conquer from the Saracens. The second part reworks an assonanced Siège de Narbonne,
of which a fragment has survived. The plot is complicated and culminates in the
sufferings of Guibelin, Aymeri’s youngest son, who is destined to have the fief of
Narbonne: imprisoned, the young man is crucified but saved by his father.
The Narbonnais is thus a composite text in which moments of epic intensity alternate
with the heroic-comic (Hernaut’s rages) and the fantastic (Isembart and his black, horned
warriors). Revisers have introduced modifications, given their own cyclical propensities:
thus, B.N. fr. 1448 reduces the poem to 303 lines (Département des fils d’Aymeri) to
serve as a prologue to the Enfances Guillaume, whereas the “Great Cycle” manuscripts
(those combining poems about Guillaume with those about Aymeri), insert the Enfances
Guillaume at the beginning of the poem and make no mention of Charlemagne’s death,
so as not to contradict the Couronnement de Louis.
François Suard
[See also: GUILLAUME D’ORANGE CYCLE]
Suchier, Hermann, ed. Les Narbonnais. 2 vols. Paris: Didot, 1888.
Tyssens, Madeleine. “Le siège de Narbonne assonancé.” In Mélanges Rita Lejeune. 2 vols.
Gembloux: Duculot, 1969, Vol. 2, pp. 891–917.
NARBONNE
. In 118 B.C., Rome established the colony of Narbo Martius in southwestern France for
war veterans, and it soon became a flourishing seaport. In 27 B.C., a senatorial province,
known as Gallia Narbonensis, was created here by Emperor Augustus. In all Gaul,
Narbonne was second only to Lyon in population. In A.D. 413, the Visigoths took
Narbonne. In 719, the city fell to the Mus-lims but was won from them by Franks under
Pepin the Short in 759. During the Carolingian period, Narbonne was the capital of the
province of Gothia.
From the 9th to the 14th century, Narbonne remained the largest Mediterranean
seaport within the kingdom of France. Its vital economic position and the authority of its
archbishops made Narbonne a key to Languedoc. Viscounts of Narbonne appear from
821. Rivalry between the secular and ecclesiastical lords intensified in the 11th century,
particularly after the accession of the vigorous archbishop Wifred (r. 1019–79). By the
12th century, Narbonne was a co-seigneurie; the archbishops retained jurisdiction over
the western half of the city, the viscounts generally over the eastern half and the bourg.
Narbonne reached the peak of its political power during the remarkable reign of Vis-
countess Ermessinde (r. 1137–92), who played an aggressive role in the struggles
between the counts of Toulouse and Barcelona, often as an ally of the latter. After 1226,
the temporal independence of the viscounts and archbishops was circumscribed by the
power of the royal seneschalsy of Carcassonne.
The earliest clear reference to the commune and consulates of Narbonne is in 1209. By
1221, consuls functioned in both the cité and the bourg, and rivalry, sometimes violent,
between these two districts remained a constant feature of the society of Narbonne. Until
the 14th century, cité and bourg retained separate consular regimes. In 1309, a long
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1244