"And when you went to Soissons to take the cross, I did not intend—may God forgive me—to cross the sea, but to increase your fame I took the cross and made confession." The count lost his life, as Villehardouin relates, in a skirmish with the Bulgarians in 1207. Raimbaut de Vaqueiras probably fell at the same time.
This is enough to show that troubadours who came to Italy could make the country a second home, and find as much occupation in love, war and politics as they had ever found in Southern France. Aimeric de Pegulhan, Gaucelm Faidit, Uc de Saint-Circ,[31] the author of some troubadour biographies, were among the best known of those who visited Italy. The last named is known to have visited Pisa and another troubadour of minor importance, Guillem de la Tor, was in Florence. Thus the visits of the troubadours were by no means confined to the north.
It was, therefore, natural that Italians should imitate the troubadours whose art proved so successful at Italian courts and some thirty Italian troubadours are known to us. Count Manfred II. and Albert, the Marquis of Malaspina, engaged in tensos with Peire Vidal and Raimbaut de Vaqueiras respectively and are the first Italians known to have written in Provençal. Genoa produced a number of Italian troubadours of whom the best were Lanfranc Cigala and Bonifacio Calvo. 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. The Venetian Bartolomeo Zorzi was a prisoner at Genoa from 1266 to 1273, having been captured by the Genoese. The troubadour of Genoa, Bonifacio Calvo, had written a vigorous invective against Venice, to which the captive troubadour composed an equally strong reply addressed to Bonifacio Calvo; the latter sought him out and the two troubadours became friends. The most famous, however, of the Italian troubadours is certainly Sordello.
There is much uncertainty concerning the facts of Sordello's life; he was born at Goito, near Mantua, and was of noble family. His name is not to be derived from sordidus, but from Surdus, a not uncommon patronymic in North Italy during the thirteenth century. Of his early years nothing is known: at some period of his youth he entered the court of Count Ricciardo di san Bonifazio, the lord of Verona, where he fell in love with his master's wife, Cunizza da Romano (Dante, Par. ix. 32), and eloped with her. The details of this affair are entirely obscure; according to some commentators, it was the final outcome of a family feud, while others assert that the elopement took place with the connivance of Cunizza's brother, the notorious Ezzelino III. (Inf. xii. 110): the date is approximately 1225. At any rate, Sordello and Cunizza betook themselves to Ezzelino's court. Then, according to the Provençal biography, follows his secret marriage with Otta, and his flight from Treviso, to escape the vengeance of her angry relatives. He thus left Italy about the year 1229, and retired to the South of France, where he visited the courts of Provence, Toulouse, Roussillon, penetrating also into Castile. A chief authority for these wanderings is the troubadour Peire Bremen Ricas Novas, whose sirventes speaks of him as being in Spain at the court of the king of Leon: this was Alfonso IX., who died in the year 1230. He also visited Portugal, but for this no date can be assigned. Allusions in his poems show that he was in Provence before 1235: about ten years later we find him at the court of the Countess Beatrice (Par. vi. 133), daughter of Raimon Berengar, Count of Provence, and wife of Charles I. of Anjou. Beatrice may have been the subject of several of his love poems: but the "senhal" Restaur and Agradiva, which conceal the names possibly of more than one lady cannot be identified. From 1252-1265 his name appears in several Angevin treaties and records, coupled with the names of other well-known nobles, and he would appear to have held a high place in Charles' esteem. It is uncertain whether he took part in the first crusade of St Louis, in 1248-1251, at which Charles was present: but he followed Charles on his Italian expedition against Manfred in 1265, and seems to have been captured by the Ghibellines before reaching Naples. At any rate, he was a prisoner at Novara in September 1266; Pope Clement IV. induced Charles to ransom him, and in 1269, as a recompense for his services, he received five castles in the Abruzzi, near the river Pescara: shortly afterwards he died. The circumstances of his death are unknown, but from the fact that he is placed by Dante among those who were cut off before they could repent it has been conjectured that he came to a violent end.
Sordello's restless life and his intrigues could be exemplified from the history of many another troubadour and neither his career nor his poetry, which with two exceptions, is of no special originality, seems to justify the portrait drawn of him by Dante; while Browning's famous poem has nothing in common with the troubadour except the name. These exceptions, however, are notable. 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. Each is invited in a separate stanza in which the poet reprehends the failings of the several potentates.
Del rey engles me platz, quar es paue coratjos,
Que manje pro del cor, pueys er valens e bos,
E cobrara la terra, per que viu de pretz blos,
Que·l tol lo reys de Fransa, quar lo sap nualhos;
E lo reys castelas tanh qu'en manje per dos,