4. Montpellier

When the town becomes a stage: royal entries and municipal power in medieval Montpellier (14th-15th Centuries)

“…3). 39 On the same day, the pope also went with the consuls to visit the building site of the college he had founded. When finally the pope left the town nearly two months later to come back to Avignon, 40 almost all the inhabitants accompanied him up to the cross of Baucels, some of them afoot, some of them on horseback.…”

The ‘Petit Thalamus’ of Montpellier. Moving mirror of an urban political Identity

“…27 The final victory of Pierre II of Aragon then appears to be the consequence of an internal opposition to the Guilhems and their councillors whose houses were seized and, in a classical phenomenon of damnatio memoriae commonly observed in Italian cities in such circumstances, 28 to have been nothing more than a symbolic destruction as the buildings where in fact reused in a way that imposed oblivion on the names of these families but emphasized at the same time both the king of Aragon and the consulate. The house of the Lamberts was the nucleus of the first consular house, 29 becoming then the symbol of the triumph of the new consulate over banished families who were involved in seigniorial power, whereas the house of the Touremires served as a royal residence: the birth of Jacques, son of Marie de Montpellier and Pierre of Aragon, in this place may be seen as emblematic of the substitution of the Guilhems by the kings of Aragon. By sharing the spoils of the Lamberts and the Tournemires, two preeminent families linked to the Guilhems, the king of Aragon and the consulate erased not only the memory of these two specific families but also the remembrance of Guilhem IX's brief interlude.…”

La transformation des villes au bas moyen‑âge entre Valence et Pise

“…Lucques ou Gérone. Elle n'a probablement marqué que les milieux sociaux aisés par exemple à Montpellier(Fabre, Lochard 1992), où l'on peut faire l'hypothèse que l'effacement complet de l'urbanisation en dehors de l'enceinte des alentours de 1200 est dû à la rapidité de disparition de constructions édifiées principalement en bois et en pisé, comme pour les faubourgs de Marseille.La hiérarchisation. On assiste pendant le Moyen Âge au développement sélectif de certaines agglomérations, les autres stagnant ou même régressant.…”