Saint William of Gellone (755-traditionally May 28, c.812 or 814), in his own day Guilhem, also known as Guillaume d'Orange, Guillaume Fierabrace, and the Marquis au court nez, was the second count of Toulouse from 790 until his replacement in 811. He is the hero of the Chanson de Guillaume, an early chanson de geste, and of several later sequels, which were categorized by thirteenth-century poets as the geste of Garin de Monglane. Another early product of oral traditions about William is a Latin Vita ("Biography"), written before the 11th century, according to Jean Mabillon, or during the 11th century according to the Bollandist Henschen.

The historical William

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Through his mother Aldana, daughter of Charles Martel, he was kinsman, as well as trusted comes, of Charlemagne, at whose court he was present as a youth (as was his right). He was born in northern France somewhere in the middle of the 8th century. When he was made Count of Toulouse, Charlemagne put his young son Louis the Pious, who was to inherit Aquitaine, in his charge. As count, he subdued the Gascons.

In 793, Hisham I (called by the Franks Hescham), the successor of Abd ar-Rahman I, proclaimed a holy war against the Christians and collected an army of 100,000 men, half of which was directed against the kingdom of the Asturias while the other half invaded Languedoc, penetrating as far as Narbonne. He defeated them at Orange, then met them near the river Orbieux, at Villedaigne, where he was defeated, but only after an obstinate resistance which so far exhausted the Saracens that they were compelled to retreat to Spain. Narbonne was kept against the infidels.

In 803, he took Barcelona from the Moors and in the next year (804) founded the monastery of Gellone (now Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert) near Lodève in the Diocese of Maguelonne, and made it subject to the famous Saint Benedict of Aniane, whose monastery was nearby. He became a monk there in 806 and there he died in the odour of sanctity on the 28th of May 812 (or 814). His feast is on that date. Among his gifts to the abbey he founded was a piece of the True Cross, a present from his cousin Charlemagne, who wept at his departure; Charlemagne had received it, according to the Vita of William, from the patriarch of Jerusalem. When he died, the bells at Orange rang of their own accord (so it is said). Both his kin and his Benedictine monastery are mentioned in his testament ^*. His granting of certain property to Gellone and subjecting that monastery to the Abbot of Aniane, became subjects of contention as the reputation of William grew, attracting so many pilgrims to Gellone that his corpse was exhumed from the modest site in the narthex and given a more prominent place under the choir, to the intense dissatisfaction of the abbey of Aniane. A raft of forgeries and assertions were produced on each side that leave details of actual history in doubt. The abbey was a major stop for pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. The Sacramentary of Gellone, dating to the late 8th century, is a famous manuscript. Its late 12th century Romanesque cloister, systematically disassembled at the French revolution, found its way to The Cloisters in New York.

The William of romance

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William's faithful service to Charlemagne is portrayed as an example of feudal loyalty. William's career battling Saracens is sung in epic poems in the 12th and 13th century cycle called La Geste de Garin de Monglane, some two dozen chansons de geste that actually center around William, the great-grandson of the largely legendary Garin.

One section of the cycle, however, is devoted to the feats of his father, there named Aymeri de Narbonne, who has received Narbonne as his seigniory after his return from Spain with Charlemagne. Details of the "Aymeri" of the poem are conflated with a later historic figure who was truly the viscount of Narbonne from 1108 to 1134. In the chanson he is awarded Ermengart, daughter of Didier, and sister of Boniface, king of the Lombards. Among his seven sons and five daughters (one of whom marries Louis the Pious) is William.

The defeat of the Moors at Orange was given legendary treatment in the 12th century epic La prise d'Orange. There, he was made Count of Toulouse in the stead of the disgraced Chorso, then King of Aquitaine in 778. He is difficult to separate from the legends and poems that gave him feats of arms, lineage and titles: Guillaume Fièrebras, Guillaum au Court-Nez (broken in a battle with a giant), Guillaum de Narbonne, Guillaume d'Orange. His wife is said to have been a converted Saracen, Orable later christened Guibourc.

Pop culture references

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William, listed under the name Guillem de Gellone, is a prominent figure in the pseudohistorical book Holy Blood Holy Grail. The book claims that William was the son of "Theodoric, king of the Jews of Septimania" (crowned in 768), and that since Theodoric was Merovingian, that meant that William was Merovingian as well, and plus was a "Jew of royal blood". The book goes on to state that "modern scholarship and research have proved Guillem's Judaism beyond dispute." It should be noted, however, that many other claims in the book which were listed as "fact", were later proven to be false (such as the existence of the Priory of Sion), because the authors were basing much of their researchs on "medieval documents" which were later shown to be forgeries.

The importance of citing William's noble heritage and Judaism, was so that the authors could prove a genealogical link between the House of David, the Merovingian nobility, and France, in order to make a case that the Holy Grail was actually the bloodline of Jesus that had worked its way into the bloodline of Frankish royalty. This line of reasoning was later incorporated into the plot of the bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code and from there into various television documentaries.

References

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• Catholic Encyclopedia: St William of Gellone
• "L'Abbaye de Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert" (in French)
• Metropolitan Museum:The Saint-Guilhem Cloister
• Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, & Henry Lincoln, Holy Blood Holy Grail, 1982

755 births | 812 deaths | Counts of Toulouse | French nobility | Matter of France | Saints

Guillem I de Tolosa | Wilhelm von Aquitanien | Guillermo I de Tolosa | Guillaume de Gellone | Willem met de Hoorn