Comtat Venaissin

The Comtat Venaissin, the Comtat for short, was a papal enclave inside the Kingdom of France from 1274 to 1791, in today's Provence, between the Rhône, the Durance and Mont Ventoux, with an exclave at Valréas bought by John XXII, and it mostly surrounded the Principality of Orange. In 1096 it had belonged to Provence, passing to Raymond of Toulouse; its lord Alphonse of Poitiers left it to the Holy See on his death in 1271, and it became papal land in 1274, named for its old capital Venasque, which Carpentras replaced in 1320. When Joanna of Naples sold Avignon to the papacy in 1348, the two counties formed one geographical enclave while keeping separate governments. Its people paid no taxes and served no army, so life there beat life under the French crown, and it sheltered French Jews, whose Carpentras synagogue, raised in the fourteenth century, is the oldest in France. French kings coveted it and seized it in 1663, 1668 and 1768 to 1774 during quarrels of crown and church, until revolutionaries annexed it to France in 1791; the region still carries the name, though it means nothing in politics now.