Bernard II, Count of Besalú III, whose precise relationship with the previous counts of Besalú has not been discovered. Having taken the cross to join the First Crusade after the Council of Clermont (1095), Bernard was nonetheless counselled by Pope Urban II to instead remain in Spain and fight the "Reconquista". In a letter that must be dated between January 1096 and July 1099, Urban wrote to Bernard, his brother Wifred, Hugh II of Empúries, Giselbert II of Roussillon, and their followers, urging the recovery of the city of Tarragona and its vacant archdiocese. In 1097 Bernard ceded the lordship of Olot to Ripoll. In
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Clermont Aquitaine by Pope John XXII, resulting in the creation of the diocese of Saint-Flour. In 1822, in the reorganization of French dioceses by Pope Pius VII, following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, the diocese of Clermont lost the Bourbonnais, on account of the erection of the diocese of Moulins. Since the reorganization in 2002 by Pope John Paul II, there are now four dioceses in the Province of Clermont: Clermont, Le Puy-en-Velay, Moulins, and Saint-Flour. The first Bishop of Clermont was Saint Austremonius (Stramonius). According to local tradition he was one of the seventy-two Disciples of Christ, by birth