| Saint William of Gellone | |
|---|---|
| Born | c. 755 somewhere in Northern France |
| Died | 28 May 812 or 28 May 814 Gellone, near Lodève? |
| Honored in | Roman Catholic Church |
| Major shrine | Monastery of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert in Gellone, France |
| Feast | May 28 |
Saint William of Gellone (755 – 28 May (traditional) 812/4) was the second Count of Toulouse from 790 until his replacement in 811. His Occitan name is Guilhem, and he is known in French as Guillaume d'Orange, Guillaume Fierabrace, and the Marquis au court nez.
He is the hero of the Chanson de Guillaume, an early chanson de geste, and of several later sequels, which were categorized by thirteenth-century poets as the geste of Garin de Monglane. Another early product of oral traditions about William is a Latin Vita ("Biography"), written before the 11th century, according to Jean Mabillon, or during the 11th century according to the Bollandist Godfrey Henschen.
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William was born in northern France in the mid-8th century. He was a cousin of Charlemagne (his mother Aldana was daughter of Charles Martel) and the son of Thierry IV, Count of Autun and only nominally of Toulouse. As a kinsman and trusted comes he spent his youth in the court of Charlemagne. When the abducted count of Toulouse Chorso was released on unfavourable conditions by the Basque Adalric, Charlemagne deposed him and appointed his trustee of Frankish stock William instead (790). He in turn successfully subdued the Gascons.
In 793, Hisham I (called by the Franks Hescham), the successor of Abd ar-Rahman I, proclaimed a holy war against the Christians to the north. He amassed an army of 100,000 men, half of which attacked the Kingdom of Asturias while the other half invaded Languedoc, penetrating as far as Narbonne.
William met this force and defeated them. He met the Muslim forces again near the river Orbieu at Villedaigne but was defeated, though his obstinate resistance exhausted the Muslim forces so much that they retreated to Spain. In 801, William commanded along with Louis King of Aquitaine a large expedition of Franks, Burgundians, Provençals, Aquitanians, Gascons (Basques) and Goths that captured Barcelona from the Moors.
In 804, he founded the monastery of Gellone (now Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert) near Lodève in the diocese of Maguelonne, which he placed under the general control of Benedict of Aniane, whose monastery was nearby. He retired as a monk there in 806 where he eventually died on the 28 May 812 (or 814). His feast is on that date.
Among his gifts to the abbey he founded was a piece of the True Cross, a present from his cousin Charlemagne, who reportedly wept at his death. Charlemagne had received the relic from the Patriarch of Jerusalem according to the Vita of William. When he died, it was said the bells at Orange rang on their own accord. He mentioned both his family and monastery in his will. [1]. He granted property to Gellone and placed the monastery under the perpetual control of the abbots of Aniane. It became a subject of contention however as the reputation of William grew. So many pilgrims were attracted 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 number of forged documents and assertions were produced on each side that leave details of actual history doubtful. The Abbey was a major stop for pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. Its late 12th century Romanesque cloister, systematically dismantled during the French revolution, found its way to The Cloisters in New York. The Sacramentary of Gellone, dating to the late 8th century, is a famous manuscript.
William's faithful service to Charlemagne is portrayed as an example of feudal loyalty. William's career battling Saracens is sung in epic 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 Aymeri de Narbonne, who has received Narbonne as his seigniory after his return from Spain with Charlemagne. Details of the "Aymeri" 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 epic La Prise d'Orange. There, 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.
In 1972 historian Arthur Zuckerman published A Jewish Princedom in Feudal France, a book about the dynasty of Makhir of Narbonne published by Columbia University Press. In that book Zuckerman argued that it was possible that William of Gellone was in fact one of the sons of Makhir, who he identified with the individual known in medieval sources as "Theodoric, King of the Jews of Septimania." Zuckerman made no definitive conclusions on this point, and the suggestion has since been refuted. (Graboïs, Aryeh, "Une Principaute Juive dans la France du Midi a l'Époque Carolingienne?", Annales du Midi, 85: 191-202 (1973); N.L. Taylor, "Saint William, King David, and Makhir: a Controversial Medieval Descent", The American Genealogist, 72: 205-223.)
William, listed under the name "Guillem de Gellone", is a prominent figure in the pseudohistorical book Holy Blood Holy Grail. The book claims that William was the son of Theodoric, and that since Theodoric was Merovingian, that meant that William was Merovingian as well, and plus was a "Jew of royal blood". The book goes on to state that "modern scholarship and research have proved Guillem's Judaism beyond dispute." It should be noted, however, that many other claims in the book which were listed as "fact", were later proven to be false (such as the existence of the Priory of Sion), because the authors were basing much of their researches on "medieval documents" which were later shown to be forgeries.
The importance of citing William's noble heritage and Judaism, was so that the authors could prove a genealogical link between the House of David, the Merovingian nobility, and France, in order to make a case that the Holy Grail was actually the bloodline of Jesus that had worked its way into the bloodline of Frankish royalty. This line of reasoning was later incorporated into the plot of the bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code and from there into various television documentaries.
| Preceded by Torson |
Count of Toulouse 790–811 |
Succeeded by Beggo |