Honorius (emperor)
Honorius was Western Roman Emperor from 395 to 423. He was the younger son of emperor Theodosius I and his first wife Aelia Flaccilla, brother of Arcadius, the Eastern Emperor from 395 until his death in 408. During his reign, Rome was sacked for the first time in 800 years. By the standards of the declining Western Empire, Honorius's reign was precarious and chaotic, his reign was supported by his principal general, successively Honorius's guardian and his father-in-law. Stilicho's generalship helped preserve some level of stability, but with his execution in 408, the Western Roman Empire moved closer to collapse. After holding the consulate at the age of two, Honorius was declared Augustus by his father Theodosius I, thus co-ruler, on 23 January 393 after the death of Valentinian II and the usurpation of Eugenius; when Theodosius died, in January 395, Honorius and Arcadius divided the Empire, so that Honorius became Western Roman Emperor at the age of ten. During the first part of his reign Honorius depended on the military leadership of the general Stilicho, appointed by Theodosius and was of mixed Vandal and Roman ancestry.
To strengthen his bonds with the young emperor, Stilicho married his daughter Maria to him. The epithalamion written for the occasion by Stilicho's court poet Claudian survives. Honorius was greatly influenced by the Popes of Rome, who sought to extend their influence through his youth and weak character. So it was that Pope Innocent I contrived to have Honorius write to his brother, condemning the deposition of John Chrysostom in 407. At first Honorius based his capital in Milan, but when the Visigoths under King Alaric I entered Italy in 401 he moved his capital to the coastal city of Ravenna, protected by a ring of marshes and strong fortifications. While the new capital was easier to defend, it was poorly situated to allow Roman forces to protect Central Italy from the regular threat of barbarian incursions, it was significant that the Emperor's residence remained in Ravenna until the overthrow of the last western Roman Emperor in 476. That was the reason why Ravenna was chosen not only as the capital of the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy, but for the seat of the Byzantine exarchs as well.
Honorius' reign was plagued by constant barbarian incursions into Gaul and Hispania. At the same time, a host of usurpers rose up due to the apparent inability of the Emperor to see to the Empire's defences; the first crisis faced by Honorius was a revolt led by Gildo, the Comes Africae and Magister utriusque militiae per Africam, in Northern Africa, which lasted for two years. It was subdued by Stilicho, under the local command of Mascezel, the brother of Gildo; the next crisis was the Visigoth invasion of Italy in 402 under the formidable command of their king, Alaric. Stilicho was absent in Raetia in the latter months of 401, when Alaric, the Eastern Empire's magister militum in Illyricum marched with a large army to the Julian Alps and entered Italy. Stilicho hurried back to protect Honorius and the legions of Gaul and Britain were summoned to defend Italy. Honorius, slumbering at Milan, was caught unaware and fled to Asti, only to be pursued by Alaric, who marched into Liguria. Stilicho defeated Alaric on the river Tanarus on Easter Day.
Alaric retreated to Verona. The Visigoths, were allowed to retreat back to Illyricum. In 405 Stilicho met, they brought devastation to the heart of the Empire, until Stilicho defeated them in 406 and recruited most of them into his forces. In 405/6, an enormous barbarian horde, composed of Ostrogoths, Alans and Quadi, crossed the frozen Rhine and invaded Gaul; the situation in Britain was more difficult. The British provinces were isolated, lacking support from the Empire, the soldiers supported the revolts of Marcus and Constantine III. Constantine invaded Gaul in 407, occupying Arles, while Constantine was in Gaul, his son Constans ruled over Britain. By 410, Britain was told to look after its own affairs and expect no aid from Rome. There was good reason for this as the western empire was overstretched due to the massive invasion of Alans and Vandals who, although they had been repulsed from Italy in 406, moved into Gaul on 31 December 406, arrived in Hispania in 409. In early 408, Stilicho attempted to strengthen his position at court by marrying his second daughter, Thermantia, to Honorius after the death of the Empress Maria in 407 making Honorius the last Western Roman Emperor to have multiple wives.
