The culture of Provence is barely dated at all as long as it goes without saying. Of 33 dates, Antiquity holds 5, the Middle Ages a single one, the early modern period 3, and the contemporary era 24. This imbalance says something about the corpus itself: Provençal language and letters enter the dated record only once the language comes under threat, once it becomes necessary to name it, defend it or measure it, as in the 1990 Blanchet survey, where 25 per cent of Provençals still spoke it to some degree.
This map therefore carries, more than any other, the trace of a silence: the centuries when Provençal needed no date because no one questioned it. It then gathers what the twentieth and twenty-first centuries had to date in order to preserve it, down to the 2024 renovation of the Museon Frederi-Mistral.
What the corpus attaches to this theme
Places most present : Marseille, Arles, Provence, Italie, Aix, Rhône, Gaule, Alpes
Figures most present : Jules César, Néron, Volusianus, Cicéron, Pythéas, Protis, Auguste, Domitius Ahenobarbus
Antiquity
around -950,000
The most ancient human occupation attested in Provence, at the Vallonnet cave, at Roquebrune: a pebble-tool industry and hunting remains
around -600,000
First fires kept alight, perhaps lit by human hand, at the Escale cave at Saint-Estève-Janson, at the start of the Mindel glaciation
around -400,000
Remarkably preserved hearths of Terra Amata, at Nice, the third major Lower Palaeolithic site in Provence
around -20,000
Cave paintings of the Cosquer cave, at Cassis, discovered in 1991: the earliest known art in Provence
Upper Palaeolithic
Provence sets itself apart from the rest of France: the Solutrean is unknown east of the Rhône and the Magdalenian does not cross the Durance, both replaced by local industries
Neolithic
Earliest known evidence of sheep domestication, at Châteauneuf-lès-Martigues. In the late Neolithic, megalithic burials appear, including the hypogea of Arles, along with the first perched and enclosed settlements
6 BC
End of the pacification of the Alpine borderlands, marked by Augustus's trophy at La Turbie
Middle Ages
813
The Council of Tours calls on priests to preach in the vernacular Romance tongue, a sign that liturgical Latin is no longer understood by the people
10th-11th century
Speakers distinguish their everyday idiom from Latin, which has become in their eyes an archaic, learned language
1100-1300
Period of activity of the troubadours, though Blanchet shows that written language served only about one percent of the population
13th century
The differences between the langue d'oc idioms, already present, sharpen markedly in the language of charters
1277
Ordinance of Charles of Anjou on the use of French in the county's treasury services, left without effect
Late 13th century
The Life of Saint Douceline, a religious work in prose, ranks among the rare literary writings in the local idiom of the period
14th century
With the decline of courtly lyric poetry, writing in the surely local idiom appears in the surviving manuscripts
14th-15th centuries
It is in the charters of this period that the local language of Provence reads most clearly in writing
1409
Founding of the University of Aix
Late 15th century
French begins to appear spontaneously in legal and administrative texts, in Provence as in the Comtat
Early modern period
1490
Edict of Moulins by Charles VIII, opening the process of replacing Latin with modern idioms in the kingdom's justice system
1530
Anonymous publication of the Chansons du Carrateyron at Aix, an example of popular expression in Provençal
1533
Edict of Joinville by François I, precursor to the edict of Is-sur-Tille on the language of trials in Provence
1536
Edict of Is-sur-Tille: criminal trials in Provence must be conducted in French "or at the very least in the vernacular of that country", that is, in Provençal
August 1539
Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts (a royal edict requiring judicial acts to be drafted in the vernacular rather than in Latin): judicial acts must henceforth be drafted in French rather than Latin, declared applicable to Provence on 17 October following
13 June 1543
The municipal council of Saint-Tropez records in Provençal a decision on the defence of the town against the Spanish galleys
1557
The municipal preconizationes of Toulon, written in Latin in 1394, are translated into Provençal by D. Balthazarem
1573
Installation of the first printing press in Provence, at Orange
1575
Jean de Nostredame publishes in French the Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provençaux
1595
Casaulx introduces printing to Marseille, until then dependent on Avignon and Aix, and has the Obros et rimos provençalos of Bellaud de la Bellaudière printed there
Mid-17th century
Disappearance of Provençal from official writing
1679
Renovation of the University of Aix
1723
Publication of Pellas's dictionary of the Provençal language
1747
Publication of Puget's dictionary
1774
Publication of the Judeo-Comtadin play La Reine Esther by two rabbis
1780
Publication of Papon's Voyage littéraire en Provence
1785
Publication of Achard's dictionary
1787
Publication of Achard's Dictionnaire de la Provence et du Comtat Venaissin
Read the period: Early modern period
Contemporary period
14 January 1790
Decree authorising the translation of decrees and laws into the languages understood by the people
1791
The Aix deputy Charles-François Bouche publishes a Provençal version of the Constitution, made possible by the 1790 decree
1795 to 1800
Period that Blanchet, citing A. Brun, describes as the most lamentable for the distribution of elementary schooling, for want of teachers and means
1803
The mas du Juge, the future family estate of the Mistrals, becomes the family's property
8 September 1830
Birth of Frédéric Mistral at Maillane
1852
Roumanille lays the first foundations of the mistralian graphy by publishing Li Prouvençalo
1853
Introduction of La Part dóu Bon Diéu, which refines the graphy proposed by Roumanille
21 May 1854
Founding of the Félibrige at the Château de Fontségugne by seven young poets: Frédéric Mistral, Joseph Roumanille, Théodore Aubanel, Jean Brunet, Paul Giéra, Anselme Mathieu and Alphonse Tavan
1855
Publication of the first Armana Prouvençau, a félibréen almanac still published today
1859
Publication of the poem Mirèio, which brings Mistral fame
1876
Mistral becomes the first capoulié (president) of the Félibrige, a position he holds until 1888
1880 to 1886
Mistral publishes the Tresor dóu Felibrige, a great Provençal-French dictionary, which changes the graphy only on a few points of detail
1882 to 1886
Establishment of Jules Ferry's secular, free and compulsory school, which profoundly changes the social and cultural structure of Provence
1896
Founding of the Museon Arlaten by Mistral, opened to the public in 1899
1904
Frédéric Mistral is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature and devotes the prize money to the Museon Arlaten
25 March 1914
Death of Frédéric Mistral at Maillane
around 1930
French spreads to the whole of Provençal society, the francisation proceeding from the top down between 1830 and 1930 at the pace of schooling
1932
Publication of the Tresor dóu Felibrige, Mistral's Provençal-French dictionary, by Delagrave
1945 to 1950
The post-war context, the affair of the 15th regiment and suspicions of collaboration weighing on certain regionalisms, blocks the regional claim in France
11 January 1951
Loi Deixonne: the first French law authorising the optional teaching of certain regional languages, including the langues d'oc
1990
Blanchet survey: 25 per cent of Provençals speak the language to varying degrees, of whom 8 per cent daily, and 40 per cent understand it without speaking it
2006
Creation of the Conseil de l'Écrit Mistralien, an internal body of the Félibrige, on the initiative of majoral Bernard Giély
2014
Centenary of Mistral's death: tributes in Provence and Catalonia, national commemoration by the Ministry of Culture
2024
Renovation of the Museon Frederi-Mistral and its garden, with the addition of an educational room