Peire Cardenal was the most important poet of the
Albigensian period in southern France. He is best
known for his moral SIRVENTES, many of which are
bitter satires and attacks on the clergy and the
French nobility.
Tradition says that Peire was the child of a
noble family from Puy-en-Velay, and that he was
educated for a career in the church but chose instead to become a TROUBADOUR. His chief patrons
were Raimon VI and Raimon VII, counts of
Toulouse and leaders of the Provençal resistance
to the invaders from the north during the
Albigensian Crusade.
Pope INNOCENT III had called for the Crusade
against the Catharist heretics in the Languedoc region in 1209, a cause that was taken up enthusiastically by northern French nobility under the
command of Simon de Montfort. Montfort destroyed the city of Béziers in 1209, and, with the
support of the clergy, slaughtered the entire population. He defeated the combined armies of Peire’s
patron Raimon VI and Pedro II of Aragon at
Muret in 1213 and occupied Toulouse itself in
1215. When Raimon took back the city in 1217,
Montfort laid siege to the city.
Peire is said to have fled from Narbonne and later
from Toulouse to escape Montfort’s armies. For
awhile he was under the protection of Jacme I, king
of Aragon, after Pedro fell at Muset. The crusade
ended in Languedoc when Raimon VII surrendered
in 1229, virtually ceding the entire region of Occitan
to the French king. The Catharist heresy continued,
however, for the rest of the century until the Inquisition ultimately succeeded in wiping it out.
Peire was never a heretic, but was rather deeply
devout. His song to Mary, the first such poem in
Provençal, is a very orthodox praise of the Virgin.
But he did clearly resent the war, the cruelty of the
French nobility, and the venality of the clergy and
monastic orders during and after the crusade. One
of his poems begins:
Buzzards and vultures
do not smell out stinking flesh
as fast as clerics and preachers
smell out the rich.
(Goldin 1973, 301, ll. 1–4)
Later in the same poem, he declares:
Frenchmen and clerics win praise
for their felonies, because they succeed;
usurers and traitors
take the whole world that way,
(Goldin 1973, 301, ll. 9–12)
In his moral outrage and his righteous vituperation, Peire is a worthy heir to the troubadour tradition begun by MARCABRU. Tradition says he lived
to be nearly 100 years old. Ninety-six of his songs
are still extant.
Bibliography
Goldin, Frederick, ed. and trans. Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouverès: An Anthology and a History.
Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1973.
Wilhelm, James J. Seven Troubadours: The Creators of
Modern Verse. University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1970.