Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse

Early life

Raymond was born at Saint-Gilles, Gard, the son of Raymond V and Constance of France. His maternal grandparents were Louis VI of France and his second wife Adélaide de Maurienne. His maternal uncles included Louis VII of France. In 1194 he succeeded his father as count of Toulouse. He immediately re-established peace with both Alfonso II of Aragon and with the Trencavel family.

Patron of the Arts

Count Raimon VI of Toulouse was the most powerful patron of troubadours in the South of France. He was a known friend of Raimon de Miraval, with whom he exchanged the reciprocal pseudonym Audiart.

Problems with the Church

Raymond VI was arguably the first target of the Albigensian crusade (1209–1229).

Raymond VI held vast territories but his control of them was problematic. Aside from theoretically owing allegiance to the King of France, Raymond held Provence as a vassal of the Holy Roman Emperor. Henry II of England controlled neighboring Aquitaine through his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had a claim to Toulouse through her grandmother, Philippa of Toulouse, daughter of William IV, Count of Toulouse. Alfonso II of Aragon was involved in the affairs of Languedoc, stimulating emigration from the north to colonize newly reconquered lands in Aragon.

In Toulouse, Raymond maintained the communal freedoms, extended exemptions from taxation, and extended his protection to the communal territory. A poet and a man of culture, he hated war but did not lack energy.

According to Henri Pirenne, "At the end of the 12th century Languedoc was swarming with those mystics who aspired to lead the Church and the age back to apostolic simplicity, condemning both the religious hierarchy and the social order". At first Innocent III tried to deal with the Cathars by peaceful conversion, sending into the affected regions a number of legates or representatives. Count Raymond declined to assist, although constantly embroiled with his vassals, and given the autonomy of the towns, Kenneth Setton questions whether Raymond "could have coped effectively with the challenge of heresy even if he had wished to do so".

The legates sent from Rome and France received little support as they were considered foreign reformers. Papal legate Pierre de Castelnau was sent to address Raymond's tolerance for the practice of the Cathars, but withdrew for six months in 1206 out of concerns for his safety.

Pierre's assassination on 15 January 1208, led to Raymond's excommunication. Following this assassination, Raymond sought reconciliation with Pope Innocent III, yet despite his overtures Innocent chose to allow crusade leaders a freehand. Raymond was ultimately able to briefly lift his excommunication in June 1209, after agreeing to be publicly stripped to the waist and flogged at Saint Giles, where papal legate Pierre de Castelnau had been assassinated, which was followed by him swearing an oath of loyalty to the Church. This display of repentance temporarily reconciled him with the Church and Innocent III, and Raymond then ostensibly aligned himself with the Crusaders. The Crusaders in July 1209 directed attention to the lands of Raymond's rival Raymond Roger Trencavel, leading to the capture and massacre of Béziers, the siege and capture of Carcassonne, and the death of Trencavel.

Death

Following an abrupt and unexpected illness that left him mostly speechless, Raymond died in August 1222. But from what was said, he was still able to remember and understand things because he extended his hands in a show of devotion to the Abbot of Saint-Sernin, as soon as the Abbot hurried to his side. He kissed a pall bearing a cross when the Brothers of the Hospital of St. John (the Knights Hospitaller) threw it over him, and then he died unexpectedly. His body was taken to their home, but it was never buried there and is still unburied as of now.

In 1998, there was a new twist to this story: during excavations at the Hôtel Saint-Jean in Toulouse, the site of the former Grand Priory of the Knights Hospitaller, a medieval sarcophagus was discovered, and for a moment it was believed that it might contain the bones of Raymond VI. The mayor of Toulouse, Dominique Baudis, took the opportunity to ask Pope John Paul II to lift Raymond VI's excommunication, without success.

Marriages

Raymond was married five times:

On 11 December 1172, to Ermessende of Pelet, Countess of Melgueil. She died in 1176 without issue.

In 1178 to Beatrice of Béziers, sister of Roger II Trencavel. She left Raymond and retired to a nunnery. Raymond VI and Beatrice had one daughter:

Constance of Toulouse, who was married first to King Sancho VII of Navarre, and secondly to Pierre-Bermond II of Sauve, Lord of Anduze.

In October 1196 at Rouen to Joan of England, daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Their marriage included Richard I's renunciation of his claim to Toulouse, ending the feud with the ducal house of Aquitaine. She died on 4 September 1199, in childbirth as a veiled nun at Fontevraud Abbey. Joan and Raymond VI had three children:

Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse (1197–1249); In 1200, he first married Damsel the daughter of Isaac Komnenos of Cyprus. They divorced in late 1202, and she remarried to Thierry of Flanders by early 1203. His second wife was Eleanor of Aragon, daughter of King Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castile. In older historiography Raymond is said to have married Burgundia of Lusignan, a daughter of King Aimery of Cyprus. But historically, they never married and he was instead married to Damsel from 1200 – 1203.

Joan of Toulouse (1198–1255), second wife of Bernard II de la Tour, Lord of la Tour;

Richard of Toulouse (1199), lived just long enough to be baptised.

In art

Raymond VI is represented as one of four figures on the ceiling of the Minnesota Supreme Court in the United States. His painting is next to Moses, Confucius, and Socrates, each painting representing an aspect of law. Raymond VI's painting is entitled "The Adjustment of Conflicting Interests", and the scene is of Raymond VI of Toulouse standing before the papal legate in 1208. Raymond argued successfully for city freedoms, extended exemptions from taxation, and protection of the communal territory from the church. Not wanting to target his Cathar vassals, he also defended, albeit with less success—since it became one of the causes of the Albigensian Crusade—the idea of religious freedom. The paintings were made by John LaFarge in 1903.

In 1889, in a painting exhibited at the Capitole in Toulouse and entitled "Raimond VI Count of Toulouse, the excommunicated 1156-1222", the painter René-Henri Ravaut depicted Raymond VI left at the door of the Church.