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Ermengard of Narbonne and the world of the troubadours

Front Cover
2 Reviews
Cornell University Press, 2001 - History - 474 pages

Before France became France its territories included Occitania, roughly the present-day province of Languedoc. The city of Narbonne was a center of Occitanian commerce and culture during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. For most of the second half of the twelfth century, that city and its environs were ruled by a remarkable woman, Ermengard, who negotiated her city's way through a maze of everchanging dynastic alliances.

Fredric L. Cheyette's masterful and beautifully illustrated book is a biography of an extraordinary warrior woman and of a unique, vulnerable, doomed society. Throughout her long reign, viscountess Ermengard roamed Occitania receiving oaths of fidelity, negotiating treaties, settling disputes among the lords of her lands, and camping with her armies before the walls of besieged cities. She was born into a world of politics and warfare, but from the Mediterranean to the North Sea her name echoed in songs that treated the arts of love.

The land between the Rhone and the Pyrenees was a delicately balanced world in which honor, dispute, and the fragile communities of loyalty and family held a "stateless" society together. In Cheyette's prose there rises before us a world we had not imagined, in which women were powerful lords, moving back and forth across what we now call Spain, France, and Italy to play the harsh political games essential to the preservation of their realms. But the region was also fertile ground for religious practices deemed heretical by the Church. The attempt to eradicate them would spawn the Albigensian Crusade, which destroyed the cosmopolitan world of Ermengard and the troubadours-the world that lives again in this book.

  

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Review: Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours

User Review  - Carol - Goodreads

This is one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. It took me a very long time to read it (I've been reading it in parallel with fiction over the last several months), but it was worth every ... Read full review

Review: Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours

User Review  - Juliette Williams - Goodreads

poop...checked this out from the library and then Life happened and I had to return it before really getting into it. It's going back on the to-read shelf, and into my library queue! :) Read full review

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Contents

Introduction
1
Occitania
2
The Viscountess Comes of Age
14
V1scounts of Narbonne
15
Preface 59
39
Narbonne in Ermengards time
46
The Urban Marketplace
54
City and Countryside
66
Oaths and Oath Takers
187
Castles of William of Alaigne and Raymond of Niort
196
Anger Conflict and Reconciliation
199
Giving and Taking
220
Preface
251
The Ravaging of Occitania
274
Trencavel family 26
276
Sowing the Seeds of Crusade
286

Environs of Narbonne
68
Viscounty north of Narbonne
74
Cities of Mammon Cities of Mars
80
The Bishop in the City
103
Archbishops castles
112
Preface
127
Serfdom and the Dues of Domination
149
Ermengards Entourage
168
A War Like an Omen
308
Cathar hierarchy in the early thirteenth century
328
Impatient Heirs
331
The Undoing of Occitania 547
347
Abbreviations
363
Love and Fidelity
418
63
464
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Ermengard of Narbonne and the world of the Troubadours
Ermengard of Narbonne and the world of the Troubadours
Fredric L Cheyette
Limited preview - 2004
Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours
Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours
Fredric L. Cheyette
Limited preview - 2004

Common terms and phrases

abbey abbot Albi Alfons alliance allies Alphonse Jordan ancient Aquitaine Aragon archbishop of Narbonne archives Aude Aymeri Berenger Bernard Ato Beziers bishop brother canons Carcassonne Cart castellans castle Cathars cathedral chap church Cistercian city's claim clergy clerical count of Barcelona count of Foix count of Toulouse Count Raymond court Crusades daughter dispute Doat 57 documents Douzens eleventh century Ermengard of Narbonne Fabrezan faith fief fighting Fontjoncouse Genoese gift Guifred Henry of Marcy heresy heretics honor king knights lady land legate Lezat lords lordship Louis marriage Mauguio medieval Melg merchants monastery monks mortgage Nimes oaths of fidelity Occitan Occitania papal peasant Peire Peter Raymond political Pons Pope Provence Raissac Ramon Berenguer III Raymond Trencavel region Rhone Rocques Rodez Roger of Beziers Roman Saint Saint-Paul solidi songs testament treaty troubadours twelfth century village Viscount Bernard Ato viscountess witnesses

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References from web pages

Professor Frederic Cheyette, Amherst College
Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. Professor Fredric Cheyette Department of History Amherst College ...
www.amherst.edu/ ~flcheyette/ Publications/ ermengard.html

ingentaconnect Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours
Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. By Fredric L. Cheyette. Cornell up. Ithaca/London. 2001. Pp. xv + 474. £23.50. ...
www.ingentaconnect.com/ content/ oup/ enghis/ 2002/ 00000117/ 00000473/ art00900;jsessionid=4hqp2t9a8beud.alice?format=print

Oxbow Books - Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the ...
Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. by Fredric L Cheyette. For much of the second half of the 12th century, Narbonne in Occitania was ...
www.oxbowbooks.com/ bookinfo.cfm/ ID/ 31689?/ Location/ Oxbow

| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.3 | The ...
Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. (Conjunctions of Religion and Power in the Medieval Past.) Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2001. ...
www.historycooperative.org/ journals/ ahr/ 108.3/ br_117.html

Aimery II of Narbonne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cheyette, Fredric L. Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001. ...
en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Aimery_II_of_Narbonne

Ermengard of Narbonne to Louis VII of France
It is translated below by Frederic L. Cheyette, and appears in his excellent Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours , Cornell University ...
home.myuw.net/ jjcrump/ courses/ medWomen/ ermengard.html

Ermengarde of Narbonne: Information and Much More from Answers.com
Fredric L. Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2001. Jacqueline Caille, Medieval Narbonne: A ...
www.answers.com/ topic/ ermengarde-of-narbonne

Books on the Troubadours of the Languedoc
Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. Frederic L Cheyette 5 stars. Despite its academic genesis, this is a wonderful book dealing with the ...
www.renneslechateaubooks.info/ languedoctroubadours/ index.htm

SOCIETIES AND CULTURES OF MEDIEVAL FRANCE
Frederic Cheyette, Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. (Ithaca, 2004). Georges Duby, France in the Middle Ages 987-1460 ...
history.fas.nyu.edu/ docs/ IO/ 5943/ V57.0900.008BedosRezak.pdf

Blackwell Synergy - History, Volume 90 Issue 299 Page 433-446 ...
Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours. By Fredric L. Cheyette. Cornell University Press. 2004. xvii + 474pp. $24.95/ £14.50. ...
www.blackwell-synergy.com/ doi/ abs/ 10.1111/ j.1468-229X.2005.00343.x

Bibliographic information

QR code for Ermengard of Narbonne and the world of the troubadours
TitleErmengard of Narbonne and the world of the troubadours
Conjunctions of religion and power in the medieval past
AuthorFredric L Cheyette
Editionillustrated, reprint
PublisherCornell University Press, 2001
ISBN0801439523, 9780801439520
Length474 pages
Subjects ›  › 

Biography & Autobiography / Historical
Biography & Autobiography / Royalty
History / Europe / France
History / Medieval
  
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