ Marvin, Occitan War, pp. 4–11.

²⁷ For a summary of the traditional view, see Bernard Hamilton, ‘Religion and the Laity’ in The New Cambridge Medieval History, iv: c.1024–c.1198, ed. D. Luscombe, J. Riley-Smith (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2004), pt. 1, pp. 499–533, at 530–531; Michael Costen, The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade (Manchester University Press: Manchester, 1997), pp. 77–119, 194–201; Malcolm Barber, The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages (Pearson: Harlow, 2000), pp. 43–58, 68–70. For the alternative view, see the various recent works of Robert Moore, especially The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe (Profile: London, 2012); and id., ‘Making Enemies: Latin Christendom in the Age of Reform’, Historein 6 (2006), pp. 48–54.

²⁸ Marvin, Occitan War, pp. 3–4; Rebecca Rist, ‘Salvation and the Albigensian Crusade: Pope Innocent III and the Plenary Indulgence’, Reading Medieval Studies 36 (2010), pp. 95–112; eadem, ‘Papal Policy and the Albigensian Crusades: Continuity or Change?’, Crusades 2 (2003), pp. 99–108; eadem, The Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 1198–1245 (Continuum: London, 2009), pp. 45–117.

²⁹ Die Register Innocenz, x, no. 69, pp. 118–122; Innocentii III Romani pontificis epistolarum sive regestorum liber decimus, pontificatus anno X, Christi, 1207, no. 69, PL 215, cols. 1166–8; Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, The History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. W. A. Sibly, M. D. Sibly (Boydell: Woodbridge, 1998), pp. 304–305.

³⁰ Jacques Paul, Laurence Marvin and the editors of Innocent’s registers all assumed that Innocent was referring to Melgueil specifically: ‘La paix de Saint-Gilles (1209) et l’exercice du pouvoir’, Le pouvoir au Moyen Âge: Idéologies, pratiques, représentations, ed. C. Carozzi, H. Taviani-Carozzi (Presses universitaires de Provence: Aix-en-Provence, 2007), pp. 147–168; Occitan War, pp. 29–30; Die Register Innocenz, x, no. 69, pp. 118–122 17n.

³¹ Marvin, Occitan War, pp. 28–68.

³² Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 179, pp. 315–316.

³³ See chapter two.

³⁴ See chapter two.

³⁵ Processus negotii Raimundi, comitis Tolosani, in Die Register Innocenz, xii, pp. 143–164; Innocentii III Romani pontificis regestorum sive epistolarum liber duodecimus, pontificatus anno XII, Christi 1209, PL 216, cols. 89–98; Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 295, pp. 48–50. On the reconciliation, see Paul, ‘La paix de Saint-Gilles’, pp. 147–168.

³⁶ See chapters four and seven.

³⁷ Paul, ‘La paix de Saint-Gilles’, but cf. Florian Mazel, ‘Soumission et obéissance. Les serments de 1209 et l’ordre pontifical dans le Midi’ in Innocent III et le Midi, pp. 145–188, at 162, 166–168, 169–170, 171, 173, 175.

³⁸ See chapter six.

³⁹ Marvin, Occitan War, pp. 28–68; Gregory Lippiatt, Simon V of Montfort and Baronial Government, 1195–1218 (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2017), pp. 32–33, 130–137.

⁴⁰ Robert Kovarik, ‘A Study of the Epistolary Relations between Pope Innocent III and Simon de Montfort (1209–1216)’, Studies in Medieval Culture 4 (1973), pp. 158–167.

⁴¹ Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Leopold Delisle, 2nd edn., 24 vols. (Palme: Paris, 1869–1904), xix, pp. 524–525.

⁴² Lippiatt, Simon V of Montfort, pp. 32–34.

⁴³ Lippiatt, Simon V of Montfort, pp. 132–133; Marvin, Occitan War, pp. 62–63, 94–95.

⁴⁴ Marvin, Occitan War, pp. 69–71.

