Raymond II Trencavel

Raimund II. Trencavel (French: Raimond ; * 1207 ; † between 1263 and 1267 ) was briefly Vice Count of Carcassonne , Razès and Béziers . He came from the Trencavels family and was the only child of Vice Count Raimund Roger Trencavel († 1209) and his wife, Agnes von Montpellier. In medieval lore it is simply called Trencavel .

Life

Seal of Raymond II Trencavel

Due to the occupation of Carcassonne by the crusaders of the Albigensian crusade in 1209, Trencavel grew up in exile at the court of the Aragonese king . Because of his underage he did not take part in the struggles to recapture his country. But in 1224 he was able to move back into Carcassonne under the protection of Count Roger Bernard II of Foix , after the crusaders had largely been driven out of the Languedoc . During his reign he tried to eliminate the church order established by the crusade, driving among other things Guy des Vaux-de-Cernay, an uncle of the chronicler Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay , from the diocese of Carcassonne .

Trencavel could not last long, however, because in the summer of 1226 King Louis VIII of France led a new crusade into the country. The city leaders of Carcassonne, tired after more than fifteen years of war, surrendered the city to the king without a fight and Trencavel had to go into exile again in Aragón. The land of the Trencavel was united with the Crown Domain and divided into the Seneschallates Carcassonne and Béziers. The supposed rights of the last crusade leader, Amaury de Montfort, which had been transferred to the crown, served as the legal basis for this . In the following years Trencavel ruled Limoux as a vassal of the Count of Foix and fought with the French crown for his rights. In September 1229 he traveled to Melun for a court day , where he received the vice-county of Béziers as a fief from the regent Blanka of Castile , but in return he had to contractually renounce Carcassonne and all other former fiefs of his family. This compensation took place in the course of a general peace between the Princes of Languedoc, which was concluded a few months earlier in the Treaty of Meaux-Paris .

Despite this success, Trencavel put himself back in the service of King James I of Aragón , whom he followed on his campaign of conquest of the Balearic Islands . He came into contact with Olivier de Termes and Xacbert de Barbaira , who were once vassals of his family and who now led an underground war against the French crown as so-called Faydits . Presumably influenced by these, Trencavel decided to retake Carcassonne by force. In September of 1240 he took the lead of an army consisting mainly of Faydits and invaded Languedoc via the Corbières , conquered the castle of Aguilar and Montréal and included Carcassonne. However, the royal seneschal , Guillaume d'Ormois , could entrench himself in the Cité and until the arrival of a relief army under the royal chamberlain Jean de Beaumont and the vice count Gottfried VI. from Châteaudun . Since the Counts of the South had refused to support him, Trencavel had to break off the siege in view of this threat on October 11, 1240 and retreat to Montréal, where he was now besieged in turn. But he managed to escape and he went into exile again in Aragon.

In 1247 Trencavel finally submitted to the crown by opposing King Louis IX. the saint broke his seal. He retained control of Limoux and took part in the Sixth Crusade (1248-1250). He is last mentioned in 1263 and probably died in 1267 at the latest, when one of his two sons is mentioned for the first time. With his death, the Trencavel family disappeared from historical tradition.

literature

• Elaine Graham-Leigh: The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade . The Boydell Press, Woodbridge 2005, ISBN 1-84383-129-5 .

predecessor	Office	successor
Amaury de Montfort	Vice Count of Carcassonne and Razès Vice Count of Béziers and Albi 1224–1226	Crown domain
Crown domain	Vice Count of Béziers 1229–1240	Crown domain