Another invasion by Alaric was prevented in 408 by Stilicho when he forced the Roman Senate to pay 4,000 pounds of gold to persuade the Goths to leave Italy. Honorius, in the meantime, was at Bononia, on his way from Ravenna to Ticinum, when the news reached him of his brother's death in May 408, he at first was planning to go to Constantinople to help set up the court in the wake of the accession of Theodosius II. Summoned from Ravenna for advice, Stilicho advised Honorius not to go, proceeded to go himself. In Stilicho's absence, a minister named, he convinced the emperor that his Arian father-in-law was conspiring with the barbarians to overthrow him. On his return to Ravenna, Honorius ordered the execution of Stilicho. With Stilicho’s fall, Honorius moved against all of his former father-in-law’s allies and torturing key individuals and ordering the confisca
Visigoths
The Visigoths were the western branches of the nomadic tribes of Germanic peoples referred to collectively as the Goths. These tribes flourished and spread throughout the late Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, or what is known as the Migration Period; the Visigoths emerged from earlier Gothic groups who had invaded the Roman Empire beginning in 376 and had defeated the Romans at the Battle of Adrianople in 378. Relations between the Romans and the Visigoths were variable, alternately warring with one another and making treaties when convenient; the Visigoths invaded Italy under Alaric I and sacked Rome in 410. After the Visigoths sacked Rome, they began settling down, first in southern Gaul and in Hispania, where they founded the Visigothic Kingdom and maintained a presence from the 5th to the 8th centuries AD; the Visigoths first settled in southern Gaul as foederati to the Romans – a relationship established in 418. However, they soon fell out with their Roman hosts and established their own kingdom with its capital at Toulouse.
They next extended their authority into Hispania at the expense of the Vandals. In 507, their rule in Gaul was ended by the Franks under Clovis I, who defeated them in the Battle of Vouillé. After that, the Visigoth kingdom was limited to Hispania, they never again held territory north of the Pyrenees other than Septimania. A small, elite group of Visigoths came to dominate the governance of that region at the expense of those who had ruled there in the Byzantine province of Spania and the Kingdom of the Suebi. In or around 589, the Visigoths under Reccared I converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity adopting the culture of their Hispano-Roman subjects, their legal code, the Visigothic Code abolished the longstanding practice of applying different laws for Romans and Visigoths. Once legal distinctions were no longer being made between Romani and Gothi, they became known collectively as Hispani. In the century that followed, the region was dominated by the Councils of the episcopacy. In 711 or 712, an invading force of Arabs and Berbers defeated the Visigoths in the Battle of Guadalete.
Their king and many members of their governing elite were killed, their kingdom collapsed. During their governance of Hispania, the Visigoths built several churches, they left many artifacts, which have been discovered in increasing numbers by archaeologists in recent times. The Treasure of Guarrazar of votive crowns and crosses is the most spectacular, they founded the only new cities in western Europe from the fall of the Western half of the Roman Empire until the rise of the Carolingian dynasty. Many Visigothic names are still in use in modern Portuguese, their most notable legacy, was the Visigothic Code, which served, among other things, as the basis for court procedure in most of Christian Iberia until the Late Middle Ages, centuries after the demise of the kingdom. Contemporaneous references to the Gothic tribes use the terms "Vesi", "Ostrogothi", "Thervingi", "Greuthungi". Most scholars have concluded that the terms "Vesi" and "Tervingi" were both used to refer to one particular tribe, while the terms "Ostrogothi" and "Greuthungi" were used to refer to another.
