LANGTON, WALTER (d. 1321), bishop of Lichfield and treasurer of England, was probably a native of Langton West in Leicestershire. Appointed a clerk in the royal chancery, he became a favourite servant of Edward I., taking part in the suit over the succession to the Scottish throne in 1292, and visiting France more than once on diplomatic business. He obtained several ecclesiastical preferments, became treasurer in 1295, and in 1296 bishop of Lichfield. Having become unpopular, the barons in 1301 vainly asked Edward to dismiss him; about the same time he was accused of murder, adultery and simony. Suspended from his office, he went to Rome to be tried before Pope Boniface VIII., who referred the case to Winchelsea, archbishop of Canterbury; the archbishop, although Langton’s lifelong enemy, found him innocent, and this sentence was confirmed by Boniface in 1303. Throughout these difficulties, and also during a quarrel with the prince of Wales, afterwards Edward II., the treasurer was loyally supported by the king. Visiting Pope Clement V. on royal business in 1305, Langton appears to have persuaded Clement to suspend Winchelsea; after his return to England he was the chief adviser of Edward I., who had already appointed him the principal executor of his will. His position, however, was changed by the king’s death in July 1307. The accession of Edward II. and the return of Langton’s enemy, Piers Gaveston, were quickly followed by the arrest of the bishop and his removal from office. His lands, together with a great hoard of movable wealth, were seized, and he was accused of misappropriation and venality. In spite of the intercession of Clement V. and even of the restored archbishop, Winchelsea, who was anxious to uphold the privileges of his order, Langton, accused again by the barons in 1309, remained in prison after Edward’s surrender to the “ordainers” in 1310. He was released in January 1312 and again became treasurer; but he was disliked by the “ordainers,” who forbade him to discharge the duties of his office. Excommunicated by Winchelsea, he appealed to the pope, visited him at Avignon, and returned to England after the archbishop’s death in May 1313. He was a member of the royal council from this time until his dismissal at the request of parliament in 1315. He died in November 1321, and was buried in Lichfield cathedral, which was improved and enriched at his expense. Langton appears to have been no relation of his contemporary, John Langton, bishop of Chichester.
LANGTRY, LILLIE (1852- ), English actress, was the daughter of the Rev. W. C. le Breton, dean of Jersey, and married in 1874 Edward Langtry (d. 1897). For many years she was famous as one of the most beautiful women in England. It was not till 1881 that she definitely went on the stage, appearing from that time under her own management both in London and in America. In 1899 she married Sir Hugo de Bathe, Bart.
LANGUAGE (adapted from the Fr. langage, from langue, tongue, Lat. lingua), the whole body of words and combinations of words as used in common by a nation, people or race, for the purpose of expressing or communicating their thoughts; also, more widely, the power of expressing thought by verbal utterance. See generally under [Philology], [Phonetics], [Voice], [Writing], [Grammar], &c.; and the articles on the various languages, or under headings of countries and races.
LANGUEDOC, one of the old provinces of France, the name of which dates from the end of the 13th century. In 1290 it was used to refer to the country in whose tongue (langue) the word for “yes” was oc, as opposed to the centre and north of France, the langue d’oil (the oui of to-day). Territorially Languedoc varied considerably in extent, but in general from 1360 until the French Revolution it included the territory of the following departments of modern France: part of Tarn et Garonne, Tarn, most of Haute-Garonne, Ariège, Aude, Pyrénées-Orientales, Hérault, Gard, Lozère, part of Ardèche and Haute-Loire. The country had no natural geographical unity. Stretching over the Cevennes into the valleys of the upper Loire on the north and into that of the upper Garonne on the west, it reached the Pyrenees on the south and the rolling hills along the Rhone on the east. Its unity was entirely a political creation, but none the less real, as it was the great state of the Midi, the representative of its culture and, to some degree, the defence of its peculiar civilization. Its climate, especially in Hérault (Montpellier), is especially delightful in spring and early summer, and the scenery still holds enough ruined remains of Roman and feudal times to recall the romance and the tragedy of its history.