⁴⁵ Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 300, pp. 58–63. The rationale for dating these (undated) instructions to Raymond’s visit to Rome is that 1) they are very similar to the letter which Legate Milo sent to the pope in September 1209 (Die Register Innocenz, xii, no. 106, pp. 205–209; Innocentii III regestorum sive epistolarum liber, 1209, no. 106, PL 216, cols. 124–6); 2) they clearly envisaged that Raymond would also be present before the pope, for example, the instructions said that ‘with the money of Toulouse and other heretics, he [Raymond] has now come to the Roman Church (modo ad Romanam Ecclesiam accedit), proclaiming openly and hoping that he will be able to corrupt the Roman Curia with his money.’

⁴⁶ Les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. Sibly, Sibly, pp. 107–109, esp. 38n.

⁴⁷ Die Register Innocenz, xiv, nos. 32–37, pp. 58–64; Innocentii III Romani pontificis regestorum sive epistolarum liber decimus quartus, pontificatus anno XIV, Christi 1211, nos. 32–38, PL 216, cols. 408–11; John Moore, Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216): To Root Up and to Plant (Brill: Leiden/Boston, 2003), p. 180.

⁴⁸ Marvin, Occitan War, pp. 94–131.

⁴⁹ William d’Autignac, bishop of Maguelone c.1204–1216.

⁵⁰ Innocentii III Romani pontificis regestorum sive epistolarum liber decimus quintus, pontificatus anno XV, Christi 1212, nos. 167–176, PL 216, cols. 690–4. On Marc, see Les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. Sibly, Sibly, pp. 184, 200.

⁵¹ Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 315, pp. 97–99.

⁵² Les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. Sibly, Sibly, pp. 40, 200.

⁵³ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 185, pp. 331–332.

⁵⁴ Innocentii III regestorum sive epistolarum liber, 1213, no. 55, PL 216, col. 857; Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 196, p. 354.

⁵⁵ Boyle, ‘Diplomatics’, p. 99. For concrete confirmation of this point, compare the petitions, and the narrationes of papal letters issued in response to those petitions, in Franco Bartoloni, ‘Suppliche pontificie dei secoli XIII e XIV’, Bullettino dell’istituto storico italiano per il medio evo 67 (1955), pp. 1–187, at nos. IV.2–3, V.1–2, pp. 33–40, 41–49 (the parts of the papal letters taken from the petitions are in italics).

⁵⁶ On petitions in letter form, see Patrick Zutshi, ‘When did Cambridge become a Studium generale?’, Law as Profession and Practice in Medieval Europe: Essays in Honor of James A. Brundage, ed. Kenneth Pennington, Melodie Eichbauer (Routledge: London, 2011), pp. 153–171, at 163–164.

⁵⁷ Delivré, ‘Le domaine de l’apôtre’, pp. 468, 493 165n. dates this letter to Dec. 1213. This is highly unlikely considering it was copied into the later folios of Innocent’s register for his fifteenth year (Jan. 1212–Jan. 1213): AAV, Reg. Vat. 8, fols. 127v–128r.

⁵⁸ AAV, Reg. Vat. 8, fols. 127v–128r; Innocentii III regestorum sive epistolarum liber, 1212, no. 222, PL 216, cols. 754–5.

⁵⁹ Die Register Innocenz, xiv, no. 58, pp. 88–89; Innocentii III regestorum sive epistolarum liber, 1211, no. 59, PL 216, col. 424.

⁶⁰ There would, I suspect, be something of a feedback loop here: in addition to papal notaries basing arengae and shorter justificatory sections on received petitions and litterae supplicatoriae, the petitioners would try and suggest justifications and captationes benevolentiae which they knew the papal chancery would accept, and so might base them on arengae from papal letters which they had seen before. There is a concrete example of this (part of an earlier papal privilege being reused in a littera supplicatoria to a later pope) from Gandersheim in the early twelfth century, which I intend to discuss in a forthcoming article on petitions to the pope in the twelfth century.

⁶¹ Liber censuum, ii, p. 117. On the Digesta, see Thérèse Montecchi Palazzi, ‘Formation et carrière d’un grand personnage de la Curie au XIIe siècle: Le Cardinal Albinus’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome. Moyen-Âge, Temps modernes 98 (1986), pp. 623–671, at 657–659.