Herwig Wolfram points out that while primary sources list all four names, whenever they mention two different tribes, they always refer either to "the Vesi and the Ostrogothi" or to "the Tervingi and the Greuthungi", they never pair them up in any other combination. This conclusion is supported by Jordanes, who identified the Visigoth kings from Alaric I to Alaric II as the heirs of the 4th century Tervingian king Athanaric, the Ostrogoth kings from Theoderic the Great to Theodahad as the heirs of the Greuthungi king Ermanaric. In addition, the Notitia Dignitatum equates the Vesi with the Tervingi in a reference to the years 388–391; the earliest sources for each of the four names are contemporaneous. The first recorded reference to "the Tervingi" is in a eulogy of the emperor Maximian, delivered in or shortly after 291 and traditionally ascribed to Claudius Mamertinus, it says that the "Tervingi, another division of the Goths", joined with the Taifali to attack the Vandals and Gepidae. The first recorded reference to "the Greuthungi" is by Ammianus Marcellinus, writing no earlier than 392 and later than 395, recounting the words of a Tervingian chieftain, attested as early as 376.
The first known use of the term "Ostrogoths" is in a document dated September 392 from Milan. Wolfram notes that "Vesi" and "Ostrogothi" were terms each tribe used to boastfully describe itself and argues that "Tervingi" and "Greuthungi" were geographical identifiers each tribe used to describe the other; this would explain why the latter terms dropped out of use shortly after 400, when the Goths were displaced by the Hunnic invasions. As an example of this geographical naming practice, Wolfram cites an account by Zosimus of a group of people living north of the Danube who called themselves "the Scythians" but were called "the Greutungi" by members of a different tribe living
Burgundians
The Burgundians were a large East Germanic tribe or group of tribes that lived in the time of the Roman Empire in the region of Germania, now part of Poland. In the late Roman period, as the empire came under pressure from many such "barbarian" peoples, a powerful group of Burgundians and other Vandalic tribes moved westwards towards the Roman frontiers along the Rhine Valley, making them neighbors of the Franks who formed their kingdoms to the north, the Suebic Alemanni who were settling to their south near the Rhine, they established themselves in Worms, but with Roman cooperation their descendants established the Kingdom of the Burgundians much further south, within the empire, in the western Alps region where modern Switzerland and Italy meet. This became a component of the Frankish empire; the name of this kingdom survives in the regional appellation, a region in modern France, representing only a part of that kingdom. Another part of the Burgundians stayed in their previous homeland in the Oder-Vistula basin and formed a contingent in Attila's Hunnic army by 451.
Before clear documentary evidence begins, the Burgundians may have emigrated from mainland Scandinavia to the Baltic island of Bornholm, from there to the Vistula basin, in the middle of what is now Poland. The ethnonym Burgundians is used in English to refer to the Burgundi who settled in Sapaudia, in the western Alps, during the 5th century; the original Kingdom of the Burgundians intersected the modern Bourgogne and more matched the boundaries of the Arpitan or Romand language area, centred on the Rôno-Arpes region of France, Romandy in west Switzerland and Val d'Outa, in north west Italy. In modern usage, however, "Burgundians" can sometimes refer to inhabitants of the geographical Bourgogne or Borgogne, named after the old kingdom, but not corresponding to the original boundaries of it. Between the 6th and 20th centuries, the boundaries and political connections of "Burgundy" have changed frequently. In modern times the only area still referred to as Burgundy is in France, which derives its name from the Duchy of Burgundy.
But in the context of the Middle Ages the term Burgundian can refer to the powerful political entity the Dukes controlled which included not only Burgundy itself but had expanded to have a strong association with areas now in modern Belgium and Southern Netherlands. The parts of the old Kingdom not within the French controlled Duchy tended to come under different names, except for the County of Burgundy; the Burgundians had a tradition of Scandinavian origin which finds support in place-name evidence and archaeological evidence and many consider their tradition to be correct. The Burgundians are believed to have emigrated to the Baltic island of Bornholm. However, by about 250 AD, the population of Bornholm had disappeared from the island. Most cemeteries ceased to be used, those that were still used had few burials. In Þorsteins saga Víkingssonar, a man named Veseti settled on a holm called borgundarhólmr in Old Norse, i.e. Bornholm. Alfred the Great's translation of Orosius uses the name Burgenda land to refer to a territory next to the land of Sweons.
