Sunifred I, IV comte d'Urgell

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunifredo_I

http://www.friesian.com/lorraine.htm#provence

http://genealogics.org/getperson.php?personID=I00120319&tree=LEO

Count of Urgell and La Cerdanya (834-848), of Barcelona, Girona, Narbonne and other counties in Septimania (844-848). According to Abadal's research, he was the son of Count Bello of Carcassonne and brother of Oliba I, Bello's successor to Carcassonne. These family ties explain the future good relations between the House of Barcelona, to which Sunifred belonged, and the House of Carcassonne, and the traditional goodwill of the Catalan counts towards the abbey of La Grassa in Carcassonne. As with other members of the Carcassonne family, he was renowned for his adherence and loyalty to the Carolingian dynasty. He was rewarded for his loyalty to his own ancestry and especially to that of his brother Oliba I, by Louis I the Pious, who awarded him the counties of L'Urgell and La Cerdanya in 834. As count of these districts, in 842, he barred the way, possibly at the canyons of the caves of Ribes, of a Saracen army, sent by Emir 'Abd al-Rahmān II, under the command of General 'Abd al-Wāhid ibn Yazid and Musà ibn Musà, which had crossed central Catalonia and intended to attack Narbonne by crossing the Pyrenees via La Cerdanya. The attackers were forced to retreat and their failure marked the last Muslim attempt to cross into France. From his years as Count of La Cerdanya and at the annexed pagus of El Conflent, two testimonies from later documents have been conserved. From one, it is known that on an unknown date, he took the village of Sedret de La Cerdenya, at the entrance to the Querol valley, from a certain Guitiscle and gave it over to a man named Isarn. The other states that, after receiving the hamlet of Mata, of Prada, in a royal precept, he gave it over to the monastery of La Grassa. Count Sunifred remained loyal to King Charles the Bald as he was loyal to Louis I the Pious years before, just at the dark time of the treachery of the omnipotent Marquis Bernat of Septimania. He was rewarded for this legitimist loyalty when the king captured and executed the traitor Bernat in the spring of 844. It appears that it was at this moment when Sunifred was invested by Charles the Bald with the conglomerate of the counties that Bernat had formed on both sides of the Pyrenees: those of Barcelona and Girona in Catalonia, and those of Narbonne, Besiers and other satellites in Septimania. The performance of Sunifred as Count of Barcelona is not well documented, but it may be assumed he did act as count, as Charles the Bald made him Marquis in a precept of May 844. Just as his spectacular rise in the governing of the March occurred following the deposition of Bernat of Septimania, his disappearance from the political scene coincided with the revolt of Guillem, the son of the executed Bernat. It is thought that Sunifred, and possibly Sunyer I of Empúries-Rosselló, his supposed brother, both legitimist leaders in Catalonia, died a violent death during Guillem's assault, who took Barcelona in 848. Sunifred was married to Ermessenda.