AUDE, a maritime department of southern France, formed in 1790 from part of the old province of Languedoc. Area, 2448 sq. m. Pop. (1906) 308,327. It is bounded E. by the Mediterranean, N. by the departments of Hérault and Tarn, N.W. by Haute-Garonne, W. by Ariège, and S. by Pyrénées-Orientales. The department is traversed on its western boundary from S. to N. by a mountain range of medium height, which unites the Pyrenees with the southern Cévennes; and its northern frontier is occupied by the Montagne Noire, the most westerly portion of the Cévennes. The Corbières, a branch of the Pyrenees, run in a south-west and north-east direction along the southern district. The Aude (q.v.), its principal river, has almost its entire length in the department, and its lower course, together with its tributary the Fresquel, forms the dividing line between the Montagne Noire and the Pyrenean system.
The lowness of the coast causes a series of large lagoons, the chief of which are those of Bages et Sigean, Gruissan, Lapalme and Leucate. The climate is warm and dry, but often sudden in its alterations. The wind from the north-west, known as the cers, blows with great violence, and the sea-breeze is often laden with pestilential effluvia from the lagoons. The agriculture of the department is in a flourishing condition. The meadows are extensive and well watered, and are pastured by numerous flocks and herds. The grain produce, consisting mainly of wheat, oats, rye and Indian corn, exceeds the consumption, and the vineyards yield an abundant supply of both white and red wines, those of Limoux and the Narbonnais being most highly esteemed. Truffles are abundant. The olive and chestnut are the chief fruits. Mines of iron, manganese, and especially of mispickel, are worked, and there are stone-quarries and productive salt-marshes. Brewing, distilling, cooperage, iron-founding, hat-making and machine construction are carried on, and there are flour-mills, brick-works, saw-mills, sulphur refineries and leather and paper works. The formerly flourishing textile industries are now of small importance. The department imports coal, lime, stone, salt, raw sulphur, skins and timber and exports agricultural and mineral products, bricks and tiles, and other manufactured goods. It is served by the Southern railway. The Canal du Midi, following the courses of the Fresquel and the Aude, traverses it for 76 m.; and a branch, the Canal de la Robine, which passes through Narbonne to the sea, has a length of 24 m. The capital is Carcassonne, and the department is divided into the four arrondissements of Carcassonne, Limoux, Narbonne and Castelnaudary, with 31 cantons and 439 communes. It belongs to the 16th military region, and to the académie (educational division) of Montpellier, where also is its court of appeal. It forms the diocese of Carcassonne, and part of the province of the archbishop of Toulouse. Carcassonne, Narbonne and Castelnaudary are the principal towns. At Alet, which has hot springs of some note, there are ruins of a fine Romanesque cathedral destroyed in the religious wars of the 16th century. The extensive buildings of the Cistercian abbey of Fontfroide, near Bizanet, include a Romanesque church, a cloister, dormitories and a refectory of the 12th century. A curious polygonal church of the 11th century at Rieux-Minervois, the abbey-church at St Papoul, with its graceful cloister of the 14th century, and the remains of the important abbey of St Hilaire, founded in the 6th century and rebuilt from the 12th to the 15th century, are also of antiquarian interest. Rennes-les-Bains has mineral springs of repute.
AUDEBERT, JEAN BAPTISTE (1759-1800), French artist and naturalist, was born at Rochefort in 1759. He studied painting and drawing at Paris, and gained considerable reputation as a miniature-painter. Employed in preparing plates for the Histoire des coléoptères of G.A. Olivier (1756-1814), he acquired a taste for natural history. In 1800 appeared his first original work, L’Histoire naturelle des singes, des makis et des galéopithèques, illustrated by sixty-two folio plates, drawn and engraved by himself. The colouring in these plates was unusually beautiful, and was applied by a method devised by himself. Audebert died in Paris in 1800, leaving complete materials for another great work, Histoire des colibris, des oiseaux-mouches, des jacamars et des promérops, which was published in 1802. Two hundred copies were printed in folio, one hundred in large quarto, and fifteen were printed with the whole text in letters of gold. Another work, left unfinished, was also published after the author’s death, L’Histoire des grimpereaux et des oiseaux de paradis. The last two works also appeared together in two volumes, Oiseaux dorés ou à reflets métalliques (1802).
AUDEFROI LE BATARD, French trouvère, flourished at the end of the 12th century and was born at Arras. Of his life nothing is known. The seigneur de Nesles, to whom some of his songs are addressed, is probably the châtelain of Bruges who joined the crusade of 1200. Audefroi was the author of at least five lyric romances: Argentine, Belle Idoine, Belle Isabeau, Belle Emmelos and Béatrix. These romances follow older chansons in subject, but the smoothness of the verse and beauty of detail hardly compensate for the spontaneity of the shorter form.
See A. Jeanroy, Les Origines de la poésie lyrique en France au moyen âge (Paris, 1889).
AUDIENCE (from Lat. audire, to hear), the act or state of hearing, the term being therefore transferred to those who hear or listen, as in a theatre, at a concert or meeting. In a more technical sense, the term is applied to the right of access to the sovereign enjoyed by the peers of the realm individually and by the House of Commons collectively. More particularly it means the ceremony of the admission of ambassadors, envoys or others to an interview with a sovereign or an important official for the purpose of presenting their credentials. In France, audience is the term applied to the sitting of a law court for hearing actions. In Spain, audiencia is the name given to certain tribunals which try appeals from minor courts. The Spanish judges were originally known as oidores, hearers, from the Spanish oir, to hear; but they are now called ministros, or magistrados togados, robed judges, as the gown of the Spanish judge is called a toga. The audiencia pretorial, i.e. of the praetor, was a court in Spanish America from which there was no appeal to the viceroy, but only to the council of the Indies in Spain. It is not the custom in Spain to speak of audiencias reales, royal courts, but of the audiencias del Reino, courts of the kingdom.
In England the Audience-court was an ecclesiastical court, held by the archbishops of Canterbury and York, in which they once exercised a considerable part of their jurisdiction, dealing with such matters as they thought fit to reserve for their own hearing. It has been long disused and is now merged in the court of arches.