Bernard de Castanet
Bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Albi
Bernard de Castanet (c. 1240 – 14 August 1317) was a French lawyer, judge, diplomat, bishop and cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church.
Castanet was not a Dominican, though he had an excellent relationship with the order of the Preachers and occasionally exercised the office of inquisition as a bishop of Albi and a representative of the inquisitor of Carcassonne.
Early life
Castanet was probably born in or next to Montpellier, on the Mediterranean coast of the Midi, and obtained a law degree from the University of Montpellier. By January 1266 he was a Professor of Civil Law, Papal Chaplain, and an Auditor Causarum at the Papal Court, which at that time was settled in Perugia. In February 1267 he was a nuntius of the Pope, and had an appointment as Canon in the Cathedral Chapter of Orléans; during a legation in Lombardy he was ordered to find a suitable person to be Abbot of the monastery of S. Thomas at Cremona.
He conducted diplomacy for the Church in Italy and Germany. In April 1268 he was sent to King Louis IX of France, to whom he would explain why the legatio to Germany (in Teutoniam) had been postponed for so long. He was also sent to King James of Aragon, to compose matters in the struggle between the Bishop of Maguelonne and the law faculty of Montpellier over the right to grant licentiates. In 1268, while he was papal legate in the Rhineland, he necessarily became involved in the case of Archbishop-elect Henry, who had been accused before Pope Urban IV of simony, sacrilege, perjury, homicide, and other various crimes, and was named Administrator of the Diocese of Trier.
The public source identifies “Bernard de Castanet” as bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Albi. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Bernard, Castanet and Bishop.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q361855. VIAF identifies the subject as 305315981. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1240, 1317, 1266 and 1267.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bernard de Castanet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.