Аквитания және Гаскония герцогі Уильям IX: Соңғы трубадурдың өмірі мен әрекеттері

Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou

William IX ( or Guilhem de Poitou, ; 22 October 1071 – 10 February 1126), called the Troubadour, was the Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou (as William VII) between 1086 and his death. He was also one of the leaders of the Crusade of 1101. Though his political and military achievements have a certain historical importance, he is best known as the earliest troubadour—a vernacular lyric poet in the Occitan language—whose work survives.

William was the son of William VIII of Aquitaine by his third wife, Hildegarde of Burgundy. His birth was a cause of great celebration at the Aquitanian court, but the Church at first considered him illegitimate because of his father's earlier divorces and his parents' consanguinity. This obliged his father to make a pilgrimage to Rome soon after his birth to seek Papal approval of his third marriage and the young William's legitimacy.

William inherited the duchy at the age of fifteen upon the death of his father. It has been generally believed that he was first married in 1088, at age sixteen, to Ermengarde, daughter of Fulk IV of Anjou. Biographers have described Ermengarde as beautiful and well educated, though suffering from severe mood swings. However, Ruth Harvey's 1993 critical investigation shows the assumption of William's marriage to Ermengarde to be based largely on an error in a nineteenth century secondary source and it is highly likely that Philippa of Toulouse was William's only wife. William married Philippa in 1094. William invited Pope Urban II to spend the Christmas of 1095 at his court. The pope urged him to "take the cross" (i. e. the First Crusade) and leave for the Holy Land, but William was perhaps more interested in exploiting the absence on Crusade of Raymond IV of Toulouse, his wife's uncle, to press her claim to Toulouse; on a more practical level, he also had no heir at that time. He and Philippa did capture Toulouse in 1098, an act for which they were threatened with excommunication. The Duchess was an admirer of Robert of Arbrissel, and persuaded William to grant him land in northern Poitou to establish a religious community dedicated to the Virgin Mary. This became Fontevraud Abbey, which would enjoy the patronage of their granddaughter Eleanor and would remain important until its dissolution during the French Revolution. Likely motivated by many factors, religious as well as secular, William joined the Crusade of 1101, an expedition inspired by the success of the First Crusade in 1099. To finance it, he had to mortgage Toulouse back to Bertrand, the son of Raymond IV. William arrived in the Holy Land in 1101 and stayed there until the following year. His record as a military leader is not very impressive. He fought mostly skirmishes in Anatolia and was frequently defeated. His recklessness led to his being ambushed on several occasions, with great losses to his own forces. In September 1101, his entire army was destroyed by the Seljuk Turks led by Kilij Arslan I at Heraclea; William himself barely escaped, and, according to Orderic Vitalis, he reached Antioch with only six surviving companions. (See Army of William IX on the Crusade of 1101.)

William, like his father and many magnates of the time, had a rocky relationship with the Church. He was excommunicated twice, the first time in 1114 for an alleged infringement of the Church's tax privileges. His response to this was to demand absolution from Peter, Bishop of Poitiers. As the bishop was at the point of pronouncing the anathema, the duke threatened him with a sword, swearing to kill him if he did not pronounce absolution. Bishop Peter, surprised, pretended to comply, but when the duke, satisfied, released him, the bishop completed reading the anathema, before calmly presenting his neck and inviting the duke to strike. According to contemporaries, William hesitated a moment before sheathing his sword and replying, "I don't love you enough to send you to paradise." William was excommunicated a second time for "abducting" the Viscountess Dangereuse (Dangerosa), the wife of his vassal Aimery I de Rochefoucauld, Viscount of Châtellerault. The lady, however, appears to have been a willing party in the matter. He installed her in the Maubergeonne tower of his castle in Poitiers (leading to her nickname La Maubergeonne), and, as related by William of Malmesbury, even painted a picture of her on his shield. Upon returning to Poitiers from Toulouse, Philippa was enraged to discover a rival woman living in her palace. She appealed to her friends at court and to the Church; however, no noble could assist her since William was their feudal overlord, and whilst the Papal legate Giraud (who was bald) complained to William and told him to return Dangerose to her husband, William's only response was, "Curls will grow on your pate before I part with the Viscountess." Humiliated, Philippa chose in 1114 to retire to the Abbey of Fontevrault. She did not survive there long, however; the abbey records state that she died on 28 November 1118.

Relations between the Duke and his elder son William also became strained—although it is unlikely that he ever embarked upon a seven year revolt in order to avenge his mother's mistreatment, as Ralph of Diceto claimed, only to be captured by his father. Other records flatly contradict such a thing. Ralph claimed that the revolt began in 1113; but at that time, the young William was only thirteen and his father's liaison with Dangereuse had not yet begun. Father and son improved their relationship after the marriage of the younger William to Aenor of Châtellerault, Dangereuse's daughter by her husband, Aimery I de Rochefoucauld, Viscount of Châtellerault, in 1121. In October 1119, Orderic Vitalis reports that the Countess of Poitou, whom he refers to as "Hildegarde," suddenly appeared at the Council of Reims being held by Pope Calixtus II and demanded that the Pope excommunicate William (again), oust Dangereuse from the ducal palace, and restore herself to her rightful place. The Pope postponed the case as William was not present to answer the charges. William was readmitted to the Church around 1120, after making concessions to it that may have included participating in the Reconquista efforts underway in Spain. Between 1120 and 1123 William joined forces with the Kingdoms of Castile and León. Aquitanian troops fought side by side with Castilians in an effort to take Cordoba. During his sojourn in Spain, William was given a rock crystal vase by a Muslim ally that he later bequeathed to his granddaughter Eleanor. The vase probably originated in Sassanid Persia in the seventh century. In 1122, William lost control of Toulouse, Philippa's dower land, to Alfonso Jordan, the son and heir of Raymond IV, who had taken Toulouse after the death of William IV. He did not trouble to reclaim it. He died on 10 February 1126, aged 54, after suffering a short illness. His nickname, "the Troubadour", was only applied in the nineteenth century. In contemporary documents, the only nickname he occasionally bears is "the Younger" to distinguish him from his father.

In 1094, William married Philippa, the daughter and heiress of William IV of Toulouse. According to the Chronicle of Saint Maixent, William and Philippa had two sons and five daughters, although it does not name them. His eldest son was his eventual successor, William X. His second son, Raymond, eventually became the Prince of Antioch in the Holy Land. A daughter, Agnes, married firstly Aimery V of Thouars and then King Ramiro II of Aragon. Armenian sources, Basil the Doctor and Gregory the Priest, imply that Baldwin of Marash was a son of William and Philippa, born shortly before the latter's retirement to a convent in 1114. Alternatively, he may have been an illegitimate son. Michael the Syrian reports that Reynald, Baldwin's successor as lord of Marash, was his brother.