Roquemaure, Gard
Roquemaure is a small town and commune in the Gard department of southern France. The town lies north of Avignon on the right bank of the Rhône. As of 2023, the population of the commune was 5,529.
Roquemaure was the site of a royal castle during the medieval period but after the French Revolution the castle was dismantled and now only two towers remain. In the 18th century Roquemaure was the centre of attempts to regulate the production of wine in the area and the term "Côte du Rhône" was coined. The town is infamous as the site where phylloxera, a pest of grapevines, was introduced into France from North America via England in the 1860s. Viticulture is still an important activity in the commune. Several types of wine are produced including some classified as Côtes du Rhône Appellation d'origine contrôlée.
Geography
Roquemaure lies on the right bank of the Rhône, at the eastern end of a narrow limestone ridge, the Montagne de Saint Geniès, that rises abruptly from the flat alluvial plain and extends for in an east–west direction. The town is north of Avignon, south-southeast of Orange and west of Châteauneuf-du-Pape which lies on the other side of the Rhône.The town is the administrative centre of the canton of Roquemaure, one of 23 cantons of the Gard department. The canton consists of eleven communes: Codolet, Laudun-l'Ardoise, Lirac, Montfaucon, Roquemaure, Saint-Geniès-de-Comolas, Saint-Laurent-des-Arbres, Saint-Paul-les-Fonts, Saint-Victor-la-Coste, Sauveterre and Tavel.
Toponym
The name Roquemaure is believed to be derived from the Occitan ròca + maura. Early Latin manuscripts use a variety of spellings for the name of the town. In 1539 the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts specified that French was to be used in official documents. The current French spelling is used in a manuscript dating from 1550.History
Hannibal
In 218 BC, at the start of the Second Punic War, Hannibal crossed the Rhône with his army and war elephants in his journey from the Iberian peninsula to northern Italy. The classical historians Polybius and Livy each provide accounts of the journey, but the exact route has been the source of much scholarly debate. Roquemaure is one of several locations that have been proposed for the crossing.Gallo-Roman villa
Archaeological excavations undertaken in 1996 ahead of the construction of a new high speed railway line uncovered the remains of a Gallo-Roman villa and 35 burials at a site northwest of the town, just to the south of the Roc de Peillet, a small limestone outcrop on the old alluvial terrace of the Rhône called Les Ramières. The earliest finds date from the Augustan period. The site was abandoned during the 7th century.Roquemaure castle
In the medieval period Roquemaure was the site of an important castle that stood on a limestone outcrop in the Rhône. The surviving ruins include two towers, the Square Tower and the Round Tower that date from the 12th and 13th centuries. Next to the Round Tower are the remains of a toll collector's house that dates from the same period. The ruins are currently privately owned. On the opposite bank of the Rhône is a similar limestone outcrop on which sits the ruins of another medieval castle, the Château de l'Hers. In the Middle Ages the Rhône was somewhat wider at this point than it is today and both castles sat on islands within the river.The first written record of the Roquemaure castle dates from 1209, on eve of the Albigensian Crusade. The castle at the time was controlled by Raymond VI of Toulouse but on being accused by Pope Innocent III of sheltering heretics, he agreed to donate seven castles, including that of Roquemaure, to the papal legate in Avignon. A document from four years later mentions a tower and a cistern. The tower is almost certainly the existing Square Tower that dominates the ruins. In 1229 the castle was acquired by the French king, Louis IX, in the Treaty of Paris. There are no surviving 13th century documents that give details on the construction of the castle but it is clear from records of the money spent on maintenance that by the beginning of the 14th century the castle included a curtain wall crowned with a parapet that sheltered a number of houses as well as an oven, a large well, a garden containing a second well, a chapel and prisons.
The castle occupied an important position on the border of the territory ruled by the French crown, as at the time, the papacy controlled the Comtat Venaissin on the opposite bank of the Rhône. During the 14th and 15th centuries the castle was the only residence with suitable accommodation for high-ranking dignitaries near the river between Pont-Saint-Esprit and Beaucaire; the Fort Saint-André and the Tour Philippe-le -Bel in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon served only a military function. During this period Roquemaure castle hosted a series of important guests.
In 1314, Pope Clement V, the first pope to be based in Avignon, died at the castle when travelling from Châteauneuf-du-Pape to his birthplace in Gascony. Later in the 14th century, Louis I, Duke of Anjou was a frequent visitor. He was the second son of John II of France and brother of Charles V of France. He used the castle as a base for his negotiations with the popes in Avignon. In 1385 John, Duke of Berry entertained a Hungarian ambassador at the castle while four years later in 1389 Charles VI stayed with a large entourage. Then in 1420 his son Charles Dauphin of Viennois visited the castle. He would become Charles VII of France on his father's death in 1422. Although regularly maintained in this period, the castle gradually ceased to have its earlier importance.
