ONE of the remarkable aspects of the society of twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Languedoc was that it produced very little narrative history. Brief annals and necrologies such as that produced by the church of Carcassonne were known, but the more detailed chronicles and histories being produced in this period in other parts of western Europe are conspicuous by their absence, as are specifically ecclesiastical forms of writing such as hagiography. This dearth of narrative was clearly not the result of a particularly illiterate culture however, as twelfth-century Languedoc left a particularly rich charter record, produced and preserved by both ecclesiastical and secular authorities.

This combination of an abundant documentary record and sparse narrative history has been considered so unusual that it has been suggested that the enthusiastic secular production of charters led to the apparent Occitan disinclination for narrative. Bisson has argued that the abundance of charters created a society in which the written word was something to be used rather than enjoyed: ‘What history most lacked in these southern lands was readers. In written societies oppressed by the accumulation of formulaic fiscal records, many literate men learned how to use the past without learning how to savour it.’ This theory rightly highlights the role of the charter as an instrument in the exercise of power, in contrast to chronicles whose relationship to government was always less direct, but also raises the question of the relationship contained in the charters of eleventh- and twelfth-century Languedoc between the oral and the written.

Despite the development of a more literate society in the twelfth century, it is evident that in the Midi inquiries into land ownership and rights were frequently based on memory; that is, on the oral testimony of reputable witnesses. This can be seen, for example, in the dispute between the Bishop of Béziers, Bernard Gaucelin (1167–1182) and the Abbot of St Aphrodise over the bishop's claim to the jurisdiction of St Aphrodise when the abbacy was vacant.