Gaucelm Faidit came from Uzerche, in the Limousin. He seems to have been a wandering minstrel of gay and reckless habits, and to have been accompanied by a light-o'-love, Guil lelma Monja, who was the object of much satire and ridicule. Another troubadour, Raimbaut of Vaquieres, passed the greater part of his life at the same court of Montferrat ; he devoted him self to the Lady Beatrix, sister of the marquis. The most cele brated of the Italian troubadours was Sordello, born at Mantua, at the beginning of the 13th century, who owes his fame to the benevolence of later poets, from Dante to Robert Browning.
We have now mentioned the troubadours who were most famous in their own time, and on the whole modern criticism has been in unison with contemporary opinion. There are, however, still one or two names to be recorded. The English historian of the troubadours, Dr. Hueffer, gave great prominence to the writings of Guillem de Cabestanh (or Capestang). This was a knight of Roussillon, who made love to Seremonda, countess of Castel-Roussillon. The lady's husband slew him in a paroxysm of jealousy and, having cut out his heart, had it delicately cooked and served to his wife's dinner. When Seremonda had eaten her lover's heart, her husband told her what she had done, and she threw herself out of the window and was killed. Feeling grew so strong that the surrounding nobles, with Alfonso, king of Spain, at their head, hunted the murderer down and killed him. The bodies of the lady and the troubadour were buried side by side, in the cathedral of Perpignan, and became the objects of pil grimage.
The great cause of the decadence and ruin of the troubadours was the struggle between Rome and the heretics. This broke out into actual war in June 1209, when the northern barons, called to a crusade by Pope Innocent III., fell upon the Albigenses and pillaged Beziers and Carcassonne. Most of the protectors of the troubadours were, if not heretics, indulgent to the heretical party, and shared in their downfall. The poets, themselves, were not
immediately injured, but the darkness began to gather round them as the ruin of Languedoc became more and more complete, culminating with the siege of Toulouse in 1218. The greatest name of this period, which was the beginning of the end, is that of Peire Cardenal, of Le Puy. He was protected by Jacme I., king of Aragon, having apparently fled from Narbonne and then from Toulouse in order to escape from the armies of Simon de Montfort. He was the inventor of the moral or ethical sirventes; and the author of singularly outspoken satires against the clergy. Another troubadour of this time was Guillem Figueira, the son of a Toulouse tailor, an open heretic who attacked the papacy with extraordinary vigour, supported and protected by Raimon II. Figueira was answered, strophe by strophe, by a female troubadour, Gormonda of Montpellier. The ruin of the southern courts, most of which belonged to the conquered Albigensi party, continued to depress the troubadours, whose system was further disintegrated by the establishment of the Inquisition. The genial and cultured society of Provence and Languedoc sank rapidly into barbarism, and there was no welcome anywhere for secular poets. The last of the French troubadours was Guiraut Riquier (c. who was born at Narbonne, and found protection at the Spanish court of Alfonso X. the Learned. Riquier, in a sir vente of about 1285, gives pathetic expression to his sense of the gathering darkness, which makes it useless and almost unbecoming for a troubadour to practise his art, while of himself he mourn fully confesses: "Song should express joy, but sorrow oppresses me, and I have come into the world too late." Guiraut Riquier passed away about 1294, and left no successor behind him.