Saint William of Gellone

William of Gellone (c. 755 – 28 May 812 or 814), the medieval William of Orange, was the second Duke of Toulouse from 790 until 811. In 804, he founded the abbey of Gellone. He was canonized a saint in 1066 by Pope Alexander II. In the tenth or eleventh century, a Latin hagiography, the Vita sancti Willelmi, was composed. By the twelfth century, William's legend had grown. He is the hero of an entire cycle of chansons de geste, the earliest of which is the Chanson de Guillaume of about 1140. In the chansons, he is nicknamed Fièrebrace (fierce or strong arm) due to his apparent strength and the marquis au court nez (margrave with the short nose) as the result of an injury suffered in battle with a giant. William was born in northern France in the mid-8th century, to Thierry IV, Count of Autun, and his wife Aldana. He was a relative of Charlemagne. The relationship is speculated to have come through William's mother, perhaps a daughter of Charles Martel, or through Thierry, apparently a close kinsman of Charlemagne's maternal great-grandmother (Bertrada of Prüm), with the two relationships not mutually exclusive. As a kinsman and trusted comes, he spent his youth in the court of Charlemagne. In 788, Chorso, Count of Toulouse, was captured by the Basque Adalric, and made to swear an oath of allegiance to the Duke of Gascony, Lupus II. Upon his release Charlemagne replaced him with his Frankish cousin William (790). William, in turn, successfully subdued the Gascons. In 793, Hisham I, the successor of Abd ar-Rahman I, proclaimed a holy war against the Christians to the north. He amassed an army of 100,000 men, half of which attacked the Kingdom of Asturias while the other half invaded Languedoc, penetrating as far as Narbonne. William met this force and defeated them. He met the Muslim forces again near the river Orbieu at Villedaigne but was defeated, though his obstinate resistance exhausted the Muslim forces so much that they retreated to Hispania.