Septimania( ; ) is a historical region in modern-day Southern France. It referred to the western part of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis that passed to the control of the Visigoths in 462 CE, when Septimania was ceded to their king, Theodoric II. During the Early Middle Ages, the region was variously known as Gallia Narbonensis, Gallia, or Narbonensis. In modern-day France, the medieval territory of Septimania roughly corresponds to the former administrative region of Languedoc-Roussillon, along with the departments of Aude, Gard, Hérault, Lozère, and Pyrénées-Orientales. Languedoc-Roussillon and the Midi-Pyrénées were merged into the current administrative region of Occitania by the Government of the French Republic in 2016.
In the Visigothic Kingdom, a Romano-Germanic independent state that emerged after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century, which became centred on Toledo by the end of the reign of Leovigild, Septimania was both an administrative province of the central royal government and an ecclesiastical province whose metropolitan was the Archbishop of Narbonne. Originally, the Goths may have maintained their hold on the Albigeois, but if so it was conquered by the time of Chilperic I. There is archaeological evidence that some enclaves of Visigothic population remained in Frankish Gaul, near the Septimanian border, after 507. The region of Septimania was invaded by the Andalusian Muslims in 719, renamed as Arbūnah and turned into a military base for future operations by the Andalusian military commanders. It passed briefly to the Emirate of Córdoba, which had been expanding from the south during the same century, before its subsequent conquest by the Christian Franks in 759, who by the end of the 9th century renamed it as Gothia or the Gothic March (Marca Gothica). Eventually, the Christian Franks chased the Muslim Arabs and Berbers away from Septimania and conquered Narbonne in 759, and the Carolingian king Pepin the Short came up reinforced.
Septimania became a march of the Carolingian Empire and then West Francia down to the 13th century, though it was culturally and politically autonomous from the northern France-based central royal government. The region was under the influence of the people from the count territories of Toulouse, Provence, and ancient County of Barcelona. It was part of the wider cultural, historical, and ethno-linguistic region comprising the southern third of France, Occitania.Peter McPhee, "Frontiers, Ethnicity and Identity in the French Revolution: Catalans and Occitans" , in Ian Coller, Helen Davies, and Julie Kalman, eds, French History and Civilisation: Papers from the George Rudé Seminar , Vol. 1, Melbourne: The George Rudé Society, 2005 This area was finally brought under effective control of the French kings in the early 13th century as a result of the Albigensian Crusade, after which it was assigned governors. Narbonne became a major center of Jewish learning in Western Europe. In the 12th century, the court of Ermengarde of Narbonne () presided over one of the cultural centers where the spirit of courtly love was developed. From the end of the 13th century, Septimania evolved into the royal province of Languedoc.
Etymology The name "Septimania" may derive from the Roman name of the city of Béziers, Colonia Julia Septimanorum Baeterrae, which in turn alludes to the settlement of veterans of the Roman Seventh Legion in the city. The name could also be an allusion to the seven cities (civitates) of the territory: Agde, Béziers, Elne, Lodève, Villeneuve-lès-Maguelone, Narbonne, and Nîmes. Septimania extended to a line halfway between the Mediterranean, and the river Garonne in the northwest; in the east, the Rhône separated it from Provence; and to the south, its boundary was formed by the Pyrénées.
Visigothic Narbonensis
Gothic acquisition Under Theodoric II, the Visigoths settled in Aquitaine as foederati of the Western Roman Empire (450s). The Gallo-Roman aristocrat and bishop Sidonius Apollinaris refers to Septimania as "theirs" during the reign of Avitus (455–456), but Sidonius is probably considering Visigothic settlement in and around Toulouse. The Visigoths were then holding the area around Toulouse against the legal claims of the Empire, though they had more than once offered to exchange it for the Auvergne.
In 462, the remaining territory of the Western Roman Empire, controlled by the Romanized Germanic general Ricimer on behalf of Emperor Libius Severus, granted the Visigoths the western half of the province of Gallia Narbonensis in which to settle. The Visigoths additionally occupied Provence (eastern Narbonensis) and only in 475 did the Visigothic king, Euric, cede it to the Empire via a treaty whereby the emperor Julius Nepos recognised the Visigoths' full independence.
Visigothic Kingdom
The Visigoths, perhaps because they were Arian Christians, met with the opposition of the Catholic Franks in Gaul. The Franks allied with the Armorici, whose land was under constant threat from the Goths south of the Loire, and in 507 Clovis I, the Frankish king, invaded the Visigothic Kingdom, whose capital lay in Toulouse, with the consent of the leading men of the tribe. Clovis defeated the Goths in the battle of Vouillé (507) and the child-king Amalaric was carried for safety into Hispania, while Gesalec was elected to replace him and rule from Narbonne.
Clovis, his son Theuderic I, and his Burgundian allies proceeded to conquer most of the Visigothic territories in Gaul, including the Rouergue (507) and Toulouse (508). The attempt to take Carcassonne, a fortified site guarding the coast of Septimania, was defeated by the Ostrogoths (508) and Septimania thereafter remained in Visigothic hands, though the Burgundians managed to hold Narbonne for a time and drive Gesalec into exile. Border warfare between Gallo-Roman magnates, including Catholic bishops, had existed with the Visigoths during the last centuries of the Western Roman Empire, and it continued under the Franks.
