| William, Count Of Toulouse |
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| CATEGORIES ABOUT WILLIAM OF GELLONE | |
| 755 births | |
| 810s deaths | |
| counts of toulouse | |
| frankish people | |
| french saints | |
| matter of france | |
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THE HISTORICAL WILLIAM Through his mother Aldana, daughter of Charles Martel , he was kinsman, as well as trusted ''comes'', of Charlemagne , at whose court he was present as a youth (as was his right). He was born in northern France somewhere in the middle of the 8th Century . When he was made Count of Toulouse, Charlemagne put his young son Louis The Pious , who was to inherit Aquitaine , in his charge. As count, he subdued the Gascon s. In 793 , Hisham I (called by the Franks Hescham), the successor of Abd Ar-Rahman I , proclaimed a Holy War against the Christian s and collected an army of 100,000 men, half of which was directed against the Kingdom Of The Asturias while the other half invaded Languedoc , penetrating as far as Narbonne. He defeated them at Orange , then met them near the river Orbieux , at Villedaigne , where he was defeated, but only after an obstinate resistance which so far exhausted the Saracen s that they were compelled to retreat to Spain . Narbonne was kept against the infidels. In of Aniane, became subjects of contention as the reputation of William grew, attracting so many pilgrims to Gellone that his corpse was exhumed from the modest site in the Narthex and given a more prominent place under the choir, to the intense dissatisfaction of the abbey of Aniane. A raft of forgeries and assertions were produced on each side that leave details of actual history in doubt. The Abbey was a major stop for pilgrims on their way to Santiago De Compostela . The '' Sacramentary Of Gellone '', dating to the late 8th century, is a famous manuscript. Its late 12th century Romanesque cloister, systematically disassembled at the French Revolution , found its way to The Cloisters in New York . THE WILLIAM OF ROMANCE :Main article: '' La Geste De Garin De Monglane '' William's faithful service to Charlemagne is portrayed as an example of Feudal loyalty. William's career battling Saracens is sung in poems in the 12th and 13th Century cycle called ''La Geste de Garin de Monglane'', some two dozen ''chansons de geste'' that actually center around William, the great-grandson of the largely legendary Garin. One section of the cycle, however, is devoted to the feats of his father, there named Aimeri De Narbonne , who has received Narbonne as his seigniory after his return from Spain with Charlemagne. Details of the "Aimeri" of the poem are conflated with a later historic figure who was truly the Viscount Of Narbonne from 1108 to 1134 . In the ''chanson'' he is awarded Ermengart, daughter of Didier, and sister of Boniface, king of the Lombards . Among his seven sons and five daughters (one of whom marries Louis the Pious) is William. The defeat of the Moors at Orange was given legendary treatment in the 12th-century '' Roman '' ''La prise d'Orange''. In that, he was made Count of Toulouse in the stead of the disgraced Chorso, then King of Aquitaine in 778 . He is difficult to separate from the legends and poems that gave him feats of arms, lineage and titles: Guillaume Fièrebras, Guillaum au Court-Nez (broken in a battle with a giant), Guillaum de Narbonne, Guillaume d'Orange. His wife is said to have been a converted Saracen, Orable later christened Guibourc. EXTERNAL LINKS
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