Europe · High and late Middle Ages
Viscounty of Béarn
9th century–1620
Vicomté de Béarn; Occitan (Gascon) Bearn; capital Pau (earlier Morlaàs, Orthez). A Pyrenean viscounty uniquely claiming to hold of no one — asserting sovereignty (owing homage to neither France, England nor Aragon).
- Existed
- 9th century–1620
- Shown on the map
- 1385–1452
- Peak area
- 4k km²
- Region
- Europe
Overview
Vicomté de Béarn; Occitan (Gascon) Bearn; capital Pau (earlier Morlaàs, Orthez). A Pyrenean viscounty uniquely claiming to hold of no one — asserting sovereignty (owing homage to neither France, England nor Aragon). United with Foix under one house from the 13th century, it passed to the Albret and then to Navarre. Henry of Navarre, born at Pau, inherited it; as Henry IV he retained Béarn as a separate sovereign realm, and it was only formally incorporated into France by his son Louis XIII in 1620. A stronghold of Calvinism under Jeanne d'Albret.
Common questions
- What was the Viscounty of Béarn?
- Vicomté de Béarn; Occitan (Gascon) Bearn; capital Pau (earlier Morlaàs, Orthez). A Pyrenean viscounty uniquely claiming to hold of no one — asserting sovereignty (owing homage to neither France, England nor Aragon).
- When did the Viscounty of Béarn exist?
- The Viscounty of Béarn existed 9th century–1620. On this map it is drawn 1385–1452.
- How large was the Viscounty of Béarn?
- At its greatest extent drawn on this map, the Viscounty of Béarn covered about 4,000 km². That is the largest area the border data gives it across the years it is drawn, not necessarily its greatest extent in history.
Sources
This compendium cites its sources once for the whole document rather than per territory. Its bibliography names the English Wikipedia articles for each territory as the primary basis, cross-checked against Encyclopædia Britannica and specialist snippets, and flags entries built on unreliable foundations — the 911 treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte known only from Dudo of Saint-Quentin, and Arnaud Amalric's alleged order at Béziers attested only decades after the fact. The article this entry is anchored on:
- Wikipedia — Viscounty of Béarn en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscounty_of_B%C3%A9arn
This entry was last updated .
This entry was researched and drafted with AI from the sources above, and has not been reviewed by a historian. How entries are made
Text available under CC BY-SA 4.0: reuse it with a credit to The World Through Time and a link to this page. Passages drawing on the Wikipedia articles listed above are also licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by their contributors.
Border geometry for the map itself comes from Cliopatria v0.12 (Seshat Global History Databank, CC-BY-4.0).
See the Viscounty of Béarn in its world
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