Folquet de Marseille, 1150-1231, Provençal troubadour. He took orders, rose to be archbishop of Toulouse, and became notorious as the chief prosecutor in Provence of the Albigensian Crusade. Dante awarded him a place in Paradise.

Barthélemy, Auguste Marseille, 1796-1867, French poet. With his friend Joseph Méry he wrote several brilliant and popular political satires, including La Villéliade (1827), Napoléon en Égypte (1828), and Le Fils de l'homme (1829), a poem on Napoleon II, for which Barthélemy was briefly imprisoned. A political chameleon, he celebrated the Revolution of 1830 in L'Insurrection, only to attack the July Monarchy in his short-lived (1831-32) journal Némésis.

or Marseilles

City (pop., 1999: city, 797,486; metro. area, 1,349,772), southeastern France. One of the Mediterranean's major seaports and the second largest city in France, it is located on the Gulf of Lion, west of the French Riviera. It was settled by Greeks during the 7th century BC and was annexed by the Romans, who called it Massilia, in 49 BC. It declined along with the Roman Empire but revived as a commercial port during the Crusades era; it passed to the French crown in 1481. The plague of 1720 killed half of its population. In the 19th century the development of France's colonial empire added to the city's importance. Following World War II, rapid industrial growth took place around the port complex at Fos-sur-Mer and in suburbs such as Marignane and Vitrolles.

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