Aquitania

“ Prosper [1] of Aquitania, a man scholastic in style and vigorous in statement, is said to have composed many works, of which I have read a Chronicle, which bears his name, and which extends from the creation of the first man, according to Divine Scripture, until the death of the Emperor Valentinianus and the taking of Rome by Genseric king of the Vandals. ”

“ They are rather frequent in the Pyrenees [386] and the Asturias, where remnants of the dolmen-building races may have found shelter and continued to exist after their congeners were swept from the plains; and there are one or two on the left bank of the Garonne, but except these there are none in Aquitania proper. If, however, we apply the term Aquitania to the province as extended by Augustus up to the left bank of the Loire, we include the greater part of the provinces where dolmens are found ”

“ The counts of Toulouse "represented an earlier line of dukes of Aquitaine, successors of the dukes of Gothia or Septimania, under whom the capital of southern Gaul had been not Poitiers but Toulouse, Poitou itself counting as a mere underfief. In the latter half of the tenth century these dukes of Gothia or Aquitania Prima, as the Latin chroniclers sometimes called them from the Old Roman name of their country, had seen their ducal title transferred to the Poitevin lords of Aquitania Secunda—the dukes of Aquitaine with whom we have had to deal. ”

“ The old Karolingian kingdom of Aquitania had been of far greater extent; it had, in fact, included the whole country between the Loire, the Pyrenees, the Rhone and the ocean. Over all this vast territory the Counts of Poitou asserted a theoretical claim of overlordship by virtue of their ducal title; they had, however, a formidable rival in the house of the Counts of Toulouse." K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, volume 1, chapter 10. See, also, TOULOUSE: 10TH AND 11TH CENTURIES. AQUITAINE: A. D. 1137-1152. Transferred by marriage from the crown of France to the crown of England. ”

“ In Aquitania, which looks towards the Pyrenees, and that part of the ocean which belongs to the Spaniards, the first province is Aquitanica, very rich in large and populous cities; passing over others, I may mention as pre-eminent, Bordeaux, Clermont, Saintes, and Poictiers.
14. The province called the Nine Nations is enriched by Ausch and Bazas. In the province of Narbonne, the cities of Narbonne, Euses, and Toulouse are the principal places of importance. The Viennese exults in the magnificence of many cities, the chief of which are Vienne itself, and Arles, and Valence ”

“ The two great powers of northern and southern Gaul, Normandy and Aquitaine, each carrying with it a crowd of smaller states, were united in the hands of a single prince, and that a prince who was also the king of a powerful foreign kingdom. The Aquitanian duchy contained, besides the county of Poitou, a number of fiefs, of which the most important were those of Perigueux, Limoges, the dauphiny of Auvergne, and the county of Marche which gave kings to Jerusalem and Cyprus. ♦Union of Aquitaine and Gascony. ”

“ They were Aquitania, from the Pyrenees and Cevennes to the Loire; Gallia Lugdunensis, between the Loire, Seine, and Marne, and extending to Lugdunum on the east; and Belgica, the great northern tract, in which the Sequani and Helvetii were also included. The new towns of the Rhone—Vienna, Lugdunum, Augustodunum (Autun) , and Burdigala (Bordeaux) —soon vied with the old province in wealth, commercial activity, and culture, with Massilia, Nemausus, Arelate, and Narbo. Lugdunum (Lyons) , whither the military roads led from every side, rose to great importance. ”

“ Young Crassus, with that necessity which of course was on him of providing winter food for the seventh legion which he had been ordered to take into Aquitania, has been obliged to send out for corn into the neighbouring countries. Of course a well-instructed young general, such as was Crassus, had taken hostages before he sent his men out among strange and wild barbarians. ”

“ To the west, again, in the peninsula of Britanny or Armorica, the ancient Celtic race preserved, as in the Welsh hills of our own island, its native tongue, its primitive laws and customs, and its separate political organization under a dynasty of native princes who owed, indeed, a nominal allegiance to the West-Frankish overlord at Laon, but whose subjection to him was scarcely more real than that of the princes of Aquitania, while their disaffection was far more active and far more threatening ”

