GASCONY
. Gascony, a large province in southwestern France north of the Pyrénées, had almost
nothing to do with northern France during the early Middle Ages. It passed under English
rule in the late-medieval period before finally being integrated into the French monarchy
in the 15th century. With no clear geographical boundaries other than the Pyrénées in the
south and the Atlantic in the west, it did not correspond to a single natural region but was
rather a historical creation grouping a collection of counties extending to the Garonne
River in the north (the Bordeaux region) and inland to the Languedoc (Toulouse) in the
east. Among the best-known counties and viscounties making up medieval Gascony were
Armagnac, Bigorre, Comminges, Fézensac, Lomagne, Albret, and Marsan. The present-
day departments of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Hautes-Pyrénées, the Landes, and the Gers
cover most of the territory of medieval Gascony. Ecclesiastically, most of the province
lay within the archdiocese of Auch, which broke down into the bishoprics of Bayonne,
Comminges, Oloron, Lescar, Tarbes, Dax, Aire, Lectoure, Bazas, and Couserans.
The earliest Gascons (Lat. Vascones) were Basques who filtered across the Pyrénées at
the end of the 6th century into what had been the Roman Aquitania Prima, eventually
settling as far north as the Bordeaux region. The Basque language did not prevail except
in a few regions of the Pyrénées; what came later on to be called Gascon was a romance
dialect. Gascony formed the southern part of what became the first duchy of Aquitaine
created near the end of the 7th century. Saracens overran the province temporarily early
in the 8th century, but the Carolingian conquest of the 8th century had more lasting
effects. Nonetheless, internal divisions combined with Viking invasions, which struck
Gascony as well, in the 9th century weakened the Carolingian government, and toward
the middle of the century Gascony emerged as an independent duchy, now separate from
Aquitaine, with its capital at Bordeaux. An almost complete lack of documentary
evidence makes it difficult to reconstruct the history of the duchy for the next two
centuries, yet this was clearly the time when the rise of a dozen regional lordships, such
as those of the counts of Bigorre, Armagnac, and Comminges and the viscounties of
Lomagne, Oloron, and above all the powerful state of the viscounts of Béarn, took shape
and undermined the authority of the duke. In the 1050s, the counts of Poitou/dukes of
Aquitaine acquired the ducal title through marriage, forging the great territorial
principality of the duchy of Aquitaine-Gascony, centered in Poitiers and Bordeaux.
Through the successive marriages of Eleanor, duchess and heiress of Aquitaine-Gascony,
to Louis VII of France in 1137, then to Henry Plantagenêt of Anjou in 1152, Gascony
passed along with Aquitaine first under Capetian then under English rule. For the next
three centuries, the English resisted all efforts of the French to drive them out and
maintained their hold on Gascony even when they lost Aquitaine in the north. Only the
loss of Bordeaux in 1453 forced them to abandon their holdings to the French kings.
Gascony never proved to be particularly favored ground for monastic foundations in
large numbers, yet one should note the success of abbeys, most of them foundations of
the 10th to 12th centuries, at Saint-Sever, Sordes, Lescar, Saint-Pe-de-Generes, Saint-
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