Verelst, Philippe, ed. Renaut de Montauban: deuxième fragment rimé du manuscrit de Londres,
British Library, Royal 16 G II (“B”), édition critique. Romanica Gandensia 21 (1988).
——, ed. Renaut de Montauban: édition critique du ms. de Paris, B.N., fr. 764 (R). Ghent:
Faculteit van de Letteren en Wijsbegeerte, 1988.
——.“Renaut de Montauban, textes apparentés et versions étrangères: essai de bibliographie.”
Romanica Gandensia 18 (1981):199–234.
QUERCY
. This large and important county, dominated by the city of Cahors, extended over much
of southwestern France transected by the River Lot. To the north of the river, the region
of Haut-Quercy included the towns of Gourdon, Figeac, and Martel and the viscounty of
Turenne. The Bas-Quercy, south of the Lot, extended to the valleys of the Tarn and
Garonne and to the new city of Montauban.
From the 9th century, Quercy remained in the hands of the counts of Toulouse, who
held it against frequent pressure from the dukes of Aquitaine, later kings of England. The
death in 1249 of the last count, Raymond VII, who was succeeded by his son-in-law
Alphonse of Poitiers, brother of Louis IX, commenced the long dispute over Quercy
between the kings of France and England. The Treaty of Paris in 1259 established the
latter in possession of Haut-Quercy and provided for his eventual succession in Bas-
Quercy, but its terms remained imperfectly fulfilled. In 1286, Edward I of England
yielded Bas-Quercy to France in exchange for guaranteed revenues. The seeds of the
dispute, however, lingered through the Hundred Years’ War.
Quercy’s advantageous geographic position assured it an important economic role. By
the close of the Middle Ages, it possessed two major centers of commerce, Montauban,
founded in 1144, and Cahors. Cahors especially capitalized on the local resources of
wool and wine and its position on the axis linking Languedoc to France and to England
through Bordeaux to the west. By the 13th cen-tury, the Cahorsins had established
trading colonies in Italy, Provence, and Bordeaux as well as England. To their
commercial activities, they joined those of banking. The name “Cahorsin” became by the
end of the century synonymous with “usurer” and Cahors with sin, as Dante expressed in
the Inferno 11.50: “the smallest round stamps with its seal both Sodom and Cahors.”
Quercy suffered extensively in the campaigns of the Hundred Years’ War. The
commerce of Cahors, already declining, was badly reduced. The last English troops were
not expelled from Haut-Quercy until 1443.
Alan Friedlander
[See also: CAHORS]
Lacoste, Guillaume. Histoire générale de la province de Quercy. 4 vols. Cahors: Girma, 1883–86.
Lartigaut, Jean. Les campagnes du Quercy après la guerre de cent ans (vers 1440-vers 1500).
Toulouse: Université de Toulousele-Mirail, 1978.
Ligou, Daniel. Histoire de Montauban. Toulouse: Privat, 1984.
Ombret, Antoine, Jean-Claude Fau, and René Touron. Le BasQuercy et les pays limitrophes aux
XIVe et XVe siècles. Montauban: Centre Départemental de Documentation Pédagogique, 1976.
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