Aimery II (also called Aimeric II) (died 17 July 1134) was the

Viscount of Narbonne The viscount of Narbonne was the secular ruler of Narbonne in the Middle Ages. Narbonne had been the capital of the Visigoth province of Septimania, until the 8th century, after which it became the Carolingian Viscounty of Narbonne. Narbonne was ...

from around 1106 until his death. He was the eldest son of Aimery I of Narbonne and Mahalt (also Mahault or Mafalda), daughter of

Robert Guiscard Robert Guiscard (; Modern ; – 17 July 1085) was a Norman adventurer remembered for the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. Robert was born into the Hauteville family in Normandy, went on to become count and then duke of Apulia and Calab ...

and Sichelgaita and widow of Raymond Berengar II of Barcelona. This made him a half-brother of Raymond Berengar III. He initially ruled as a minor under the regency of his mother. After he came of age he married Ermengard. Probably in 1112 or 1113, Aimery received the

Fenouillèdes Fenouillèdes (; oc, Fenolhedés/Fenolheda; ca, Fenolledès/Fenolleda) is a French comarca and a traditional Occitan-speaking area in the ''département'' of Pyrénées-Orientales. The capital of the comarca is Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet (''Sant ...

and the Peyrepertusès from his half-brother in return for swearing an oath of fealty against Bernard Ato IV of

Béziers Béziers (; oc, Besièrs) is a subprefecture of the Hérault department in the Occitanie region of Southern France. Every August Béziers hosts the famous ''Feria de Béziers'', which is centred on bullfighting. A million visitors are attra ...

, with whom Raymond Berengar was at war.Cheyette, 77 and n31. The lords of the Fenouillèdes and the Peyrepertuseès remained vassals of Narbonne until the

Albigensian Crusade The Albigensian Crusade or the Cathar Crusade (; 1209–1229) was a military and ideological campaign initiated by Pope Innocent III to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc, southern France. The Crusade was prosecuted primarily by the French crow ...

and the viscounts of Narbonne took the lordship of Rouffiac near Peyrepertuse into their own hands. When Douce I, Countess of Provence died and Raymond Berengar claimed the County of Provence, Aimery received the fief of Beaucaire and the ''terre d'Argence'' near the mouth of the

Rhône The Rhône ( , ; wae, Rotten ; frp, Rôno ; oc, Ròse ) is a major river in France and Switzerland, rising in the Alps and flowing west and south through Lake Geneva and southeastern France before discharging into the Mediterranean Sea. At Ar ...

in Provence.Cheyette, 86. Sometime during his rule, Aimery granted the merchants of

Narbonne Narbonne (, also , ; oc, Narbona ; la, Narbo ; Late Latin:) is a commune in Southern France in the Occitanie region. It lies from Paris in the Aude department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. It is located about from the shores of the ...

the right to form a

consulate A consulate is the office of a consul. A type of diplomatic mission, it is usually subordinate to the state's main representation in the capital of that foreign country (host state), usually an embassy (or, only between two Commonwealth co ...

in imitation of

Genoa Genoa ( ; it, Genova ; lij, Zêna ). is the capital of the Italian region of Liguria and the sixth-largest city in Italy. In 2015, 594,733 people lived within the city's administrative limits. As of the 2011 Italian census, the Province of ...

. Probably he saw the self-organisation of his merchants and their formation of a military in their own defence as an aid to his own rule so long as the consulate remained under vicecomital control, which in the end it did not. Aimery also participated in 1114–15 in the Balearic Islands expedition led by the Republic of Pisa and Raymond Berengar. In 1114, Aimery put an end to conflicting claims in the village of Le Lac on the

Via Domitia The Via Domitia was the first Roman road built in Gaul, to link Italy and Hispania through Gallia Narbonensis, across what is now Southern France. The route that the Romans regularised and paved was ancient when they set out to survey it, and ...

by transferring his rights there to the

abbey of Lagrasse The Abbey of St. Mary of Lagrasse (French: ''Abbaye Sainte-Marie de Lagrasse'' or ''Abbaye Sainte-Marie-d'Orbieu'') is a Romanesque abbey in Lagrasse, southern France, whose origins date to the 7th century. It is located in Languedoc, near the ...

in return for a large loan of gold and silver. He also entered into a conflict with his cousin Richard de Millau,

Archbishop of Narbonne The former Catholic diocese of Narbonne existed from early Christian times until the French Revolution. It was an archdiocese, with its see at Narbonne, from the year 445, and its influence ran over much of south-western France and into Catalon ...

, who may have been a compromise candidate between Aimery and the

pope The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...

for the archiepiscopal throne. Richard claimed that Aimery ''fecit mihi hominium propriis manibus'' ("did homage to imwith his own hands") received ''fedovia'' ("fiefs") from the Church "in the presence of the universal synod of the

province of Narbonne A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions outs ...

." The archbishop accused Aimery of deceiving him concerning the extent of the Church's fiefs and attempting to hold land as his by inheritance which was his by grant of the Church; he also accused Aimery of withholding revenues from taxes and imposts that should have gone to the Church. Aimery was recorded to have even abused church property violently and there were disputes concerning who controlled the towers on the city walls. The whole dispute lasted a long time, but Aimery was made to come to terms by the

Papacy The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...

's support of Richard.Cheyette, 108–109. In the end, he had to swear oaths of fealty to the archbishop, recognise the archbishop's independent temporal lordship, and concede that some of the rights he held in the city of Narbonne constituted a fief of the archbishopric. In 1124, Bernard Ato of Béziers declared war on Aimery, who responded by razing the castle (''pro justicia'', "out of justice") at Montséret, which had been held by Aimery's vassal Bernard Amati until he had treacherously turned it over to Bernard Ato. Not long after this Aimery turned towards

Iberia The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese language, Aragonese and Occitan language, Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a pe ...

and joined the

Reconquista The ' ( Spanish, Portuguese and Galician for "reconquest") is a historiographical construction describing the 781-year period in the history of the Iberian Peninsula between the Umayyad conquest of Hispania in 711 and the fall of the N ...

being waged by

Alfonso the Battler Alfonso I (''c''. 1073/10747 September 1134), called the Battler or the Warrior ( es, el Batallador), was King of Aragon and Navarre from 1104 until his death in 1134. He was the second son of King Sancho Ramírez and successor of his brother P ...

in the

Ebro , name_etymology = , image = Zaragoza shel.JPG , image_size = , image_caption = The Ebro River in Zaragoza , map = SpainEbroBasin.png , map_size = , map_caption = The Ebro ...

valley. In July 1131, Aimery was at the deathbed of his half-brother to witness his final testament, of which he was to be the executor. Aimery died in

battle A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and for ...

before the walls of the

Moorish The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a distinct or s ...

city of Fraga, which Alfonso had been besieging.Cheyette, 21. Aimery had a son and a daughter by Ermengard; the son, Aimery, predeceased him (ca. 1130), and he was succeeded by his daughter Ermengard, who was only four or five at the time. He married a second time to a woman named Ermessende and left by her a daughter of the same name. This second daughter, Ermessende, married before 1153 a great Castilian magnate, Manrique Pérez de Lara, lord of Molina.

Sources

*Cheyette, Fredric L. ''Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aimery 02 Of Narbonne 1134 deaths Military personnel killed in action People of the Reconquista Viscounts of Narbonne 12th-century French people Christians of the 1113–1115 Balearic Islands expedition Year of birth unknown