History of Avignon
The site of Avignon has been occupied since the Neolithic period as shown by excavations at Rocher des Doms and the Balance district.
[1] In 1960 and 1961 excavations in the northern part of the Rocher des Doms directed by Sylvain Gagnière uncovered a small anthropomorphic stele (height: 20 cm), which was found in an area of land being reworked.
[2] Carved in Burdigalian sandstone, it has the shape of a "tombstone" with its face engraved with a highly stylized human figure with no mouth and whose eyes are marked by small cavities.
On the bottom, shifted slightly to the right is a deep indentation with eight radiating lines forming a solar representation - a unique discovery for this type of stele.
[b] This was confirmed by other findings made in this excavation near the large water reservoir on top of the rock where two polished greenstone axes were discovered, a lithic industry characteristic of "shepherds of the plateaux".
[citation needed][contradictory] Other sources trace its origin to the Gallic mignon ("marshes") and the Celtic definitive article.
It was in the 4th century BC that the Massaliotes (people from Marseilles) began to sign treaties of alliance with some cities in the Rhone valley including Avignon and Cavaillon.
The memory of St. Eucherius still clings to three vast caves near the village of Beaumont where, it is said, the people of Lyon had to go in search of him in 434 when they sought him to make him their archbishop.
Gregory of Tours reported that the Frankish king devastated the fields, cut down the vines and olive trees, and destroyed the orchards.
Chlothar I annexed Avignon, Orange, Carpentras, and Gap; Childebert I took Arles and Marseilles; Theudebert I took Aix, Apt, Digne, and Glandevès.
A centralized government was put in place and, in 879, the bishop of Avignon, Ratfred, with other Provençal colleagues,[9][j] went to the Synod of Mantaille in Viennois where Boso was elected King of Provence after the death of Louis the Stammerer.
With the help of Ardouin, Marquis of Turin, and after two weeks of siege, Provençal troops chased the Saracens from their hideouts in Fraxinet and Ramatuelle as well as those at Peirimpi near Noyers in the Jabron valley.
With the German rulers at a distance, Avignon set up an autonomous administration with the creation of a consulat in 1129, two years before its neighbour Arles.
[12] At the end of the twelfth century, Avignon declared itself an independent republic, and sided with Raymond VII of Toulouse during the Albigensian Crusade.
At the end of September, a few days after the surrender of the city to the troops of King Louis VIII, Avignon experienced severe flooding.
The University of Avignon was founded by Pope Boniface VIII in 1303 and was famed as a seat of legal studies, flourishing until the French Revolution (1792).
Their palace, the most remarkable building in the International Gothic style was the result, in its construction and ornamentation, of the joint work of the best French architects, Pierre Peysson and Jean du Louvres (called Loubières)[20] and the larger frescoes from the School of Siena: Simone Martini and Matteo Giovanetti.
[23] At the same time the Clementine Chapel, called the Grande Chapelle, attracted composers, singers, and musicians[24] including Philippe de Vitry, inventor of the Ars Nova, and Johannes Ciconia.
[23] As Bishop of Cavaillon, Cardinal Philippe de Cabassoles, Lord of Vaucluse, was the great protector of the Renaissance poet Petrarch.
This immense Gothic building, with walls 17–18 feet thick, was built 1335–1364 on a natural spur of rock, rendering it all but impregnable to attack.
The popes were followed to Avignon by agents (or factors) of the great Italian banking-houses who settled in the city as money-changers and as intermediaries between the Apostolic Camera and its debtors.
A crowd of traders of all kinds brought to market the produce necessary for maintaining the numerous courts and for the visitors who flocked to it: grain and wine from Provence, the south of France, Roussillon, and the country around Lyon.
The Public Council, composed of forty-eight councillors chosen by the people, four members of the clergy, and four doctors from the university, met under the presidency of the chief magistrate of the city: the viquier (Occitan) or representative of the papal Legate or Vice-legate who annually nominated a man for the post.
The councillors' duty was to watch over the material and financial interests of the city but their resolutions had to be submitted to the vice-legate for approval before being put in force.
Avignon's survival as a papal enclave was, however, somewhat precarious, as the French crown maintained a large standing garrison at Villeneuve-lès-Avignon just across the river.
In 1663 Louis XIV seized Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin in retaliation for the Corsican Guard Affair, an attack on the Duc de Créqui, his ambassador to the Holy See.
[37] On the night of 16 to 17 October 1791, after the lynching by a mob of the secretary-clerk of the commune who was wrongly suspected of wanting to seize church property, the event called the Massacres of La Glacière took place, when 60 people were summarily executed and thrown into the dungeon of the tower on the Palais des Papes.
The Archdiocese of Avignon was re-established in 1822, receiving as suffragan sees the Diocese of Viviers, Valence: (formerly under Lyon), Nîmes, and Montpellier (formerly under Toulouse).
[45] Already the reception Poincaré had received at the Mas du Juge from the poet and the communal meal they had taken in the presidential train at Graveson had reassured him of the patriotism of Provence.
It was, therefore in these terms that he spoke on the Nobel Prize in Literature: "Dear and illustrious master, you who have pointed out imperishable monuments in honour of French land; you who have raised the prestige of a language and a literature that has a place in our national history to be proud of; you who, in glorifying Provence, have braided a crown of olive green; to you, august master, I bring the testimony of the recognition of the Republic and the great motherland".