Although the name is of comparatively late medieval origin, the history of Languedoc, which had little in common with that of northern France, begins with the Roman occupation. Toulouse was an important place as early as 119 B.C.; the next year Narbonne, the seaport, became a Roman colony. By the time of Julius Caesar the country was sufficiently Romanized to furnish him with men and money, and though at first involved in the civil wars which followed, it prospered under Roman rule as perhaps no other part of the empire did. While it corresponded exactly to no administrative division of the Roman empire, it was approximately the territory included in Gallia Narbonensis, one of the seventeen provinces into which the empire was divided at the death of Augustus. It was rich and flourishing, crowded with great and densely populated towns, Nîmes, Narbonne, Béziers, Toulouse; with schools of rhetoric and poetry still vigorous in the 5th century; theatres, amphitheatres and splendid temples. In the 5th century this high culture was an open prize for the barbarians; and after the passing of the Vandals, Suebi and Visigoths into Spain, the Visigoths returned under Wallia, who made his capital at Toulouse in 419. This was the foundation of the Visigothic kingdom which Clovis dismembered in 507, leaving the Visigoths only Septimania—the country of seven cities, Narbonne, Carcassonne, Elne, Béziers, Maguelonne, Lodève and Agde—that is, very nearly the area occupied later by the province of Languedoc. At the council of Narbonne in 589 five races are mentioned as living in the province, Visigoths, Romans, Jews—of whom there were a great many—Syrians and Greeks. The repulse of the Arabs by Charles Martel in 732 opened up the country for the Frankish conquest, which was completed by 768. Under the Carolingians Septimania became part of the kingdom of Aquitaine, but became a separate duchy in 817.
Until the opening of the 13th century there is no unity in the history of Languedoc, the great houses of Toulouse and Carcassonne and the swarm of warlike counts and barons practically ignoring the distant king of France, and maintaining a chronic state of civil war. The feudal régime did not become at all universal in the district, as it tended to become in the north of France. Allodial tenures survived in sufficient numbers to constitute a considerable class of non-vassal subjects of the king, with whose authority they were little troubled. By the end of the 11th century the house of the counts of Toulouse began to play the predominant rôle; but their court had been famous almost a century before for its love of art and literature and its extravagance in dress and fashions, all of which denoted its wealth. Constance, wife of King Robert II. and daughter of the count of Toulouse, gave great offence to the monks by her following of gallant gentlemen. They owed their tastes, not only to their Roman blood, and the survival of their old love for rhetoric and poetry, but also to their intercourse with the Mahommedans, their neighbours and enemies, and their friends when they were not fighting. Under Raymond of Saint Gilles, at the end of the 11th century, the county of Toulouse began its great career, but Raymond’s ambition to become an Oriental prince, which led him—and the hundred thousand men who, according to the chroniclers, followed him—away on the first crusade, left a troubled heritage to his sons Bertrand and Alphonse Jourdain. The latter successfully beat off William IX., duke of Aquitaine, and won from the count of Barcelona that part of Provence between the Drôme and the Durance. The reign of Alphonse lasted from 1109 to 1148. By the opening of the 13th century the sovereignty of the counts of Toulouse was recognized through about half of Provence, and they held the rich cities of the most cultured and wealthiest portion of France, cities which had a high degree of local independence. Their local governments, with their consuls at the head, show, at least in name, the influence of Roman ideas. It is still an open question how much of their autonomy had remained untouched by the barbarian invasions from the Roman period. The citizens of these free cities were in continual intercourse with Saracens of Palestine and Moors of Spain; they had never entirely abandoned pagan customs; their poetry—the poetry of the troubadours—taught them the joys of life rather than the fear of death, the licence of their chivalry with its courts of love led to the other extreme of asceticism in such as were of religious temperament; all things combined to make Languedoc the proper soil for heresy. The Church never had the hold upon the country that it had in the north, the people of the Midi were always lukewarm in the faith; there was no noteworthy ecclesiastical literature in Languedoc from the end of the Carolingian period until after the Albigensian crusade, no theological centre like Paris, Bec or Laon. Yet Languedoc furnished the most heroic martyrs for the ascetic