The poet and early mythologist Viktor Rydberg, asserted from an early medieval source, Vita Sigismundi, that they themselves retained oral traditions about their Scandinavian origin. Early Roman sources, such as Tacitus and Pliny the Elder, knew little concerning the Germanic peoples east of the Elbe river, or on the Baltic Sea. Pliny however mentions them among the Vandalic or Eastern Germanic Germani peoples, including the Goths. Claudius Ptolemy lists them as living between the Suevus and Vistula rivers, north of the Lugii, south of the coast dwelling tribes. Around the mid 2nd century AD, there was a significant migration by Germanic tribes of Scandinavian origin towards the south-east, creating turmoil along the entire Roman frontier; these migrations culminated in the Marcomannic Wars, which resulted in widespread destruction and the first invasion of Italy in the Roman Empire period. Jordanes reports that during the 3rd century, the Burgundians living in the Vistula basin were annihilated by Fastida, king of the Gepids, whose kingdom was at the mouth of the Vistula.
In the late 3rd century, the Burgundians appear on the east bank of the Rhine, confronting Roman Gaul. Zosimus reports them being defeated by the emperor Probus in 278 in Gaul. At this time, they were led by a Vandal king. A few years Claudius Mamertinus mentions them along with the Alamanni, a Suebic people; these two peoples had moved into the Agri Decumates on the eastern side of the Rhine, an area today referred to still as Swabia, at times attacking Roman Gaul together and sometimes fighting each other. He mentions that the Goths had defeated the Burgundians. Ammianus Marcellinus, on the other hand, claimed; the Roman sources do not speak of any specific migration from Poland by the Burgundians, so there have been some doubts about the link between the eastern and western Burgundians. In 369/370, the
Hispania
Hispania was the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula and its provinces. Under the Republic, Hispania was divided into two provinces: Hispania Citerior and Hispania Ulterior. During the Principate, Hispania Ulterior was divided into two new provinces and Lusitania, while Hispania Citerior was renamed Hispania Tarraconensis. Subsequently, the western part of Tarraconensis was split off, first as Hispania Nova renamed "Callaecia". From Diocletian's Tetrarchy onwards, the south of remaining Tarraconensis was again split off as Carthaginensis, then too the Balearic Islands and all the resulting provinces formed one civil diocese under the vicarius for the Hispaniae; the name, was used in the period of Visigothic rule. The modern placenames Hispaniola are both derived from Hispania; the origin of the word Hispania is much disputed and the evidence for the various speculations are based upon what are at best mere resemblances to be accidental, suspect supporting evidence. One theory holds it to be from the Phoenician language of colonizing Carthage.
It may derive from a Punic cognate of Hebrew אי-שפניא meaning "island of the hyrax" or "island of the hare" or "island of the rabbit". Some Roman coins of the Emperor Hadrian, born in Hispania, depict a rabbit. Others derive the word from Phoenician span, meaning "hidden", make it indicate "a hidden", that is, "a remote", or "far-distant land". Another theory, proposed by the etymologist Eric Partridge in his work Origins, is that it is of Iberian derivation and that it is to be found in the pre-Roman name for Seville, which hints at an ancient name for the country of *Hispa, an Iberian or Celtic root whose meaning is now lost. Isidore of Sevilla considered Hispania derived from Hispalis. Hispalis may alternatively derive from Heliopolis. According to Manuel Pellicer Catalán, the name derives from Phoenician Spal "lowland", rendering this explanation of Hispania dubious. Hispania was called Hesperia Ultima, "the last western land" in Greek, by Roman writers, since the name Hesperia had been used by the Greeks to indicate the Italian peninsula.
Another theory holds that the name derives from Ezpanna, the Basque word for "border" or "edge", thus meaning the farthest area or place. During Antiquity and Middle Ages, the literary texts derive the term Hispania from an eponymous hero named Hispan, mentioned for the first time in the work of the Roman historian Gnaeus Pompeius Trogus, in the 1st century BC. Although "Hispania" is the Latin root for the modern name "Spain", substituting Spanish for Hispanicus or Hispanic, or Spain for Hispania, should be done and taking into account the correct context; the Estoria de España written on the initiative of Alfonso X of Castile "El Sabio", between 1260 and 1274, during the Reconquest of Spain, is believed to be the first extended history of Spain in Old Spanish using the words "España" and "Españoles" to refer to Medieval Hispania. The use of Latin "Hispania", Castilian "España", Catalan "Espanya" and French "Espaigne", between others, to refer to Roman Hispania or Visigothic Hispania was common throughout all the Late Middle Ages.
