Adhémar

The Adhémar were a noble house of the Valentinois on the lower Rhône, whose castles included Grignan, Montélimar and La Garde. Their first famous son was Adhémar de Monteil, bishop of Le Puy, whom Pope Urban II named apostolic legate of the First Crusade: he fought at Dorylaeum and carried the Holy Lance during the breakout at Antioch, before dying of illness in 1098.

The family later supplied many clerics. Aymar Adhémar de Monteil de La Garde, son of Hugues, lord of Montélimar, became bishop of Metz in 1327; he feuded with the dukes of Lorraine, built the fortress of Château-Salins and stood with Metz when Count Eberhard II of Württemberg besieged it in 1350.

He made peace with Lorraine in 1358 and died at Metz in 1361. The line continued through a female branch as the Castellane-Adhémar, counts of Grignan, into the seventeenth century.