BEARN, formerly a small frontier province in the south of France, now included within the department of Basses-Pyrenees. It was bounded on the west by Soule and Lower Navarre, on the north by Chalosse, Tursan and Astarac, east by Bigorre and south by the Pyrenees. Its name can be traced back to the town of Beneharnum (Lescar). It was conquered by the Vascones in the 6th century and in 819 became a viscounty dependent on the dukes of Aquitaine—a feudal link which was broken in the i i th century, when the viscounts ceased to acknowledge any suzerain. They then reigned over the two dioceses of Lescar and Oloron; but their capital was Morlaas, where they had a mint which was famous throughout the middle ages. In the i 3th century Gaston VII., of the Catalonian house of Moncade, made Orthez his seat of government. His long reign (1229-90) was a perpetual struggle with the kings of France and England, each anxious to assert his suzerainty over Beam. As Gaston left only daughters, the vis county passed at his death to the family of Foix, from whom it was transmitted through the houses of Grailly and Albret to the Bourbons, and they, in the person of Henry IV., king of Navarre, made it an apanage of the crown of France. From the i 1 th cen tury onward, the Bearnais were governed by their own special customs or fors. Moreover, from the i2th century Beam enjoyed a kind of representative government, with tours plenieres com posed of deputies from the three estates. From 1220 onward, the judiciary powers of these assemblies were exercised by a tour majour of 12 barons jurats charged with the duty of maintaining the integrity of the fors. When Gaston-Phoebus wished to establish a regular annual hearth-tax (fouage) in the viscounty, he convoked the deputies of the three estates in assemblies called etats. These soon acquired extensive political and financial powers, which continued in operation till 1789.
See Olhagaray, Histoire de Foix, Beam et Navarre (1609) ; Pierre de Marca, Histoire de Beam (164o) , a work which does not go beyond the end of the i3th century, but contains a large number of documents; Faget de Baure, Essais historiques sur le Bearn (1818) ; Les Fors de Bearn, by Mazure and Hatoulet (1839) completed by J. Brissaud and P. Roge in Textes additionels aux anciens Fors de Bearn (1905) ; Leon Cadier, Les Etats de Bearn depuis leer origine jusqu'au commencement du X V Ie siecle (1888) . (C. BEM.)