A document dated 1292 mentions the names of foreigners from Medieval Spain as "Gracien d'Espaigne". Latin expressions using "Hispania" or "Hispaniae" like "omnes reges Hispaniae" are used in the Middle Ages at the same time as the emerging Spain Romance languages during the Reconquista use the Romance version interchangeably. In James Ist Chronicle Llibre dels fets, written between 1208 and 1276, there are many instances of this: when it talks about the different Kings, "los V regnes de Espanya"; the Latin term Hispania used during Antiquity and the Low Middle Ages as a geographical name, starts to be used with political connotations, as shown in the expression "Laus Hispaniae" to describe the history of the peoples of the Iberian Peninsula of Isidore of Seville's "Historia de regibus Gothorum, Vandalorum et Suevorum".: You are, Oh Spain and always happy mother of princes and peoples, the most beautiful of all the lands that extend far from the West to India. You, by right, are now the queen of all provinces, from whom the lights are given not only the sunset, but the East.
You are the honor and ornament of the orb and the most illustrious portion of the Earth... And for this reason, long ago, the golden Rome desired you In modern history and Spanish have become associated with the Kingdom of Spain alone, although this process took several centuries. After the union of the central peninsular Kingdom of Castile with the eastern peninsular Kingdom of Aragon in the 15th century under the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, onl
Suebi
The Suebi were a large group of related Germanic tribes, which included the Marcomanni, Hermunduri, Semnones and others, sometimes including sub-groups referred to as Suebi. In the broadest sense, the Suebi are associated with the early Germanic tribal group Irminones mentioned by classical authors. Beginning in the 1st century BC, various Suebian tribes moved south-westwards from the Baltic Sea and the Elbe and came into conflict with Ancient Rome, they are first mentioned by Julius Caesar in connection with the invasion of Gaul by the Suebian chieftain Ariovistus during the Gallic Wars. During the reign of Augustus, the Suebi expanded southwards at the expense of Gallic tribes, establishing a Germanic presence in the immediate areas north of the Danube. During this time, Maroboduus of the Marcomanni established the first confederation of Germanic tribes in Bohemia. Under the reign of Marcus Aurelius in the 2nd century AD, the Marcomanni, under pressure from East Germanic tribes, invaded Italy.
By the Crisis of the Third Century, new Suebian groups had emerged, Italy was invaded again by the Juthungi, while the Alamanni ravaged Gaul and settled the Agri Decumates. The Alamanni continued exerting pressure on Gaul, while the Alamannic chieftain Chrocus played an important role in elevating Constantine the Great to Roman Emperor. By the late 4th century AD, many Suebi were migrating westwards under Hunnic pressure, in 406 AD, Suebian tribes led by Hermeric crossed the Rhine and overran Hispania, where they established the Kingdom of the Suebi. During the last years of the decline of the Western Roman Empire, the Suebian general Ricimer was its de facto ruler; the Lombards settled Italy and established the Kingdom of the Lombards. The Alammani and Thuringii who remained in Germania gave their name to the German regions of Swabia and Thuringia respectively; the Suebi are thought to encompass the High German cultures and dialects predominant in Southern Germany and Austria. Etymologists trace the name from Proto-Germanic *swēbaz, either based on the Proto-Germanic root *swē- meaning "one's own" people or on the third-person reflexive pronoun.