⁶² Liber censuum, ii, p. 117.

⁶³ Liber censuum, i, pp. 207–211.

⁶⁴ Liber censuum, ii, p. 117.

⁶⁵ Liber censuum, i, p. 210. Although the entry under Maguelone—Raimundus Petri pro tota terra sua II marabutinos—might well be Count Raymond, son of Count Peter, who received his county ‘from the pope’s hand’ in 1099 (see chapter one). The census amount is wrong, however, and Cencius made no note of what Raymond’s land consisted.

⁶⁶ Lippiatt, Simon V of Montfort, p. 195.

⁶⁷ Histoire générale de Languedoc, ed. Devic, Vaissète, vi, p. 63.

⁶⁸ Histoire générale de Languedoc, ed. Devic, Vaissète, viii, pp. 723–725.

⁶⁹ Noted also by Macé, Les comtes de Toulouse, pp. 353–354.

⁷⁰ Processus, no. 13, in Die Register Innocenz, xii, pp. 162–163; Innocentii III regestorum sive epistolarum liber, 1209, PL 216, cols. 96–7. Mazel, ‘Soumission et obéissance’, p. 155. These five lords who collectively handed over the three castles were probably all family (see below for Pelet and Peter-Bermond’s familial relationship) since an identical promise (with different castles) was also made collectively by the family de Baux at the same time.

⁷¹ Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Delisle, xix, pp. 538–539.

⁷² Unless the B. of Anduze here was Peter-Bermond’s brother Bernard, in which case Raymond would be Peter-Bermond’s nephew by marriage.

⁷³ Lippiatt notes that Montfort gave Peter-Bermond joint lordship over Severac in 1214 (Simon V of Montfort, p. 195). On the other hand, Peter-Bermond of Sauve is surely the same person as the Bremundus de Salve who witnessed Raymond VI of Toulouse’s emancipation of his son, Raymond VII, in 1210 (Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 306, pp. 72–73). Peter-Bermond probably shifted between whoever he thought could offer him most, see Macé, Les comtes de Toulouse, pp. 209–210, 275–276.

⁷⁴ See chapter four.

⁷⁵ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, pp. 356–363.

⁷⁶ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, pp. 356–363. For this council, see Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. Giovanni Domenico Mansi, 31 vols. (Zatta: Florence/Venice, 1759–98), xxii, cols. 950–1; Marvin, Occitan War, pp. 217–224; Damian Smith, ‘Pope Innocent III and the Minority of James I’, Anuario de Estudios Medievales 30 (2000), pp. 19–50, at 31–32.

⁷⁷ Dating these hearings is problematic. The document recording the hearings claims that they began on 27 Jan. 1213 in Montpellier. Since the New Year normally started on 25 March this would date the start of the hearings to 27 Jan. 1214. However, the document also says that, first, Pelet offered the carta libelli to Peter of Benevento, the cardinal-legate, and that the hearing was delegated by Peter to the bishop of Nîmes. The papal letters announcing Peter’s legation were dated 17 Jan. 1214. A series of further papal letters—dated between 20 and 25 Jan.—referred to Peter as legate and were presumably intended to be carried to the south by Peter (Innocentii III regestorum sive epistolarum liber, 1213, nos. 163, 167, 170–172, PL 216, cols. 952–3, 955–6, 958–60). How could Raymond Pelet have given his carta libelli to Peter and got the case delegated to the bishop of Nîmes by the 27 Jan., at most two days after Peter left Rome? Peter himself did not reach Capestang (nr. Narbonne) until April 1214. The plausible explanation is that the date of the hearings is wrong, and the hearings actually began on 27 Jan. 1215. First, we know for certain that Peter of Benevento was in Montpellier in January 1215 (presiding over the council of Montpellier). Secondly, if the hearings before the bishop of Nîmes are dated to Jan. 1215 then it would explain why the record of the hearings cuts off after appointing 19 March as the day to continue the case: by then the bishop of Maguelone had sent an embassy to Rome with enough money to persuade the papal court to confirm the county to him (which they did in letters of 14 April 1215).