“ Before the battle of Actium, the empire extended over Achaia, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Narbonensic Gaul, Cyrenaica, Crete, Cilicia, Cyprus, Bithynia, Syria, Aquitania, Belgic and Celtic Gaul. Augustus added Egypt, Lusitania, Numidia, Galatia, the Maritime Alps, Noricum, Vindelicia, Rhaetia, Pannonia, and Mosia. Tiberius increased the empire by the addition of Cappadocia. Claudius incorporated the two Mauritanias, Lycia, Judaea, Thrace, and Britain. Nero added Pontus. These various and extensive countries had every variety of climate and productions, and boasted of celebrated cities. ”

“ XXI.—The battle was long and vigorously contested, since the Sotiates, relying on their former victories, imagined that the safety of the whole of Aquitania rested on their valour; [and] our men, on the other hand, desired it might be seen what they could accomplish without their general and without the other legions, under a very young commander; at length the enemy, worn out with wounds, began to turn their backs, and a great number of them being slain, Crassus began to besiege the [principal] town of the Sotiates on his march. Upon their valiantly resisting, he raised vineae and turrets. ”

“ The Britannia was 200 feet long, a wooden paddle-wheel steamer of 1,154 tons, 740 horse-power, and a speed of 81⁄2 knots. The Aquitania is 902 feet long, of 46,000 tons, with quadruple screws driven by turbine engines of a designed shaft of 60,000 horse-power, maintaining a speed of 24 knots. With her Louis XVIth staircase, her garden Lounge, her Adams drawing-room, her frescoes, her Palladian lounge, her Carolean smoking-room, and her10 Pompeian swimming bath, she can carry in the comfort of a first-class hotel more than 3,200 passengers, together with a crew of over 1,000. ”

“ He charges him to visit the Remi and the other Belgae, and to keep them in their allegiance and repel the Germans (who were said to have been summoned by the Belgae to their aid,) if they attempted to cross the river by force in their ships. He orders Publius Crassus to proceed into Aquitania with twelve legionary cohorts and a great number of the cavalry, lest auxiliaries should be sent into Gaul by these states, and such great nations be united. ”

“ The populations who inhabited it were of different origins: there were found there Aquitanians, Belgæ, Ligures, Celts, who had all long undergone the influence of Greek civilisation, and especially establishments founded by the Phocæans on the coasts of the Mediterranean. ”

“ At Tours he was met by the disaffected Aquitanian chiefs:—the injured bridegroom young Hugh of La Marche, and two of his uncles, Ralf of Issoudun the dispossessed count of Eu, and Geoffrey of Lusignan, the inveterate fighter who had taken a leading part in every Aquitanian rising throughout the last twenty-two years of Henry’s reign, who after being Richard’s bitterest foe at home had been one of his best supporters in Palestine, and who had come back, it seems, to join in one more fight against his successor. ”

“ The other Aquitanian rebels, besides the count of Angoulême and the two Lusignans, were Geoffrey of Rancogne, the lords of Coulonges and Rochefort in Saintonge, of Blaye (“Robertus de Ble”—this might possibly be Blet in Berry) and Mauléon in Gascony, and of Chauvigny in Poitou, with Archbishop William of Bordeaux and Abbot Richard of Tournay (ib. pp. 46, 47) ; to whom we may add Ralf of Faye. [662] Gesta Hen. (Stubbs) , vol. i. pp. 46, 47. The other Angevin rebels are Vivian and Peter of Montrévault: to whom may be added John of Lignières and Geoffrey of La Haye in Touraine. Ibid. p. ”

“ The southern provinces of France, Poitou, Saintogne, Auvergne, Perigord, Limousin, Angoumois and Guienne, received of the Romans the classic appellation of Aquitaine. This beautiful land, watered by the Garonne and Loire, whose clear and sparkling streams, flowing from vine-clad hills, stretched their silvery arms to irrigate the fairest fields and to enclose the finest harbors in the world, was in the twelfth century, inhabited by the most civilized and polished people on the face of the earth. ”