The etymological sources list the following ethnic names as being from the same root: Suiones, Samnites and Sabines, indicating the possibility of a prior more extended and common Indo-European ethnic name, "our own people". Notably, the Semnones, known to classical authors as one of the largest Suebian groups seem to have a name with this same meaning, but recorded with a different pronunciation by the Romans. Alternatively, it may be borrowed from a Celtic word for "vagabond". Caesar placed the Suebi east of the Ubii near modern Hesse, in the position where writers mention the Chatti, he distinguished them from their allies the Marcomanni; some commentators believe that Caesar's Suebi were the Chatti or the Hermunduri, or Semnones. Authors use the term Suebi more broadly, "to cover a large number of tribes in central Germany". While Caesar treated them as one Germanic tribe within an alliance, albeit the largest and most warlike one authors, such as Tacitus, Pliny the Elder and Strabo, specified that the Suevi "do not, like the Chatti or Tencteri, constitute a single nation.
They occupy more than half of Germania, are divided into a number of distinct tribes under distinct names, though all are called Suebi". Although no classical authors explicitly call the Chatti Suevic, Pliny the Elder, reported in his Natural History that the Irminones were a large grouping of related Germanic gentes or "tribes" including not only the Suebi, but the Hermunduri and Cherusci. Whether or not the Chatti were considered Suevi, both Tacitus and Strabo distinguish the two because the Chatti were more settled in one territory, whereas Suevi remained less settled; the definitions of the greater ethnic groupings within Germania were not always consistent and clear in the case of mobile groups such as the Suevi. Whereas Tacitus reported three main kinds of German peoples, Irminones and Ingaevones, Pliny adds two more genera or "kinds", the Bastarnae and the Vandili; the Vandals were tribes east of the Elbe, including the well-known Silingi and Burgundians, an area that Tacitus treated as Suebic.
That the Vandals might be a separate type of Germanic people, corresponding to the modern concept of East Germanic, is a possibility that Tacitus noted, but for example the Varini are named as Vandilic by Pliny, Suebic by Tacitus. At one time, classical ethnography had applied the name Suevi to so many Germanic tribes that it appeared as if, in the first centuries AD, that native name would replace the foreign name "Germans"; the modern term "Elbe Germanic" covers a large grouping of Germanic peoples that at least overlaps with the classical terms "Suevi" and "Irminones". However, this term was developed as an attempt to define the ancient peoples who must have spoken the Germanic dialects that led to modern Upper German dialects spoken in Austria, Thuringia, Baden-Württemberg and German speaking Switzerland; this was proposed by Friedrich Maurer as one of five major Kulturkreise or "culture-groups" whose dialects developed in the southern German area from the first century BC through to the fourth century AD.
Apart from his own linguistic work with modern dialects, he referred to the archaeological and literary analysis of Germanic tribes done earlier by Gustaf Kossinna In terms of these pr
Toulouse
Toulouse is the capital of the French department of Haute-Garonne and of the region of Occitanie. The city is on the banks of the River Garonne, 150 kilometres from the Mediterranean Sea, 230 km from the Atlantic Ocean and 680 km from Paris, it is the fourth-largest city in France, with 466,297 inhabitants as of January 2014. In France, Toulouse is called the "Pink City"; the Toulouse Metro area, with 1,312,304 inhabitants as of 2014, is France's fourth-largest metropolitan area, after Paris and Marseille, ahead of Lille and Bordeaux. Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, the Galileo positioning system, the SPOT satellite system, ATR and the Aerospace Valley, it hosts the European headquarters of Intel and CNES's Toulouse Space Centre, the largest space centre in Europe. Thales Alenia Space, ATR, SAFRAN, Liebherr-Aerospace and Astrium Satellites have a significant presence in Toulouse; the University of Toulouse is one of the oldest in Europe and, with more than 103,000 students, it is the fourth-largest university campus in France, after the universities of Paris and Lille.