⁷⁸ Radulphi de Coggeshall chronicon Anglicanum, ed. Joseph Stevenson (Longman: London, 1875), p. 136; Nicholas Vincent, ‘Rank Insubordination: Disobedience and Disinheritance amongst the Anglo-Norman Nobility, 1050–1250’, Rank and Order: The Formation of Aristocratic Elites in Western and Central Europe, 500–1500, ed. Jörg Peltzer (Thorbecke: Ostfildern, 2015), pp. 131–170, at 152–159.

⁷⁹ Vincent, ‘Rank Insubordination’, pp. 145, 150, 152–159, 164–167; id., ‘English Kingship: The View from Paris, 1066–1204’, Anglo-Norman Studies XL: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2017, ed. Elisabeth van Houts (Boydell and Brewer: Woodbridge, 2018), pp. 1–24, at 21; David Carpenter, ‘Confederation not Domination: Welsh Political Culture in the Age of Gwynedd Imperialism’, Wales and the Welsh in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to J. Beverley Smith, ed. R. Griffiths, P. Schofield (University of Wales Press: Cardiff, 2011), pp. 20–28.

⁸⁰ Les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. Sibly, Sibly, pp. 241–244; Petri monachi coenobii Vallium Cernaii Historia Albigensium, ch. 81, PL 213, cols. 694–5.

⁸¹ Layettes du tresor du chartes, ed. Teulet, i, nos. 1113–16, pp. 413–416.

⁸² Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 197, pp. 363–364. This letter was recorded in Innocent’s (now lost) register of letters for this year, Anton Haidacher, ‘Beiträge zur Kenntnis der verlorenen Registerbände Innocenz’ III. Die Jahrgänge 3–4 und 17–19 der Hauptregisterreihe und die ursprüngliche Gestalt des Thronstreitregisters’, Römische historische Mitteilungen 4 (1960/61), pp. 37–62, at 59.

⁸³ Les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensian Crusade, trans. Sibly, Sibly, pp. 241–244; Petri Vallium Cernaii Historia Albigensium, ch. 81, PL 213, cols. 694–5.

⁸⁴ Alternatively it might have been the palace of the ruler of Montpellier who was—in name—James I of Aragon, the boy-king whom Peter of Benevento had recently freed from Montfort and returned to Aragon.

⁸⁵ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 198, pp. 365–366.

⁸⁶ This letter was (seemingly) not registered in Innocent’s chancery registers since it was not noted in the later summary of registered letters which concerned lands or money. It was, however, copied into the Liber censuum and when Honorius III confirmed the grant on 26 May 1218, he noted that it was recorded In regesto censuali. Haidacher, ‘Beiträge zur Kenntnis der verlorenen Registerbände Innocenz’ III’, p. 59 (absent); Liber censuum, i, no. 17, pp. 241–242; Regesta Honorii, ed. Pressutti, i, no. 1379.

⁸⁷ Adriani IV epistolae et privilegia, no. 149, PL 188, cols. 1532–3.

⁸⁸ Liber censuum, i, no. 198, p. 449.

⁸⁹ Kantorowicz, King’s Two Bodies, pp. 348–354.

⁹⁰ Urban II’s privilege in 1088 had explicitly been granted ‘saving the metropolitan authority of Narbonne’. Early thirteenth-century manuscripts of the Provinciale Romanum (a list of all the bishops in Christendom) placed Maguelone unequivocally under the archbishop of Narbonne. See, for example, Bamberg, Msc. Can. 91, fol. 2v.

⁹¹ Kantorowicz, ‘Inalienability’, pp. 488–502; idem, King’s Two Bodies, pp. 348–354; chapter four above.

⁹² Malcolm Barber, ‘The Albigensian Crusades: Wars like any other?’, Dei gesta per Francos: etudes sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard, ed. Jonathan Riley-Smith, Michel Balard, Benjamin Ḳedar (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2001), pp. 45–55.

⁹³ Processus, no. 8, in Die Register Innocenz, xii, pp. 156–157; Innocentii III regestorum sive epistolarum liber, 1209, ch.8, PL 216, cols. 94–5.

