Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 14.djvu/303

 L A N L A N 287 home in the Cistercian monastery of Pontigny near Sens in France, which thus became a principal resort of English malcontents and refugees. In the summer of 1212 he accompanied the bishops of London and Ely to Rome, and it was in consequence of their representations that deposi tion was passed upon John ; the same prelates were also present at the great assembly of Soissons (April 1213), where a crusade against the king of England was set on foot, under the leadership of Philip of France. In the following May John made his peace, agreeing to recognize Langton, receive the exiled clergy, and restore the property which he had confiscated. Langton did not actually reach England till July, when (July 20, 1213) he performed his first episcopal act by pronouncing the absolution of the excommunicated John, who swore that all the laws of his grandfather Henry I. should be kept by all throughout the kingdom, and that all unjust laws should be utterly abolished. This oath the king was held by the archbishop to have violated almost immediately in levying war irregu larly against the barons who had, not illegally, deserted him at Portsmouth ; and at the meeting held in St Paul s, London, on August 25, 1214, it was Langton who produced the old charter of Henry L, and suggested the demand for its renewal, a suggestion which in the following year issued in the concession of Magna Charta at Eunnymede. Soon afterwards the archbishop left England for Rome to attend the fourth Lateran council, but not before lie had by the commissioners of the pope been pronounced contumacious, and declared to be suspended for his refusal to publish the excommunication of the English barons who had joined in obtaining the great charter. At Rome, where the sentence of his suspension was confirmed, he remained from November 1215 till May 1218; in September of the latter year he presided in the council held at London, where Magna Charta was solemnly confirmed ; and on May 17, 1220, he officiated at the re-coronation of Henry III. In the same year the &quot;translation&quot; of St Thomas of Can terbury took place. Among the fragmentary notices we possess of the remainder of Langton s life are mentioned his demand in name of the barons for royal confirmation of the charter at London in 1223. He died at Slindon on July 9, 1228. The principal authority for the events of the life of Langton is the Chronicle of Roger of Wendover. See Hook s Lives of the Arch bishops of Canterbury, vol. ii. ; Pearson s History of England, vol. ii. ; and Pauli s continuation of Lnppenberg s Gcschichte -von Eng land, vol. iii. LANGUAGE. See PHILOLOGY. LANGUEDOC, a province of France, which lay be tween the Garonne on the west and the Rhone on the east, with the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean on the south. It was divided into the three se nechaussees of Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Beaucaire ; and it comprised, besides the province proper, the districts of Gevaudan, Vellai, Vivarez, Cevennes, and Foix. It contained the important cities of Toulouse, Carcassonne, Narbonne, Montpellier, Nismes, Cette, Viviers, Alby, and Foix. The south-western spurs of the Cevennes run across the pro vince from the north-east to meet the first slopes of the Pyrenees. In spring and early summer no part of France possesses a more delightful climate than Languedoc, while Montpellier and its neighbourhood, in spite of the mistral, was up to recent times considered as an excellent retreat for consumptive patients. The Roman remains of Nismes, the lagoons and decayed towns of the Gulf of Lyons, the historical associations of Montpellier, the fine mediaeval fortress of Carcassonne, the old towers and the hotel de ville of Narbonne, the little known scenery of the eastern Pyrenees, with the castles of Foix and Tarascon, and Toulouse with its churches, fairs, floral games, and winding streets, make the country one of the most interesting in the whole of France. Here may still be heard the soft accents of the Langue d Oc, a language which has not, even yet, spoken its last word in the poetry of the world. Gallia Narbonensis, one of the seventeen provinces into which the empire was divided at the death of Augustus, occupied nearly the same extent as the province of Languedoc. It was rich and flourishing, crowded with great towns, densely populated, with schools of rhetoric and poetry, theatres, amphitheatres, and splendid temples. From Narbo Martins came the rhetorician and poet Montanus, who was exiled by Tiberius to Majorca ; from Nismes came Domitius Afer ; and the emperors Carinus and Numerianus were also natives of Narbonne. The planting of Christianity, though doubtless the Greeks of Massilia heard of it before, was accomplished, accord ing to tradition, by St Trophimus of Aries, St Paul of Beziers, and Saint Saturnin of Toulouse. It is char acteristic of the country that its ecclesiastical historians lament even in the earliest ages a tendency to heresy among its people. At the break up of the Roman empire the Visigoths founded the kingdom of Toulouse (412 A.D.), and in a few years spread their conquests over Narbonensis, Novempopulana (Gascony), and Aquitauia in France, as well as over the whole of the Spanish peninsula. They were driven out of France by Clovis, but retained &quot; Septimania,&quot; the country of the seven cities Narbonne, Carcassonne, Elne, Beziers, Maguelonne, Lodeve, and Agde that is, very nearly the area occupied later by the province of Languedoc. At the council of Narbonne (589) five sorts of people are mentioned as living in the pro vince: the Visigoths, then the ruling race, Romans, Jews, of whom there were a great many, Syrians, and Greeks. It was not until the year 759, when Pippin took their chief town, Narbonne, that the Visigoths were forced across the Pyrenees, and the country became part of the great empire bequeathed by Pippin to his great son Charles. Septimania became part of the kingdom of Aquitaine, but was separated from it and constituted a special duchy in the year 817. Two or more invasions of the Saracens took place in the 9th century, and the Normans made a descent upon the coast in the year 859. Early in the 10th century we find the whole province in the power of the counts of Toulouse, and one of the great fiefs of the crovn of France. While the Normans were ravaging the north of France and laying siege to Paris, the Saracens from the mouths of the Rhone were plundering and harrying the county of Toulouse. Neither in the south nor in the north of the country was there during the terrible 10th and llth centuries any peace or comfort. A frightful pestilence desolated Aquitaine and Toulouse in the year 1000 ; and in 1032 a famine began which lasted for three years. Yet the court of Toulouse was already remarkable for its &quot; luxury,&quot; as the ecclesiastical writers call it, rather for its love of art and literature, combined with extravagance of dress and fashions. Constance, wife of King Robert, and daughter of the count of Toulouse, gave great offence to the monks by her following of gallant countrymen. They owed their tastes, not only to their Roman blood and the survival of their old love for rhetoric and poetry, but also to their intercourse with the Saracens, their neighbours and enemies, and their friends when they were not fighting. On the preaching of the crusade, no part of France responded with greater enthusiasm than the south. A hundred thousand men followed Raymond de Saint Gilles. A century later their own country was to be the scene of another crusade even more bloody than that against the Saracen. The heresies which were the cause of so much blood shed may, perhaps, be said to have begun with Peter de Brueys, who preached in Languedoc for twenty years, until he was silenced by the usual method. He denied