LANGUEDOC, one of the old provinces of France, the name of which dates from the end of the 13th century. In 1290 it was used to refer to the country in whose tongue (longue) the word for "yes" was oc, as opposed to the centre and north of France, the longue d' oil (the oui of to-day). Territorially Lan guedoc varied considerably in extent, but in general from 1360 until the French Revolution it included the territory of the fol lowing departments of modern France; part of Tarn et Garonne, Tarn, most of Haute-Garonne, Ariege, Aude, Pyrenees-Orientales, Herault, Gard, Lozere, part of Ardeche and Haute-Loire. The country had no natural geographical unity. Stretching over the Cevennes into the valleys of the upper Loire on the north and into that of the upper Garonne on the west, it reached the Pyrenees on the south and the rolling hills along the Rhone on the east. Its unity was entirely a political creation, but none the less real, as it was the great state of the Midi, the representative of its culture and, to some degree, the defence of its peculiar civilization.
While it corresponded exactly to no administrative division of the Roman empire, Languedoc was approximately the territory included in Gallia Narbonensis, one of the 17 provinces into which the empire was divided at the death of Augustus. It was rich and flourishing, with great and densely populated towns, Nimes, Narbonne, Beziers, Toulouse ; with schools of rhetoric and poetry still vigorous in the 5th century. In the 5th century this high culture was an open prize for the barbarians ; and after the passing of the Vandals, Suebi and Visigoths into Spain, the Visigoths returned under Wallia, who made his capital at Toulouse in 419. This was the foundation of the Visigothic kingdom which Clovis dismembered in 507, leaving the Visigoths only Septimania —the country of seven cities, Narbonne, Carcassonne, Elne, Beziers, Maguelonne, Lodeve and Agde—that is, very nearly the area occupied later by the province of Languedoc. At the council of Narbonne in 589 five races are mentioned as living in the province, Visigoths, Romans, Jews—of whom there were a great many—Syrians and Greeks. The repulse of the Arabs by Charles Martel in 732 opened up the country for the Frankish conquest, which was completed by 768. Under the Carolingians, Septimania became part of the kingdom of Aquitaine, but it became a separate duchy in 817.
Until the opening of the 13th century there is no unity in the history of Languedoc. The feudal regime did not become at all universal in the district, as in the north of France. By the end of the 11th century the house of the counts of Toulouse began to play the predominant role; but their court had been famous almost a century before for its love of art and literature and its extravagance in dress and fashions, all of which denoted its wealth. Under Raymond of Saint Gilles, at the end of the 11th
century, the county of Toulouse began its great career, but Ray mond's ambition to become an Oriental prince, which led him away on the first crusade left a troubled heritage to his sons Bertrand and Alphonse Jourdain (I io.9-48). The latter success fully beat off William IX., duke of Aquitaine, and won from the count of Barcelona the part of Provence between the DrOme and the Durance. By the opening of the 13th century the sover eignty of the counts of Toulouse was recognized through about half of Provence, and they held the rich cities of the most cultured and wealthiest portion of France.
The prosperity of this region was ruined by the great crusade directed against the popular heresy which had developed there by the early 13th century. The whole county of Toulouse, with its fiefs of Narbonne, Beziers, Foix, Montpellier and Quercy, was in open and scornful secession from the Catholic Church, and the suppression of this Manichaean or Cathar religion was the end of the brilliant culture of Languedoc. (See ALBIGENSES, CATHARS, INQUISITION.) The crusade against the Albigenses, as the Cathars were locally termed, in 1209, resulted in the union to the crown of France in 1229 of all the country from Carcas sonne to the Rhone, thus dividing Languedoc into two. The western part, left to Raymond VII., by the treaty of 1229, included the Agenais, Quercy, Rouergue, the Toulousain and southern Albigeois. He had as well the Venaissin across the Rhone. From 1229 to his death in 1249 Raymond VII. worked tirelessly to bring back prosperity to his ruined country, encouraging the foundation of new cities, and attempting to gain reconciliation with the Church. He left only a daughter, Jeanne, who was mar ried to Alphonse of Poitiers. Alphonse, a sincere Catholic, upheld the Inquisition, but, although ruling the country from Paris, main tained peace. Jeanne died without heirs four days of ter her hus band, in 1271, and her lands were promptly seized by King Philip III. Thus the county of Toulouse passed to the crown, though Philip III. turned over the Agenais to Edward I. of England in 1279. In 1274 he ceded the county of Venaissin to Pope Gregory X., the papacy having claimed it, without legal grounds, since the Albigensian crusade (see AVIGNON ).