⁹⁴ Regesta Honorii, ed. Pressutti, ii, nos. 4635–6, 5083.

⁹⁵ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 200, p. 381. Master Raymond was a prebendary of the church of Marseille, Innocentii III regestorum sive epistolarum liber, 1213, no. 163, PL 216, cols. 952–3.

⁹⁶ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, p. 374.

⁹⁷ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 201, pp. 382–383.

⁹⁸ Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 345, pp. 144–151.

⁹⁹ Stephan Kuttner, Antonio Garcia y Garcia, ‘A New Eyewitness Account of the Fourth Lateran Council’, Traditio 20 (1964), pp. 115–178, at 124–125.

¹⁰⁰ The Chronicle of William of Puylaurens: The Albigensian Crusade and its Aftermath, trans. W. A. Sibly, M. D. Sibly (Boydell and Brewer: Rochester, NY, 2003), pp. 53–54.

¹⁰¹ Puylaurens, trans. Sibly, Sibly, p. 54; Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. Delisle, xix, p. 211.

¹⁰² Lippiatt, Simon V of Montfort, p. 195.

¹⁰³ Lippiatt, Simon V of Montfort, pp. 35–36.

¹⁰⁴ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii. nos. 479, 488, pp. 364–366, 373–376.

¹⁰⁵ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 497, pp. 382–389. On the background to this, see William Chester Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade: A Study in Rulership (Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1979), pp. 135–140.

¹⁰⁶ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 203, p. 384.

¹⁰⁷ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 204, p. 386.

¹⁰⁸ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 202, p. 383. In 1227, the bishop complained that Raymond Pelet was detaining certain instrumenta of the county: Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 297, p. 114.

¹⁰⁹ Regesta Honorii, ed. Pressutti, ii, nos. 4635–6.

¹¹⁰ One of the petitions was that the pope should confirm the bishop’s possession of the church of Bejargues which had for a long time been separated from the bishop’s table. Pope Gregory confirmed this in a letter of 25 June 1229: Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 324, p. 152. Rouquette would, I think, rather date these petitions to 1227: ‘Saint Louis et le comté de Melgueil’, pp. 188–189.

¹¹¹ The castle of Laroque-Aynier (Ruppis Ainerii) was, in 1155, held jointly by Raymond of Laroque, G. Arnaldi and Berengar of Sauve, the latter presumably an ancestor of Peter-Bermond of Sauve (Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 93, pp. 182–185).

¹¹² The form here Ermensis; suggested to be a scribal misreading of Exunensis/Exunatis. On the castrum Exunatis and Arisdium, see André Soutou, ‘Localisation du castrum Exunatis, chef-lieu de la viguerie d’Arisitum du IX^e au XII^e siècle’, Annales du Midi 96 (1984), pp. 199–209.

¹¹³ Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 466, pp. 359–362.

¹¹⁴ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 287, pp. 100–101.

¹¹⁵ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 328, p. 158.

¹¹⁶ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 322, pp. 148–149.

¹¹⁷ Bullaire de l’Église de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, nos. 349–351, pp. 182–185.

¹¹⁸ Registres de Grégoire, ed. Auvray, Vitte-Clémencet, Carolus-Barré, ii, no. 3982, p. 828.

¹¹⁹ Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, ii, no. 466, pp. 359–362.

¹²⁰ Cartulaire de Maguelone, ed. Rouquette, Villemagne, i, no. 14, pp. 18–20. The text (with a slightly different date) was also copied into the Catalogus episcoporum Magalonensium of Arnaud of Verdale.

¹²¹ This is the central theme of Rouquette, ‘Saint Louis et le comté de Melgueil’, and is noted also by Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 81, 115n, 135–140.

¹²² Lippiatt, Simon V of Montfort, pp. 1–15.

¹²³ Rouquette, ‘Saint Louis et le comté de Melgueil’, p. 198.

¹²⁴ Jordan, Louis IX and the Challenge of the Crusade, pp. 138–140.

¹²⁵ Mazel, ‘Soumission et obéissance’, pp. 162, 166–168, 169, 171, 173, 175.