The Ostrogothic king Theodoric the Great reconquered Narbonne from the Burgundians and retained it as the provincial capital. Theudis was appointed regent at Narbonne by Theodoric while Amalaric was still a minor in Hispania. In 509, Theodoric the Great created the first Germanic kingdom of Septimania, retaining its traditional capital at Narbonne. He appointed as his regent an Ostrogothic nobleman named Theudis. When Theodoric died in 526, Amalaric was elected king in his own right and he immediately made his capital in Narbonne. He ceded Provence, which had at some point passed back into Visigothic control, to the Ostrogothic king Athalaric. The Frankish king of Paris, Childebert I, invaded Septimania in 531 and chased Amalaric to Barcelona in response to pleas from his sister, Chrotilda, that her husband, Amalaric, had been mistreating her. The Franks did not try to hold the province, and, under Amalaric's successor, the centre of gravity of the kingdom crossed the Pyrénées and Theudis made his capital in Barcelona.
Gothic province of Gaul
In the Visigothic Kingdom, which became centred on Toledo by the end of the reign of Leovigild, the province of Gallia Narbonensis (usually shortened to just Gallia or Narbonensis and never called Septimania) was both an administrative province of the central royal government and an ecclesiastical province whose metropolitan was the Archbishop of Narbonne. Originally, the Goths may have maintained their hold on the Albigeois, but if so it was conquered by the time of Chilperic I. There is archaeological evidence that some enclaves of Visigothic population remained in Frankish Gaul, near the Septimanian border, after 507. In 534, Prince Theudebert I, son of the Merovingian king Theuderic I of Austrasia, invaded Septimania in concert with Prince Gunthar, son of the Frankish king Chlothar I. Gunthar stopped at Rodez and didn't progress with his troops further into Septimania, whereas Theudebert took and held the country as far as Béziers and Cabrières, from which he took the woman Deuteria as his first wife and future queen consort. Theudebert and his half-brother Childebert I invaded Hispania as far as Zaragoza (534–538). Eventually, the Visigoths regained the territory they had lost in Theudebert's invasion.
The province of Gaul held a unique place in the Visigothic Kingdom, as it was the only province outside of Hispania, north of the Pyrénées, and bordering a strong foreign nation, in this case the Franks. The kings after Alaric II favoured Narbonne as a capital, but twice (611 and 531) were defeated and forced back to Barcelona by the Franks, before Theudis moved the capital there permanently. Under Theodoric Septimania had been safe from Frankish assault, but was raided by Childebert I twice (531 and 541). When Liuva I succeeded to the throne in 568, Septimania was a dangerous frontier province and Hispania was wracked by revolts. Liuva granted Hispania to his son Leovigild and took Septimania to himself.
During the revolt of Hermenegild (583–585) against his father Leovigild, Septimania was invaded by Guntram, King of Burgundy, possibly in support of Hermenegild's revolt, since the latter was married to his niece Ingundis. The Frankish attack of 585 was repulsed by Hermenegild's brother Reccared, who was ruling Narbonensis as a sub-king. Hermenegild died at Tarragona that year and it is possible that he had escaped confinement in Valencia and was seeking to join up with his Frankish allies. Alternatively, the invasion may have occurred in response to Hermenegild's death. Reccared meanwhile took Beaucaire (Ugernum) on the Rhône near Tarascon and Cabaret (a fort called "Ram's Head"), both of which lay in Guntram's kingdom. Guntram ignored two pleas for a peace in 586 and Reccared undertook the only Visigothic invasion of Francia in response. However, Guntram was not motivated solely by religious alliance with the fellow Catholic Hermenegild, for he invaded Septimania again in 589 and was roundly defeated near Carcassonne by Claudius, Duke of Lusitania.
It is clear that the Franks, throughout the 6th century, had coveted Septimania, but were unable to take it and the invasion of 589 was the last attempt. In the 7th century, Gallia often had its own governors or duces (dukes), who were typically Visigoths. Most public offices were also held by Goths, far out of proportion to their part of the population.
Culture of Gothic Septimania The native population of Gallia was referred to by Visigothic and Iberian writers as the "Gauls", and there is a well-attested hatred between the Goths and the Gauls, which was atypical for the Visigothic Kingdom as a whole. One of the most well-known and attested remnants of Gothic paganism and cultural autonomy in Septimania and other regions of the Visigothic Kingdom was the Visigothic Code (in medieval Latin: Lex Visigothorum), a Romanized Germanic set of over 500 laws and customs constructed by the Visigothic king Recceswinth () and promulgated in 653, that the Gothic inhabitants and Visigothic rulers continued to preserve and uphold long into their inclusion within the Frankish Kingdom and the Carolingian Empire (8th century onwards). Thanks to the preserved canons of the Council of Narbonne of 590, a good deal can be known about surviving Gothic Pagan beliefs and practices in Visigothic Septimania. The Council may have been responding in part to the orders of the Third Council of Toledo, which found "the sacrilege of idolatry [to be] firmly implanted throughout almost the whole of Iberia and Septimania." The traditional Roman practice of not working Thursdays in honour of Jupiter was still prevalent.