The air route between Toulouse–Blagnac and Paris Orly is the busiest in Europe, transporting 2.4 million passengers in 2014. According to the rankings of L'Express and Challenges, Toulouse is the most dynamic French city; the city was the capital of the Visigothic Kingdom in the 5th century and the capital of the province of Languedoc in the Late Middle Ages and early modern period, making it the unofficial capital of the cultural region of Occitania. It is now the capital of the second largest region in Metropolitan France. A city with unique architecture made of pinkish terracotta bricks, which earned it the nickname la Ville Rose, Toulouse counts two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the Canal du Midi, the Basilica of St. Sernin, the largest remaining Romanesque building in Europe, designated in 1998 because of its significance to the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route. Toulouse is in the south of France, north of the department of Haute-Garonne, on the axis of communication between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
The city is traversed by the Canal de Brienne, the Canal du Midi and the rivers Garonne and Hers-Mort. Toulouse has a humid subtropical climate, with too much precipitation in the summer months preventing the city from being classified as a Mediterranean climate zone; the Garonne Valley was a central point for trade between the Pyrenees, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic since at least the Iron Age. The historical name of the city, Tolosa, it is of unknown meaning or origin from Aquitanian, or from Iberian, but has been connected to the name of the Gaulish Volcae Tectosages. Tolosa enters the historical period in the 2nd century BC. After the conquest of Gaul, it was developed as a Roman city of Gallia Narbonensis. In the 5th century, Tolosa fell to the Visigothic kingdom and became one of its major cities, in the early 6th century serving as its capital, before it fell to the Franks under Clovis in 507. From this time, Toulouse was the capital of Aquitaine within the Frankish realm. In 721, Duke Odo of Aquitaine defeated an invading Umayyad Muslim army at the Battle of Toulouse.
Odo's victory was a small obstacle to Muslim expansion into Christian Europe, Muslims occupied a large territory including Poitiers. Charles Martel, a decade won the Battle of Tours called the Battle of Poitiers; the Frankish conquest of Septimania followed in the 750s, a quasi-independent County of Toulouse emerged within the Carolingian sub-kingdom of Aquitaine by the late 8th century. The Battle of Toulouse of 844, pitting Charles the Bald against Pepin II of Aquitaine, was key in the Carolingian Civil War. During the Carolingian era, the town rose in status. In the 12th century, consuls took over the running of the town and these proved to be difficult years. In particular, it was a time of religious turmoil. In Toulouse, the Cathars tried to set up a community here, but were routed by Simon de Montfort's troops; the Dominican Order was founded in Toulouse in 1215 by Saint Dominic in this context of struggle against the Cathar heresy. The subsequent arrival of the Inquisition led to a period of religious fervour during which time the Dominican Couvent des Jacobins was founded.
Governed by Raimond II and a group of city nobles, Toulouse's urban boundaries stretched beyond its walls to the north and as far south as Saint Michel. In the Treaty of Paris of 1229, Toulouse formally submitted to the crown of France; the county's sole heiress Joan was engaged to Alphonse, Count of Poitiers, a younger brother of Louis IX of France. The marriage became legal in 1241, but it remained childless so that after Joan's death the county fell to the crown of France by inheritance. In 1229, University of Toulouse was established after the Parisian model, intended as a means to dissolve the heretic movement. Various monastic orders, like the congregation of the order of frères prêcheurs, were started, they found home in Les Jacobins. In parallel, a long period of inquisition began inside the Toulouse walls; the fear of repression obliged the notabilities to convert themselves. The inquisition lasted nearly 4
Aquitaine
Aquitaine, archaic Guyenne/Guienne, is a historical region of France and a former administrative region of the country. Since 1 January 2016 it has been part of the region Nouvelle-Aquitaine, it is situated in the south-western part of Metropolitan France, along the Atlantic Ocean and the Pyrenees mountain range on the border with Spain. It is composed of the five departments of Dordogne, Lot-et-Garonne, Pyrénées-Atlantiques and Gironde. In the Middle Ages, Aquitaine was a duchy, whose boundaries fluctuated considerably. There are traces of human settlement by prehistoric peoples in the Périgord, but the earliest attested inhabitants in the south-west were the Aquitani, who were not proper Celtic people, but more akin to the Iberians. Although a number of different languages and dialects were in use in the area during ancient times, it is most that the prevailing language of Aquitaine during the late pre-historic to Roman period was an early form of the Basque language; this has been demonstrated by various Aquitanian names and words that were recorded by the Romans, which are easily readable as Basque.