Manichaean creed. The era of heresy began with the preaching of Peter de Brueys and his follower, Henry of Lausanne, who emptied the churches and taught contempt for the clergy. Saint Bernard himself was able to make but temporary headway against this rebellion from a sacramental and institutionalized Christianity. In the first decade of the 13th century came the inevitable conflict. The whole county of Toulouse, with its fiefs of Narbonne, Béziers, Foix, Montpellier and Quercy, was in open and scornful secession from the Catholic Church, and the suppression of this Manichaean or Cathar religion was the end of the brilliant culture of Languedoc. (See [Albigenses], [Cathars], [Inquisition].) The crusade against the Albigenses, as the Cathars were locally termed, in 1209, resulted in the union to the crown of France in 1229 of all the country from Carcassonne to the Rhone, thus dividing Languedoc into two. The western part left to Raymond VII., by the treaty of 1229, included the Agenais, Quercy, Rouergue, the Toulousain and southern Albigeois. He had as well the Venaissin across the Rhone. From 1229 to his death in 1249 Raymond VII. worked tirelessly to bring back prosperity to his ruined country, encouraging the foundation of new cities, and attempting to gain reconciliation with the Church. He left only a daughter, Jeanne, who was married to Alphonse of Poitiers. Alphonse, a sincere Catholic, upheld the Inquisition, but, although ruling the country from Paris, maintained peace. Jeanne died without heirs four days after her husband, upon their return from the crusade in Africa, in 1271, and although she attempted by will to prevent the reversion of her lands to the crown, they were promptly seized by King Philip III., who used the opposition of Roger Bernard, count of Foix, as an excuse to appear with a formidable army, which had little to do to secure entire submission. Thus the county of Toulouse passed to the crown, though Philip III. turned over the Agenais to Edward I. of England in 1279. In 1274 he ceded the county of Venaissin to Pope Gregory X., the papacy having claimed it, without legal grounds, since the Albigensian crusade (see [Avignon]).
Such was the fate of the reduced county of Toulouse. At the division of Languedoc in 1229 Louis IX. was given all the country from Carcassonne to the Rhone. This royal Languedoc was at first subject to much trickery on the part of northern speculators and government officials. In 1248 Louis IX. sent royal enquêteurs, much like Charlemagne’s missi dominici, to correct all abuses, especially to inquire concerning peculation by royal agents. On the basis of their investigations the king issued royal edicts in 1254 and 1259 which organized the administration of the province. Two sénéchaussées were created—one at Nîmes, the other at Carcassonne—each with its lesser divisions of vigueries and bailliages. During the reign of Philip III. the enquêteurs were busily employed securing justice for the conquered, preventing the seizure of lands, and in 1279 a supreme court of justice was established at Toulouse. In 1302 Philip IV. convoked the estates of Languedoc, but in the century which followed they were less an instrument for self-government than one for securing money, thus aiding the enquêteurs, who during the Hundred Years’ War became mere revenue hunters for the king. In 1355 the Black Prince led a savage plundering raid across the country to Narbonne. After the battle of Poitiers, Languedoc supported the count of Armagnac, but there was no enthusiasm for a national cause. Under Charles V., Louis of Anjou, the king’s brother, was governor of Languedoc, and while an active opponent of the English, he drained the country of money. But his extortions were surpassed by those of another brother, the duc de Berry, after the death of Charles V. In 1382 and 1383 the infuriated peasantry, abetted by some nobles, rose in a rebellion—known as the Tuchins—which was put down with frightful butchery, while still greater sums were demanded from the impoverished country. In the anarchy which followed brigandage increased. Redress did not come until 1420, when the dauphin, afterwards Charles VII., came to Languedoc and reformed the administration. Then the country he saved furnished him with the means for driving out the English in the north. For the first time, in the climax of its miseries, Languedoc was genuinely united to France. But Charles VII. was not able to drive out the brigands, and it was not until after the English were expelled in 1453 that Languedoc had even comparative peace. Charles VII. united Comminges to the crown; Louis XI. Roussillon and Cerdagne, both of which were ceded to Aragon by Charles VIII. as the price of its neutrality during his expedition into Italy. From the reign of Louis XI. until 1523 the governorship of Languedoc was held by the house cf Bourbon. After the treason of the constable Bourbon it was held by the Montmorency family with but slight interruption until 1632.