In 1590-1591 during the French Wars of Religion the castle came under siege and parts of towers and walls were destroyed. Subsequently, Louis XIV failed to maintain the building and it fell into a state of disrepair. At the beginning of the 18th century, the arm of the Rhône flowing between the castle and the right bank silted up so that instead of sitting on an island the castle now stood on the bank of the river near the town. After the revolution, the ruined castle was sold off in lots and used as a source of stone for other buildings.
A plan dating from 1752 shows that the castle was entirely constructed on the limestone outcrop. The fortifications included seven round towers of which only the most northerly tower survives. The remaining square tower is in height and in width. On the limestone base it rises above the town.
Port on the Rhône
At least from the middle of the 17th century, and probably much earlier, the port was situated to the west of the castle at a position near the present car park and the Cave Granier in the l'Escatillon district of the town. During the 18th century the river deposited silt around the Île de Méimart which increased in size and eventually blocked access to the port. In the 19th century attempts were made to construct a new port just to the north of the Square Tower but the build-up of silt limited the depth of water.Flooding of the town
Roquemaure was vulnerable to flooding by the Rhône and on the southern wall of the church there are marks recording the height of the water in the major floods of 1755 and 1840 when most of the town would have been under more than one meter of water. There was another very destructive flood in May–June 1856. In 1860 the French state agreed to pay two thirds of the cost of the construction of a dyke to protect the town. The dyke began at the Colline Saint-Jean and followed the river south to the village of Sauveterre. It protected the town during the severe flooding of 1935. After World War II the Compagnie Nationale du Rhône began canalizing the river. The section near Roquemaure was completed in the early 1970s.Bridge across the Rhône
In 1835 work began on the construction of a suspension bridge over the Rhône at Roquemaure. At the time there was no bridge across the river between Avignon and Pont-Saint-Esprit. The bridge was destroyed by American aircraft in August 1944 during World War II. A chain ferry was then operated across the river until 1959 when the current bridge was opened.Railway station
The railway station in Roquemaure was opened in August 1880 on the line running between Le Teil and Grézan-Nîmes on the right bank of the Rhône. The station closed in August 1973 when passenger transport on the line ceased. The line has since been electrified and is now used for freight.Church
The Catholic collegiate church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste and Saint-Jean-l'Evangéliste dates from the first half of the 14th century. It was built in the southern gothic style and replaced an earlier church dedicated to Sainte-Marie. The construction of the present church was initiated by Bertrand du Pouget, a powerful figure in the church hierarchy in the early period of the Avignon Papacy. He was appointed as the cardinal priest of San Marcello by Pope Jean XXII in 1316 and the cardinal bishop of Ostia e Velletri in 1327. In 1345 Pope Clement VI authorised the transfer of the parish services from Sainte-Marie to the new church and the establishment of a collegiate chapter consisting of ten priests and two canons. One of the canons was charged with the spiritual care of the congregation. The chapter was relatively wealthy as it inherited the benefices of the earlier church and gained addition endowments from the founder.Originally the wooden roof was visible in the church but in the 19th century the timbers were replaced and the vaulting was added.
The third chapel on the right hand side of the nave is the Chapel Saint-Jean which dates from the 15th century. In 1855 a marble slab was discovered under layers of whitewash in the wall. The slab has an engraving of a man and a Latin inscription around three sides; the slab is damaged and the inscription on the fourth side is missing. The text reads: "This is the tomb of the noble master professor of both laws, Lord Jordanus Bricius, Lord of the castles of Velaux and Châteauneuf-le-Rouge, who was chief judge of Provence, and had built..." Unfortunately the date which presumably would have been on the fourth side and is missing. Velaux and Châteauneuf-le-Rouge are communes in the department of the Bouches-du-Rhône. The stone is now set into the nearby wall of the church.
Jordanus Bricius, whose name is usual written in French as Jourdain Brice, was an important judge and legal scholar. He is believed to have died in either 1433 or 1439. The historian Eugène Germer-Durand when reporting the discovery of the slab suggested that his family name may have been Brès which in the Provençal dialect is similar to the word for a type of trap used to catch birds. This could explain the crest on the slab which includes a small bird above three objects that could be traps. Jourdain Brès may have been born locally as the family name of Brès existed in the neighbouring village of Laudun in the 17th century.
The church contains an organ made in 1690 by the brothers Barthélémy and Honoré Julien from Marseille. It was originally installed in the Couvent des Cordeliers in Avignon but was moved to the church in Roquemaure in around 1820. The walnut casing dates from when the organ was moved.
In the chapel to the right of the main altar is a casket containing some relics of Saint Valentine. These were extracted from the catacomb of Saint Hippolytus in Rome and given by Pope Pius IX to Maximilien Pichaud, a local dignitary. They were placed in the church in a ceremony led by Claude-Henri Plantier, the bishop of Nîmes, in October 1868.