Whether this Aquitanian language was a remnant of a Vasconic language group that once extended much farther, or it was limited to the Aquitaine/Basque region is not known. One reason the language of Aquitaine is important is because Basque is the last surviving non-Indo-European language in western Europe and it has had some effect on the languages around it, including Spanish and, to a lesser extent, French; the original Aquitania at the time of Caesar's conquest of Gaul included the area bounded by the Garonne River, the Pyrenees and the Atlantic Ocean. The name may stem from Latin'aqua', maybe derived from the town "Aquae Augustae", "Aquae Tarbellicae" or just "Aquis" or as a more general geographical feature. Under Augustus' Roman rule, since 27 BC the province of Aquitania was further stretched to the north to the River Loire, thus including proper Gaul tribes along with old Aquitani south of the Garonne within the same region. In 392, the Roman imperial provinces were restructured as Aquitania Prima, Aquitania Secunda and Aquitania Tertia, better known as Novempopulania in the south-west.
Accounts of Aquitania during the Early Middle Ages are a blur, lacking precision, but there was much unrest. The Visigoths were called into Gaul as foederati, they established themselves as the de facto rulers in south-west Gaul as central Roman rule collapsed. Visigoths established their capital in Toulouse. In 507, they were expelled south to Hispania after their defeat in the Battle of Vouillé by the Franks, who became the new rulers in the area to the south of the Loire; the Roman Aquitania Tertia remained in place as Novempopulania, where a duke was appointed to hold a grip over the Basques. These dukes were quite detached from central Frankish overlordship, sometimes governing as independent rulers with strong ties to their kinsmen south of the Pyrenees; as of 660, the foundations for an independent Aquitaine/Vasconia polity were established by the duke Felix of Aquitaine, a magnate from Toulouse of Gallo-Roman stock. Despite its nominal submission to the Merovingians, the ethnic make-up of new realm Aquitaine wasn't Frankish, but Gallo-Roman north of the Garonne and main towns and Basque south of the Garonne.
A united Basque-Aquitanian realm reached its heyday under Odo the Great's rule. In 721, the Aquitanian duke fended Umayyad troops off at Toulouse, but in 732, an Umayyad expedition commanded by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi defeated Odo next to Bordeaux, went on to loot its way up to Poitiers. Odo was required to pledge allegiance to the Frankish Charles Martel in exchange for help against the advancing Arabic forces. Basque-Aquitanian self-rule temporarily came to a halt in 768 after the assassination of Waifer. In 781, Charlemagne decided to proclaim his son Louis King of Aquitaine within the Carolingian Empire, ruling over a realm comprising the Duchy of Aquitaine and the Duchy of Vasconia He suppressed various Basque uprisings venturing into the lands of Pamplona past the Pyrenees after ravaging Gascony, with a view to imposing his authority in the Vasconia to south of Pyrenees. According to his biography, he achieved everything he wanted and after staying overnight in Pamplona, on his way back his army was attacked in Roncevaux in 812, but narrowly escaped an engagement at the Pyrenean passes.
Seguin, count of Bordeaux and Duke of Vasconia, seemed to have attempted a detachment from the Frankish central authority on Charlemagne's death. The new emperor Louis the Pious reacted by removing him from his capacity, which stirred the Basques into rebellion; the king in turn sent his troops to the territory, obtaining their submission in two campaigns and killing the duke, while his family crossed the Pyrenees and continued to foment risings against Frankish power. In 824, the 2nd Battle of Roncevaux took place, in which counts Aeblus and Aznar, Frankish vassals from the Duchy of Vasconia sent by the new King of Aquitaine, were captured by the joint forces of Iñigo Arista and the Banu Qasi. Before Pepin's death, emperor Louis had appointed a new king in 832, his son Charles the Bald, while the Aquitanian lords elected Pepin II as king; this struggle for control of the kingdom led to
