Raimund-Roger Trencavel

Raimund-Roger Trencavel

Raimund-Roger Trencavel (French: Raimond-Roger, Occitan: Raimon Rogièr, * 1185 ; † November 10, 1209 ) was a member of the Trencavel family and Vice Count of Carcassonne .

Life

Raimund-Roger Trencavel was the son of Vice Count Roger II. Trencavel and Adélaïde de Toulouse , a sister of Count Raimund VI. from Toulouse . At the age of five he became a half-orphan. Bertrand von Saissac , who was an opponent of the Roman Church and a supporter of the Cathars, was appointed as his guardian .

In 1199 Trencavel was declared of age at the age of fourteen and was able to take over the administration of his lands. He was vice count of Carcassonne and Razès (fiefdom of the Crown of Aragón ) and of Albi , Ambialet and Béziers (fiefdom of the House of Toulouse ). He was thus one of the most powerful nobles in southwest France, his residence was the Château Comtal in Carcassonne. In 1201, through the mediation of King Peter II of Aragón, he married the noblewoman Agnès de Montpellier, a daughter of Lord William VIII of Montpellier ( House of Montpellier ), with whom he had the son Raimund II Trencavel . Through the marriage of his sister-in-law Marie de Montpellier to the Aragonese king two years later, Trencavel approached him both politically and dynastically.

Albigensian Crusade

A street in Carcassonne is named after the vice count.

Trencavel, like almost all princes of Languedoc, tolerated the Christian sect of the Cathars and other religions in his domain. The Roman Catholic Church had classified this sect as heretical and tried to reduce its influence. Trencavel as well as his uncle, Count Raimund VI. of Toulouse, refused to support the papal legate Pierre de Castelnau in fighting the Cathars, for which they were excommunicated. The assassination of the legate in 1208 took Pope Innocent III. as an occasion to proclaim the crusade against the Albigensians (another term for Cathars).

In 1209 around 10,000 crusaders gathered in Lyon and moved south in March. Despite the mutual threat, Trencavel refused to enter into an alliance with his uncle, probably due to the generational rivalry between Trencavel and Toulouse. The Count of Toulouse submitted to the church in June 1209 and joined the crusade in order to keep it away from his own lands. Trencavel was not ready to take this step, which is why his country became the main destination of the crusaders. Since King Peter II of Aragon was bound by the battle against the Moors at the same time , Trencavel had no significant ally. The crusaders first moved towards Montpellier and then towards Béziers. After Trencavel's attempt to reach an agreement with the Crusaders failed, he left the city to retreat to the better fortified Carcassonne. In July 1209, Béziers was conquered by the Crusaders who massacred the city's population.

Carcassonne, which was well fortified but overpopulated due to refugees, was able to hold out longer, but suffered from a lack of water. Trencavel tried to prevent a fate similar to that of Béziers by negotiating with the Crusaders, but this failed despite the mediation of the King of Aragón. When he went to the Crusaders' camp for talks again, he was captured by them despite promised safe conduct. Thereupon the defenders of Carcassonne surrendered on August 15, 1209 and let the crusaders move in. The residents had to leave the city. Trencavel was imprisoned in one of the towers of the city fortifications, where he probably died a short time later of the dysentery . Trencavel's widow Agnes had to renounce all possessions in favor of the newly appointed crusader leader, Simon de Montfort , and go into exile in Aragon with her son.

The trobador Guillem Augier Novella (middle of the 13th century), from the Dauphiné , lamented the death of Trencavel in a seven- stanza Sirventes . He accused the Crusaders as false descendants of Pilate and thus indirectly compared Trencavel's death with the martyrdom of Jesus Christ .

reception

The German esoteric Otto Rahn († 1939) recognized in Raimund-Roger Trencavel the historical model of the knight of the grail " Parzival " of Wolfram von Eschenbach , just as the entire epic work took up motifs from the history of the Albigensian Crusade. The (presumably legendary) poet Kyot de Provence, to whose work Eschenbach referred, is identical to the trouvère Guiot de Provins from northern France , who is said to have sung about the vice-count as "Perceval" and his mother as "Herzeloyde" at the court of Carcassonne. Another indication is Eschenbach's definition of the name Parzival as “cutting through the middle” (from old French Percer val ), which translates into old Provencal as Trencar vel .

Rahn's theories found their way into popular literature as a source of inspiration, for example in the Grail Pentalogy (1991-2005) by Peter Berling .

literature

• Elaine Graham-Leigh: The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade . The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2005, ISBN 1-84383-129-5 .
• Renée-Paule Guillot: Le défi cathare . Published by Fernand Lanore, 1996, ISBN 2-85157-147-8 .
• Charles Schmidt: Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares ou Albigeois . J. Cherbuliez, Paris 1849.
• Christoph Hollergschwandner: The Albigensian Crusade as reflected in the "beautiful" literature of the 13th century . GRIN Verlag, 2009.

Fiction:

• Kate Mosse : The Lost Labyrinth ("Labyrinth"). Droemer Knaur Verlag, Munich 2006, ISBN 3-426-63161-X .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Magloire Nayral: biography castraise, on Tableau historique ... des personnages qui se sont rendus célèbres à Castres . Volume 1. Castres 1833, p. 5.
2. ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original dated August 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ Guillem Augier Novella, Quascus plor e planh son dampnatge , ed. by Johannes Alfred Müller: Poems by Guillem Augier Novella , in: Zeitschrift für Romantische Philologie , Vol. 23 (1898), pp. 58-60.
4. ↑ Otto Rahn: The Crusade Against the Grail: The History of the Albigensians (1933)

predecessor	Office	successor
Roger II Trencavel	Vice Count of Carcassonne and Razès Vice Count of Béziers and Albi 1194–1209	Simon de Montfort