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The first is a sirventes composed by Sordello on the death of his patron Blacatz in 1237. He invites to the funeral feast the Roman emperor, Frederick II., the kings of France, England and Aragon, the counts of Champagne, Toulouse and Provence. They are urged to eat of the dead man's heart, that they may gain some tincture of his courage and nobility.
It was probably invented to explain the hostility on Bertran's part which dated from the wars between Alfonso and Raimon V. of Toulouse. This animosity was trumpeted forth in two lampooning sirventes criticising the public policy and the private life of the Spanish King. His accusations of meanness and trickery seem to be based on nothing more reliable than current gossip.
The point is that Dante in the Purgatorio represents Sordello as showing to Virgil the souls of those who, while singing Salve Regina, ask to be pardoned for their neglect of duty and among them appear the rulers whom Sordello had satirised in his sirventes. Hence it seems that it was this composition which attracted Dante's attention to Sordello.
He had composed a vigorous sirventes urging Christian men to join the movement, but he does not himself show any great enthusiasm to take the cross. "I would rather, if it please you, die in that land than live and remain here. So also in the letter quoted above.
A discordant note is raised by Bertran de Born, who composed some violent sirventes against Alfonso; he was actuated by political motives: Alfonso had joined the King of England in his operations against Raimon V. of Toulouse and Bertran's other allies and had been present at the capture of Bertran's castle of Hautefort in 1183.
His advice was relished, and they invited their cousin, named Elias, a comic poet, to travel with them. Now Guy, the youngest of the brothers, and Ebles the eldest, had a pretty gift at poetry, and the second brother, Pierre, had a pleasant pipe, so they agreed that Ebles should write sirventes, and Guy chansons, and that Pierre should sing them.
No less vigorous are his invectives against the rich and the social evils of his time. The tone of regret that underlies Guiraut de Bornelh's satires in this theme is replaced in Peire Cardenal's sirventes by a burning sense of injustice. Covetousness, the love of pleasure, injustice to the poor, treachery and deceit and moral laxity are among his favourite themes.
Guiraut's moral sirventes are reprobations of the decadence of his age. He saw a gradual decline of the true spirit of chivalry. The great lords were fonder of war and pillage than of poetry and courtly state. He had himself suffered from the change, if his biographer is to be believed; the Viscount of Limoges had plundered and burnt his house.
He was no singer of love and the three of his chansos that remain are inspired by the misogyny that we have noted in the case of Marcabrun. Peire Cardenal's strength lay in the moral sirventes: he was a fiery soul, aroused to wrath by the sight of injustice and immorality and the special objects of his animosity are the Roman Catholic clergy and the high nobles.
The latter was a wanderer and spent some time in Castile at the court of Alfonso X. Lanfranc Cigala was a judge in his native town: from him survive a sirventes against Bonifacio III. of Montferrat who had abandoned the cause of Frederick II., crusade poems and a sirventes against the obscure style.
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