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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;seth77, post: 7933021, member: 56653&quot;]I don&#039;t think we should let the thread go, wouldn&#039;t you agree?</p><p><br /></p><p>Here is an interesting titulature employed by Raymond V de Saint Gilles (de Toulouse) at Pont-de-Sorgues in the Margraviate of Provence:</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]1371967[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>R[amundus] COMES PALACI / DVX [Narbonensis] MARCh[io] P[ro]V[incie]</p><p><br /></p><p>Raymond, Count Palatine / Duke of Narbonensis (the Roman province), Margrave of Provence</p><p><br /></p><p>In the late 12th century this sounds already antiquated and snobbish to be certain. The coinage is introduced as a denier in ca. 1177 at the height of Raymond&#039;s power, so there is no threat to his overlordship and/or legitimacy to meet. This legend is not thus meant as a warning to transgressors, but rather an affirmation of an old tradition.</p><p><br /></p><p>Occitania and Narbonensis were still very much connected with the Roman world of the antiquity. The tradition was kept by the Merovingians and used by the Carolingian nobility and in the 10th to 11th century as means of civic propaganda -- the counts of Toulouse would style themselves as <i>consuls</i>, Fulk Nerra of Anjou was himself a <i>consul</i>, while the Trencavels were <i>proconsuls </i>at Albi and Beziers. Dux Narbonensis was also a late Roman artifact, marking not the actual authority in Narbonne (the viscount ruled the city) at the time but the overlordship in the coastal area, oftentimes himself Count of Toulouse beforehand.</p><p><br /></p><p>Raymond was not alone in employing a combination of Frankish (feudal) titles with late Roman mechanisms of power and Carolingian prestige -- the Count Palatine was not just a regular baron, but one of the chosen few of the Emperor. Pons de Toulouse was Count Palatine in 1047 and so was Alphonse Jourdain in the 1130s.</p><p><br /></p><p>In southern France, prior to the Albigensian Crusade, the antiquated world was still kept around and alive as means for lords to signal not only power but a deeper connection with the history of their allodial lands.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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