“ So far as Aquileia is a city at all, it is now a "church city." The patriarchal church, with its tall but certainly not beautiful campanile, soars above all. But, if it soars above all, it still is not all. Here and there a fragment of a column, or an inscription built into the wall, reminds us of what Aquileia once was. One ingenious man has even built himself an outhouse wholly out of such scraps, here a capital, there a bit of sculpture, there inscriptions of various dates, with letters of the best and of the worst kinds of Roman lettering. ”

“ We have noticed that, while the cities of this region rise and fall, still even those which fall are not wholly swept away. Aquileia has always lived, though, since the days of Attila, the life of the actual city of Aquileia has been a very feeble one indeed. But though Aquileia, as a city, practically perished in the fifth century, yet it continued till the eighteenth to give its name to a power of some kind. Its temporal position passed to Forum Julii, and Udine succeeded to the position alike of Forum Julii and of Aquileia. ”

“ It was one of the twelve fortified towns built to repel the attacks of the Barbarians, and at the same time such towers as Duino, Monfalcone, and Sagrado were erected as watch-towers. Aquileia was a very extensive and important place under the Romans, and possessed a population of half a million. With the decline of the Roman power the glory of Aquileia departed. The town withstood many attacks from the Barbarians, but after a siege of some months it was finally burnt down and quite destroyed by the Huns under Attila. ”

“ The skill of the Roman artists might be corrupted to the destruction of their country. The walls of Aquileia were assaulted by a formidable train of battering rams, movable turrets, and engines, that threw stones, darts, and fire; 48 and the monarch of the Huns employed the forcible impulse of hope, fear, emulation, and interest, to subvert the only barrier which delayed the conquest of Italy. Aquileia was at that period one of the richest, the most populous, and the strongest of the maritime cities of the Adriatic coast. ”

“ Thomas Aquinas. St. John Chrysostom and St. Athanasius represent the Greek doctors. St. Leo, who saved Rome from Attila, is with peculiar propriety placed in the Vatican; and St. Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, naturally finds a place in a chapel painted by a Dominican for a pope who particularly favoured the Dominicans,—Nicholas V.
The Four Fathers communing on the mystery of the Trinity, or the Immaculate Conception, were favourite subjects in the beginning of the seventeenth century, when church pictures, instead of being religious and devotional, became more and more theological. ”

“ With the opening of the next century the movement spread over Aquitaine and the rest of France. Everywhere the bishops set themselves to exact from the whole diocese, noble and simple alike, a novel oath to abstain from violence and to respect the sanctity of churches. William V. of Aquitaine, the most powerful lord of southern France, lent his influence to the cause at the councils of Limoges (994) and Poitiers (999) . ”

“ Aquileia was the second city of the Western Empire, and by some called the second Rome. It was the Metropolis of Istria, Forum Julium, and Venetia; and its subjection to the See of Rome is manifest by the decretal Epistle of Leo I. directed to Nicetas Bishop of this city; for the Pope begins his Epistle thus: Regressus ad nos filius meus Adeodatus Diaconus Sedis nostræ, dilectionem tuam poposcisse memorat, ut de his à nobis authoritatem Apostolicæ Sedis acciperes, quæ quidem magnam difficultatem dijudicationis videntur afferre. ”

“ The city of Bordeaux, near the mouth of the Garonne, as shown by the map, [E] was the chief city of Aquitaine. There the prince established his court, and reigned, as it were, for several years in great splendor. The [Pg 141] fame which he had acquired attracted to his court a great number of knights and nobles from all lands, and whenever a great personage had any wrongs, real or imaginary, to be redressed, or any political end to gain which required the force of arms, he was very likely to come to the Prince of Aquitaine, in order, if possible, to secure his aid. ”

“ After the Treaty of Bretigny in 1360, Aquitaine ceased to be a French fief, and was exalted in the interests of the King of England into an independent sovereignty, together with the provinces of Poitou, the Saintonge, Aunis, Agenois, Perigord, Limousin, Quercy, Bigorre, Angoumois and Rouergue, greatly to the dissatisfaction of the people, who remonstrated against being handed over to a foreign lord. Charles V. and Charles VII. sought on every available occasion to escape from its obligations, and the towns were in periodic revolt. ”