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 Diocese of Le Puy-en-Velay to the Bishops of Le Puy, also granting them the right, until then reserved to archbishops exclusively of wearing the pallium. "Nowhere", he said in his Bull, "does the Blessed Virgin receive a more special and more filial worship." It was from Le Puy that Pope Urban II dated (15 August 1095) the Letters Apostolic convoking the Council of Clermont, and it was a canon of Le Puy, Raymond d'Aiguilles, chaplain to the Count of Toulouse, who wrote the history of the crusade. Pope Gelasius II, Pope Callistus II, Pope Innocent II and Pope Alexander III visited Le Puy to