OCCITANS

The domain of the Occitans, speakers of a Gallo-Romance language, extends roughly between the Garonne River in the west and the Rhône in the east, bordered to the north by the area of the langues d’oïl and to the south by the Pyrenees and Catalan Roussillon.

From the standpoint of historical and identity consciousness, one distinguishes:

• Southern Occitania (Miègjorn occitan), mainly Languedocian;
• High Occitania (Occitania Nauta), or the High Lands of Oc or Montanha, comprising the Auvergne–Limousin domain (Auvergne, Forez d’Oc, Velay; Limousin and its borders with the Marche and Angoumois, the north of Périgord). The High Lands of Oc are marked by the three mountains of the Monédières in Limousin, the Monts Dore of Auvergne, and the mountains of Velay, and bordered to the south by plateaus.
  Between these two groups, on the foothills of the Massif Central, lies a vast linguistic zone (the guianés area), formerly included for the most part within the center and east of the province of Guyenne. This zone comprises southern Périgord, Rouergue, Upper Quercy, Gévaudan, and southern Vivarais (the last two belonging to Languedoc).

A) Emblematic of the southern lands
A major emblem of Languedoc is the cléchée, voided and pommeted cross.

B) Emblematic of the High Lands
The pattée cross surrounded by small rings (annelets) characterizes coins from Limousin (Saint-Martial, ref. Poey d’Avant catalogue no. 2293).
The Marche used as its device a pattée cross with triangular arms, flanked above and below by a small ring, to the right by a crescent, and to the left by a reversed crescent (Bd. 436 and PA 2609).
The deniers of Le Puy-en-Velay, most often struck with a “six-petaled flower-like” motif (Bd. 373), circulated throughout the Massif Central (12th–13th c., catalogues Boudeau Bd 372 var., PA 2231 49/6). The bishopric of Clermont shows a comparable cross with four petal-like arms, each quarter bearing a stem ending in a group of three small rings (Bd. 381, 2f).
The 19th and 20th centuries confirmed the taste of the Auvergne regions for floral motifs in jewelry (notably the “Rose of Velay”). However, the coins of the County of Riom also bore a pattée cross (PA 2261).
On the coins of Périgord, rings and bezants dominate (five rings in cross, Bd. 453); likewise on those of Quercy (concave pattée cross, three bezants in the first quarter, PA 3907, Bd. 778, 2f.) and Rouergue (slender pattée cross, one ring with a central dot in the second quarter, PA 22, Bd. 769).
Certain coins from Mende (Gévaudan) bear a narrowed or concave pattée cross from which four stems emerge, each ending in a dot or a ring — “linked points” (M. E. Demoré in Félix Remize, Saint Privat, martyr, Évêque du Gévaudan, Mende, 1910, p. 396 ff.).
Most of the coins of Viviers (Vivarais) bear, within the circular beading, a concave or narrowed pattée cross (PA 3864 pl. 86 no. 12, Bd. 762, 764).

The emblematic tree of the northern regions is the chestnut (Latin castanea sativa), also characteristic of Vivarais.

Cross of Limousin – Crescent of the Marche – Denier of Le Puy-en-Velay

A specifically northern Occitan emblem would combine the pattée cross found on all ancient coins of this area with characteristic marks of the coinage of its four main regions:
a crescent for the Marche, a small bezant for Limousin, the flower of Auvergne and Velay, and a ring (annelet) for Périgord.
Colors: gold, red, green.

C) The Occitan emblem represented here combines geographically the pattée cross surrounded by rings from Limousin, the flower of the bishops of Le Puy-en-Velay, and the cross of Languedoc.