Violence, towns and the Church : some southern French cases (XIIth - XIIth centuries) The spreading of the consulates and the claiming of liberties by the urban societies of the south of France is part of a more general movement of rejection of traditional powers, well known from the end of the XIth century. Inside cities, the use of violence in political conflicts is characteristic, visible in time and with different modalities in a large number of cities. But, with a violence characteristic of the communal world, which reveals the existence of internal divisions and which feeds on economic or social disparities, come to be added other types of violence, exacerbated in the south of France by the crusade, by the hardening of the pontifical theocracy, by the affirmation of princely and royal powers, by the explosion of politico-religious dissent and by the setting up of the Inquisition. It is proposed here to observe several cases of violence involving towns in Languedoc and Provence from the point of view of the urban elites, and not through the prism of the inquisitor, heretics or crusaders, as has already been done. This approach allows the observation of a milieu whose interests, strategies, and points of view lead one to confront the geopolitical movements beyond urban frontiers, whether local or regional. It allows one equally to reconstitute the totality of the complexity of the episodes of conflict, often interpreted in an excessively linear manner, such as the antagonisms setting the citizens of a town against the prelates, or, more generally, the clergy. It would in effect be to diminish consideration of the world of southern French towns as a homogeneous whole, opposed, from the XIIIth century, to the ecclesiastical or central powers. The urban elites, on the contrary, experience strong internal tensions which explode at the same time as a more general competition bursts out between universal powers.