Guillaume de Nogaret

Youths: Nogaret man of law in Languedoc (1282-1295)

The Nogaret family held a small ancestral property with Nogaret, close to Saint-Felix-of-Caraman (today Saint-Felix-Lauragais), from where it drew her name. The father of Guillaume de Nogaret was Toulouse and was condemned like heretic at the time of the Albigensian Crusade.

One knows few things about the youth of Guillaume de Nogaret, if it is not that he studied the right to the Université of Montpellier, and that he became professor of Roman law there in 1287. In these years, the career of Guillaume is then that many men of law of the South: it is divided between the teaching of the right, with Montpellier, and of the activities of legal council in favor of various “customers”, the such bishop of Maguelonne, the king de Majorque and the King de France. It entremit thus at the time of the purchase by the king of the share which in the seigniory of Montpellier the bishop of Maguelonne had.

In 1293, Nogaret enters to the service of the king de France Philippe IV Beautiful the and becomes judge-magus of the Sénéchaussée of Beaucaire - Nimes during two years, function with responsibility, which is more than that of a judge in a strict sense, in one for the most important seneschalsies for the kingdom.

Nogaret “adviser of the king”: rise towards the capacity (1295-1303)

Engaged with the service of the king with Paris at the end of 1295, Nogaret acts until worms 1301 - 1302 as an investigator in Champagne and in the Eastern provinces of the kingdom. It is incorporated in same time at certain institutions, the Parlement, where it sits starting from 1298, and the Conseil of the king where its presence is attested as of 1300. Made Nogaret, during these years, its evidence: it carries out mainly tasks of administrative nature, in which it acts while carrying out and the initiative does not have.

Its responsibilities increase starting from the turning of the century. Indeed, it is from now on personally in charge with control, an end to the other, businesses of importance (project of pariage with the king de Majorque on the town of Montpellier, negotiations relating to acquisition by the king of the justice of Figeac, drafting of a charter of franknesses for this city,…).

It is of this time also that date its participation in the religious affairs, in slides first of all at the time of the religious disorders of the Languedoc and the lawsuit of Bernard Saisset, then at the great day when, in March 1303, it makes known by a famous speech the crimes of Boniface VIII. The name of Guillaume de Nogaret will be mainly related to the quarrel of Philippe Beautiful the with the Pape Boniface VIII. In 1300, it was sent in embassy near the Pape, of which it left a picturesque report and highly coloured.

The religious affairs (1): Boniface VIII and the Attack of Anagni (1303)

Ascending reality that Guillaume de Nogaret took on the king can be gone back to February 1303, when he managed to persuade Philippe IV agree to implement the consistent plan to seize the Pape to bring back it of force in France, where a council joined together for the occasion would have deposited it.

The March 7th it accepted, with three other people, the message coded of the royal chancellery “to go in certain place… and to do there with such people what it seemed to them good to make there”.

The March 12th, at the time of a solemn royal assembly held with the Louvre, Guillaume de Nogaret made a speech during which it launched a whole series of charges against Boniface VIII, and claimed the convocation of a general council to examine its case (and thus to make its lawsuit).

At once afterwards, it left for the Italy, and with the assistance of Florentin spy, it engaged a band of adventurers, enemies of the family Gaetani (the family of the Pope). The Colonna clan became his best ally, and Sciarra Colonna accompanied Nogaret with Anagni, the birthplace of Boniface VIII. The September 7th, with their small army of some 1.600 men, Nogaret and Colonna took by surprised the small town. The Pape was made prisoner. Sciarra wanted to kill it, but the goal of Nogaret was to bring back it to France and to make it appear before a general council.

But all did not occur as envisaged. The September 9th a rising of the population in favor of the Pape obliged Nogaret and its allies to escape and released Boniface VIII. The death of this one with Rome one month later, the October 11th, saved the mission of Nogaret. The election of the shy person Benoit XI mark the beginning of the triumph of the France on the Papacy, which will find its result with the election, two years later, to succeed Benoît XI, of the archbishop of Bordeaux Bertrand de Got ( Clément V ), which will install the Papauté of Avignon.

On his return, when it returned account to the king of its mission, Guillaume de Nogaret was cordially thanked by attribution for grounds and accepted a large amount of money. Philippe IV Beautiful the sent it in embassy near Benoît XI in order to require the discharge for all the participants in the quarrel with Boniface VIII. The Pape refused to receive it and excludes it from the general discharge that it granted the May 12th 1304. The June 7th, it fulminated against him and its allies of Anagni the bubble Flagitiosum scelus .

Project superintendent Nogaret of the royal policy (1306-1313)

In September 1307, a few days after the emission by the royal chancellery about arrest of Templiers (which it probably wrote in person), Nogaret obtains the station of Minister of Justice, which it succeeds Pierre de Belleperche.

The religious affairs (2): Suppression about the Temple

Its talents still fully found to get busy at the time of the lawsuit of Guichard, bishop of Troyes, shown various crimes, which began in 1308 and lasted until in 1313.

The April 27th 1311, Guillaume de Nogaret obtained Clément V the discharge for the protagonists of the conflict with Boniface VIII, that Benoît XI had refused to him. It had in exchange, as repentance, to commit themselves leaving for the next crusade, and to go in a certain number of places of Pèlerinage in France and Spain, but it never did it.

He would have died in 1313 thus returning the curse which would have pronounced, according to Maurice Druon, the Master of the Ordre of the Temple, Jacques de Molay, on roughing-hew it, quoting it at the same time as the King de France and the Pape Clément, “ to appear before the divine court in less than one year… ” anachronistic since Jacques de Molay was burned in 1314.

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