13th century marked the end of the effective independence of Languedoc. The
prominence of the family began with Fredelon, a Frankish noble confirmed as count of
Toulouse by King Charles the Bald in 849. Although his successors suffered a temporary
eclipse by the end of the century, they had recovered their possessions and had added the
counties of Rouergue, Quercy, Nîmes, and Albi. The second half of the 10th century
marked in Languedoc, as elsewhere in France, the disintegration of the central and public
authority maintained generally on the level of the county. The possessions of the house of
Toulouse broke apart in 919 on the death of Count Eudes, whose eldest son, Raymond,
succeeded as count of Toulouse while his brother Ermengaud became count of the
Rouergue. In the 11th century, there appeared the first features of what became the
regime of feudalism in Languedoc.
The precise nature of Languedocian feudalism poses problems that are yet debated.
The older evaluation of such historians as Paul Dognon and Pierre Timbal that the
institutions of feudalism in the south scarcely merited the name, Languedoc remaining
“practically ignorant of even the concept of feudal law,” has been challenged; for Pierre
Bonnassie, the historian of the Midi and Catalonia, the practices of feudalism and
vassalage appeared in Languedoc in a form quite pure by the beginning of the 12th
century. While it is certainly unwise to assume a monolithic definition of feudalism, it is
clear that in Languedoc feudal institutions developed more slowly and in a more nuanced
form than that which they took in the north. Two essential features of the prefeudal
regime—commerce and a relatively viable circulation of money, and the prevalence of
the allod, land possessed in full proprietorship—remained more firmly fixed in the south
than elsewhere. These factors both retarded the appearance and diluted the rigor of
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