Aimery II of Narbonne

Who was Aimery II of Narbonne?

Aimery II was the Viscount of Narbonne from around 1106 until his death.

He was the eldest son of Aimery I of Narbonne and Mahalt, daughter of Robert Guiscard and Sichelgaita and widow of Raymond Berengar II of Barcelona. This made him a half-brother of Raymond Berengar III. He initially ruled as a minor under the regency of his mother. After he came of age he married Ermengard.

Probably in 1112 or 1113, Aimery received the Fenouillèdes and the Peyrepertusès from his half-brother in return for swearing an oath of fealty against Bernard Ato IV of Béziers, with whom Raymond Berengar was at war. The lords of the Fenouillèdes and the Peyrepertuseès remained vassals of Narbonne until the Albigensian Crusade and the viscounts of Narbonne took the lordship of Rouffiac near Peyrepertuse into their own hands. When Douce I, Countess of Provence died and Raymond Berengar claimed the County of Provence, Aimery received the fief of Beaucaire and the terre d'Argence near the mouth of the Rhône in Provence.

Sometime during his rule, Aimery granted the merchants of Narbonne the right to form a consulate in imitation of Genoa. Probably he saw the self-organisation of his merchants and their formation of a military in their own defence as an aid to his own rule so long as the consulate remained under vicecomital control, which in the end it did not. Aimery also participated in 1114–15 in the Balearic Islands expedition led by the Republic of Pisa and Raymond Berengar.