Ricaut Bonomel was a Knight Templar

Knights Templar

The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon , commonly known as the Knights Templar, the Order of the Temple or simply as Templars, were among the most famous of the Western Christian military orders...

 and troubadour

Troubadour

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

 in the Holy Land

Holy Land

The Holy Land is a term which in Judaism refers to the Kingdom of Israel as defined in the Tanakh. For Jews, the Land's identifiction of being Holy is defined in Judaism by its differentiation from other lands by virtue of the practice of Judaism often possible only in the Land of Israel...

 around the time of the Eighth Crusade

Eighth Crusade

The Eighth Crusade was a crusade launched by Louis IX, King of France, in 1270. The Eighth Crusade is sometimes counted as the Seventh, if the Fifth and Sixth Crusades of Frederick II are counted as a single crusade...

. He was an outspoken critic of Charles I of Naples and his attempts to secure a throne in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, and of the Papal policy which diverted funds intended for the Holy Land to other purposes. He was also a vocal critic of the European clergy who did not preach crusading.

Bonomel's dispute was not so much with the Italian crusades in general, but with the siphoning off of monies paid for the commuting of crusader vows to fund Angevin

Capetian House of Anjou

The Capetian House of Anjou, also known as the House of Anjou-Sicily and House of Anjou-Naples, was a royal house and cadet branch of the direct House of Capet. Founded by Charles I of Sicily, a son of Louis VIII of France, the Capetian king first ruled the Kingdom of Sicily during the 13th century...

 ambitions in Italy when they should have been going to the Holy Land. His sole surviving song, Ir'e dolors s'es dins mon cor asseza, a sirventes

Sirventes

The sirventes or serventes is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry used by the troubadours. In early Catalan it became a sirventesch and was imported into that language in the fourteenth century, where it developed into a unique didactic/moralistic type...

, is a contrafactum

Contrafactum

In vocal music, contrafactum refers to "the substitution of one text for another without substantial change to the music"....

 of a canso

Canso (song)

The canso is a song style used by the troubadours. It consists of three parts. The first stanza is the exordium, where the composer explains his purpose. The main body of the song occurs in the following stanzas, and usually draw out a variety of relationships with the exordium. The canso can end...

by Peirol

Peirol

Peirol or PeiròlIn Occitan, peir means "stone" and -ol is a diminutive suffix, the name Peirol being understood as the equivalent of "Little Stone" but also "Petit Pierre" or "Pierrot" ; however, "peiròl" also meant a cauldron or a stove...

, M'entencio ai tot'en un vers mesa. Ricaut demonstrates a skilled portrayal of the emotions of frustration and anger. He employs reverse psychology

Reverse psychology

Reverse psychology is a technique involving the advocacy of a belief or behavior that is opposite to the one desired, with the expectation that this approach will encourage the subject of the persuasion to do what actually is desired: the opposite of what is suggested...

 in an effort to stoke fervour for crusading: the Holy Land is lost, Christianity is defeated, God is on the side of the pagans. It is a conscious play on the assumption implicit in many chansons de geste that divine approval is indicated by success on the battlefield.

. . . crotz ni lei no.m val ni guia contr'als fels Turcs, cui Dieus maldia; anz es semblans, segon qu'hom pot vezer, c'al dan de nos los vol Dieus mantener —————————— Lo papa faid de perdon gran largueza contr'als Lombartz, a Carl'e als Frances e sai, ves nos, en mostra gran cobeza que nostra crotz perdona per tornes. E qui vol camjar romaria per la guerra de Lombardia nostre legatza lor en dara poder, qu'il vendon Dieu e.l perdona per aver.

. . . neither the cross nor the Christian faith help me or protect me from the wicked Turks whom God curses. It thus seems, as anyone can see, that God wishes to support them to our detriment. —————————— The pope is generous in his distribution of pardons given to Charles and the French to fight the Lombards, while he displays great miserliness toward us here, for he forgives the taking of the cross in exchange for payments in livres tournois. And whoever wishes to exchange his pilgrimage for war in Lombardy will be given the go-ahead by our legate, for they sell God and pardon for money.

The poem can be dated to between the capture of the Hospitaller castle of Arsuf

Arsuf

Arsuf also known as Arsur or Apollonia, was an ancient city and fortress located in Israel, about 15 kilometres north of modern Tel Aviv, on a cliff above the Mediterranean Sea. The city site, Tel Arsuf, was intensively excavated from 1994...

 to Baibars

Baibars

Baibars or Baybars , nicknamed Abu l-Futuh , was a Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. He was one of the commanders of the forces which inflicted a devastating defeat on the Seventh Crusade of King Louis IX of France and he led the vanguard of the Egyptian army at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, which marked...

on 29 April 1265 and that of the Templar fortress at Saphet in late July 1266.

External links

• Ricaut Bonomel, Ir'e dolors s'es dins mon cor asseza, translated by Helen Nicholson, at The ORB: On-Line Reference Book for Medieval Studies.