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
Clermont-Ferrand Jerusalem from Muslim domination: Pope Urban II preached the crusade there in 1095, at the Second Council of Clermont. In 1120, following repeated crises between the counts of Auvergne and the bishops of Clermont and in order to counteract the clergy’s power, the counts founded the rival city of Montferrand on a mound next to the fortifications of Clermont, on the model of the new cities of the Midi springing up in the 12th and 13th centuries. Until the early modern period, the two remained separate cities: Clermont, an episcopal city; Montferrand, a comital one. Clermont became a royal city