Good morning! It's @tlecaque, starting my takeover for the week with some #medieval southern France leading up to the First #Crusade. I want to take today to lay out some differences between southern Francia (s. of the Loire, w. of Alps, n. of Pyrenees) and northern Francia. 1/

The 1st difference is language--the south is the land of the langue d'oc (from whence we get Languedoc), as opposed to the langue d'oil, which becomes modern French. Our oldest surviving texts in it are 11th c., this is a 1st half of 12th c. Gospel translation: 2/

The First Crusade leader from southern France, Raymond of Saint-Gilles, uses Old Occitan in at least one charter ( http://www.cn-telma.fr//originaux/charte2767/) as does his older brother, William IV, count of Toulouse ( http://www.cn-telma.fr/chartae-galliae/charte218192/), so it's used for business and official documents. 3/

The 2nd big difference is it's legacy of romanitas, "the continued vestiges of Roman identity that separated the Provençals from the northern Franks," found in architecture, art, language and ideology. The cities ARE Roman cities. As Amy Remensynder said, “The imaginative sway 4/

of Romanitas was so great that it even spilled out of its historical period to color the entire vision of the non-Frankish past as elaborated by southern abbeys,” alongside the repurposing of Roman buildings as palaces. This romanitas was not just cool buildings, 5/

but the imprint of the legacy of the Roman Empire: Nimes was founded by Augustus Caesar, Arles was rebuilt by Constantine as the "Little Rome of the Gauls," (Ausonius), and the region was marked by being the oldest Roman provinces outside of Italy. 6/

The third big difference is that unlike northern Francia, southern Francia had a history of war against different Muslim groups and polities. For all the historiography on the so-called "Battle of Tours" crafted by the Carolingians to emphasize Charles Martel's glory, 7/

the Umayyad invasion across the Pyrenees were largely stopped in 721 at the Battle of Toulouse, when Eudes, Duke of Aquitaine, CRUSHED the army of Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani while Martel waited in the north. Read the Vita Pandulfi for more. ( https://www.dmgh.de/mgh_ss_rer_merov_7/index.htm#page/(19)/mode/1up). 8/

This was followed by Carolingian wars against al-Andalus and the resettling of Spanish Christians in Languedoc; the mytho-history of St. Guillaume, count of Toulouse, who becomes William of Orange in later epics, and centuries of pirate raids on the coast, 9/

most important of which were the activities of Muslim pirates at Fraxinetum, (read @xuthalofthedusk's https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501748431/cluny-and-the-muslims-of-la-garde-freinet/) which was stopped by the counts of Provence without royal aid which led to them claiming the independent title of marquis of Provence. 10/

It also gave birth to a local saint, Saint Bobo, a much cooler lay saint that the better-known Gerald of Aurillac--a story for later.

So, southern Francia, had at least 3 big differences from northern Francia: Language, Romanitas, local war w/ Muslims. To be continued! -TWL 11/