Jewish learning and thought in Languedoc

Common descent and shared cultural patrimony led the Jews of Languedoc to regard themselves as belonging to a single region, extending across the counties of Roussillon, Languedoc, and Provence, that they called “this land.” ¹ While the French monarchy advanced steadily southward toward the Pyrénées throughout the first half of the thirteenth century, Roussillon still stood under Aragonese sovereignty, Provence remained the possession of the Kingdom of Burgundy, and most of Languedoc—with such major centers of Jewish life as Narbonne, Béziers, and Montpellier—had submitted to the French crown only recently. ²