Western Francia: the southern principalities

Abstract

For the western Frankish kingdom, Odo's reign initiated the era of principalities: hegemonies over cultural or ethnic entities which revived the former territorial units making up the regnum Francorum. Sources from north of the Loire largely ignore what was happening in the south: the Annales of Flodoard contain only a few scattered references to southern events, mainly during Radulf's reign. Gascony soon became a 'national' principality, in which a culturally and linguistically homogeneous population was subject only to the authority of native chieftains. The tenth century was the age of the principalities: still in formation in 900, they were in decline before 1000. Catalonia in the second half of the tenth century does, however, answer to the definition of a territorial principality. The decades around the millennium were a turning point in the history of the southern principalities. The southern princes thus forcibly declared an independence hitherto restrained by their loyalty to the Carolingian order.

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