encouragement of the count of Toulouse. The rebellion failed, but it pointed up the
precariousness of Capetian rule in the southwest.
Alphonse’s holdings were vastly increased in the south in 1249 on the death of his
father-in-law, the erstwhile rebel Count Raymond VII of Toulouse. Raymond’s heir, as
provided by the Treaty of Meaux-Paris (1229) that ended the Albigensian Crusade, was
his daughter Jeanne, Alphonse’s wife. Although he was with his brother on crusade at the
time of Raymond’s death, Alphonse’s interests were protected by the decisive action of
his mother, the regent Blanche of Castile. Reacting swiftly to information that some
southerners were refusing to adhere to the transfer of the deceased count’s lands to
Alphonse, she made a show of force and quickly won their capitulation.
The biography of Alphonse, therefore, is largely the history of his attempts to govern
his apanage and the diverse lands that fell to his administration from the holdings of the
count of Toulouse. Back from crusade in 1250, he set about ruling these vast territories,
which included, besides Poitou and Toulouse, Saintonge, Auvergne, and part of the
Rhône Valley. In addition to resident administrators (sénéchaux, viguiers, and bayles), he
employed enquêteurs, investigators modeled on his brother’s enquêteurs, whose duty it
was to investigate periodically complaints against his government. He had commissioned
a handful of these agents in 1249 at the time of his departure on crusade. He extended the
commissions in 1251 to all the lands inherited from the count of Toulouse; and he used
the enquêteurs regularly thereafter. Their work went a long way toward assuaging the
discontent in his territories.
Though governing from Paris, Alphonse took an active, almost obsessive interest in
the details of administration, as his surviving administrative correspondence and his
excellent accounts demonstrate. He monitored closely the activities of his provincial
officials and took a judicious interest in the workings of the high court or parlement of
Toulouse.
It is difficult to get a nuanced sense of Alphonse as a man. Although briefly a
crusader, he seems on the whole to have been conventionally pious. He detested Judaism
and vigorously exploited the wealth of the Jews in his domains; but he did not disdain to
use a Jewish physician when he had some painful eye trouble. There is an element of
closefistedness in his character, although it would be wrong to call him a miser. He seems
to have enjoyed a happy married life. Despite the fact that she bore him no children,
Alphonse never deserted Jeanne, and both went on St. Louis’s last crusade (1270). Both
died on the trip homeward (1271) within a few days of each other. Their holdings
escheated to the crown.
William Chester Jordan
Boutaric, Edgard. Saint Louis et Alfonse de Poitiers. Paris: Plon, 1870.
DeVic, Claude, and Jean Vaissète. Histoire générale du Languedoc, ed. Ernest Molinier. New
edition. Toulouse: Privat, 1879, Vol. 7.
Fournier, Pierre-François, and Pascal Guébin, eds. Enquêtes administratives d’Alfonse de Poitiers.
Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1959.
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