On sian trenchat mil escut,
Elm e ausberc e alcoto
E perponh faussat e romput.
The count he sent to me one day
Sir Arramon Luc d'Esparro;
A song I was to make him—so
That thousand shields with ring and stay
And mail and armour of the foe
To fragments shivered in dismay.
The poetry of the Provençal troubadours had already passed its prime when, in the other European countries, lyric art was still in its infancy. The crusade against the Albigenses (1209), undertaken by Gregory VII. with the object of killing the new spirit and the new secular civilisation, drove many troubadours to Italy, among others the famous Sordello, who is mentioned in Dante's Divine Comedy. Others went to Sicily, to the court of the art-loving Emperor, Frederick II., where a distinct, but not very original, poetic art arose. In Italy the perfection of mediaeval poetry was reached in the "sweet, new style" immortalised by Dante. But not only the great Italians, the trouveres from the North of France also, and—to some extent—the German minnesingers, were influenced by the art, and above all, the ideals which had originated in Provence. The poetry of the earliest Rhenish and Austrian minnesingers closely follows German folklore, and the songs of Dietmar of Aist and others are still quite innocent of any trace of neo-Latin characteristics. But very soon the technical perfection of the Provençal poetry and the Provençal ideal of courtesy and love, famous all over Europe, strongly influenced the German mind.