France – Bearn In The Name of Centulle Silver Denier 18mm, Struck circa 1100-1300 A.D. Reference: Montlezun Hoard Certification: NGC MS 63 5872724-008 Encircled square cross. Encircled square cross.
You are bidding on the exact item pictured, provided with a Certificate of Authenticity and Lifetime Guarantee of Authenticity.
Centule V (or Centulle; died 1090), called the Young, was the Viscount of Béarn from 1058 to his death. Centule increased the autonomy of the viscounts of Béarn and distanced them from the dukes of Aquitaine, to whom they owed theoretical vassalage. Centule was also Count of Bigorre jure uxoris as Centule I.
Centule was the eldest son of Gaston III and the important Gascon lady Adalais (sister of the duke of Gascony and the viscount of Lomagne), and was successor of his paternal grandfather Centule IV. Centule was almost a sovereign prince. He minted his own money in his capital of Morlaas. He received the viscounty of Acqs and the countries of Orthe and Salies from the duke of Aquitaine, who freed him from nominal ties of vassalage. He was the only person with the right to call on the knights of Béarn, who owed fealty to none but him. He granted the deserted city of Oloron a charter repopulating it. Centuries later, this fuero, called the For de Oloron, would be incorporated into the other Fors de Bearn.
Centule was a great participant in the Gregorian reform and he maintained excellent relations with the Holy See. He made many donations to the church and initiated the construction of the church of Santa Fe de Morlaas, the first romanesque edifice in Béarn. Pope Gregory VII referred to him as an amator justitiae, lover of justice; defensor pauperum, defender of the poor; and propagator pacis, propagator of the peace. Towards 1060, Centule married a relative of his, probably a cousin, possibly a daughter of Bernard II of Gascony, named Gisela (Gisla), with whom he had two children, his heir Gaston IV and a daughter named Osquinette. The pope, however, exhorted him to break the marriage on grounds of consanguinity, which he obediently did (1074), founding, in penitence, a priory at Morlaas dependent on the Abbey of Cluny.
Centule married for a second time in 1077 to Beatrice I of Bigorre. With her he had other children: Bernard and Centule, both future counts of Bigorre. Centule married his eldest son to Talesa, a natural daughter of Sancho V of Navarre, and Gaston received the neighbouring viscounty of Montaner as a dowry, thus uniting it to the dominion of Béarn. It can be seen that, through strategic marriages, Centule expanded his control to include his western neighbours Bigorre and Montaner and solidified an alliance with his royal neighbour to the south, the Crown of Aragon. However, he had to war with his neighbours to the east. In 1082, he launched an attack on Dax, but was severely defeated.
In 1079, Centule participated in the attempt to take Zaragoza that was repelled by El Cid Campeador, then in the service of the Moors. In 1090, he travelled anew into Aragon at the head of Bearnese troops to assist in an assault on Huesca under the guidance of Sancho, but he was assassinated in the Tena Valley. Gaston succeeded him and continued in his policies of aggrandisement and friendly church-state relations.
France, officially the French Republic (French: République française), is a sovereign state comprising territory in western Europe and several overseas regions and territories. The European part of France, called Metropolitan France, extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean. France spans 640,679 square kilometres (247,368 sq mi) and has a total population of 67 million. It is a unitary semi-presidential republic with the capital in Paris, the country’s largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. The Constitution of France establishes the state as secular and democratic, with its sovereignty derived from the people.
During the Iron Age, what is now Metropolitan France was inhabited by the Gauls, a Celtic people. The Gauls were conquered in 51 BC by the Roman Empire, which held Gaul until 486. The Gallo-Romans faced raids and migration from the Germanic Franks, who dominated the region for hundreds of years, eventually creating the medieval Kingdom of France. France emerged as a major European power in the Late Middle Ages, with its victory in the Hundred Years’ War (1337 to 1453) strengthening French state-building and paving the way for a future centralized absolute monarchy. During the Renaissance, France experienced a vast cultural development and established the beginning of a global colonial empire. The 16th century was dominated by religious civil wars between Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots).
France became Europe’s dominant cultural, political, and military power under Louis XIV. French philosophers played a key role in the Age of Enlightenment during the 18th century. In 1778, France became the first and the main ally of the new United States in the American Revolutionary War. In the late 18th century, the absolute monarchy was overthrown in the French Revolution. Among its legacies was the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, one of the earliest documents on human rights, which expresses the nation’s ideals to this day. France became one of modern history’s earliest republics until Napoleon took power and launched the First French Empire in 1804. Fighting against a complex set of coalitions during the Napoleonic Wars, he dominated European affairs for over a decade and had a long-lasting impact on Western culture. Following the collapse of the Empire, France endured a tumultuous succession of governments: the monarchy was restored, it was replaced in 1830 by a constitutional monarchy, then briefly by a Second Republic, and then by a Second Empire, until a more lasting French Third Republic was established in 1870. By the 1905 law, France adopted a strict form of secularism, called laïcité, which has become an important federative principle in the modern French society.
France reached its territorial height during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when it ultimately possessed the second-largest colonial empire in the world. In World War I, France was one of the main winners as part of the Triple Entente alliance fighting against the Central Powers. France was also one of the Allied Powers in World War II, but came under occupation by the Axis Powers in 1940. Following liberation in 1944, a Fourth Republic was established and later dissolved in the course of the Algerian War. The Fifth Republic, led by Charles de Gaulle, was formed in 1958 and remains to this day. Following World War II, most of the empire became decolonized.
Throughout its long history, France has been a leading global center of culture, making significant contributions to art, science, and philosophy. It hosts Europe’s third-largest number of cultural UNESCO World Heritage Sites (after Italy and Spain) and receives around 83 million foreign tourists annually, the most of any country in the world. France remains a great power with significant cultural, economic, military, and political influence. It is a developed country with the world’s sixth-largest economy by nominal GDP and eight-largest by purchasing power parity. According to Credit Suisse, France is the fourth wealthiest nation in the world in terms of aggregate household wealth. It also possesses the world’s second-largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ), covering 11,035,000 square kilometres (4,261,000 sq mi).
French citizens enjoy a high standard of living, and the country performs well in international rankings of education, health care, life expectancy, civil liberties, and human development. France is a founding member of the United Nations, where it serves as one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. It is a member of the Group of 7, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Trade Organization (WTO), and La Francophonie. France is a founding and leading member state of the European Union (EU).
|