The County of Provance

(Today part of: region Provance-Alpes-Cote of Azur in southern France)

From the beginning of the 12^th century to the mid-13^thcentury its counts were the Catalan counts from Barcelona. The language spoken in Barcelona was one of the dialects of the Occitan language, related to the Catalan language. Together with the region of Languedoc with Toulouse, Provence was an area of a widespread heretic movement in the first half of the 13^th century – the Cathars, who considered their faith a more orthodox version of Christianity. The fundamental causes of the creation and rise of the heretic movements were the lavish life of the Church, the conflict between the secular structures and the Church for power and wealth, as well as the worship in an unintelligible Latin language. The Cathars clashed with the society, ownership, social hierarchy and worldly institutions, and did not offer any other system of governance in return. The Church employed mercenaries from the north of France against them. The wars lasted for about 40 years, and were followed by scandalous and merciless bloodshed in which Catharism was eradicated.

The kings of France used the Cathar campaigns to consolidate their power in the southern reaches of the Kingdom of France, as well as the Kingdom of Burgundy. The king’s brother, the Count of Anjou, will come to rule Provence by way of marriage in 1246, and his family will soon come to rule the Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily (1266). From that time on, they will be in constant conflict with the Crown of Aragon and Catalonia, seen as how their interests in southern France and the south of the Apennine Peninsula overlapped.