1.
Ramon Berenguer IV, Count of Provence
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Ramon Berenguer IV or V, Count of Provence and Forcalquier, was the son of Alfonso II of Provence and Garsenda de Sabran, heiress of Forcalquier. He was the first Count of Provence to live in the county in more than one hundred years, after his fathers death, Ramon was imprisoned in the castle of Monzón, in Aragon until he was able to escape in 1219 and claim his inheritance. He was a powerful and energetic ruler who added Forcalquier to his domain and he and his wife were known for their support of troubadors, always having some around the court. He was known for his generosity, though his income did not always keep up and he wrote laws prohibiting nobles from performing menial work, such as farming or heavy labor. Ramon had many disputes with his neighbors, the Counts of Toulouse. In 1226, Ramon began to reassert his right to rule in Marseille, the citizens there initially sought the help of Ramons father-in-law Thomas, Count of Savoy in his role as imperial vicar. However, they sought the help of Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse. In 1228, Ramon supported his father-in-law in a conflict against Turin. This small war was one of many intended to more firmly establish control over trade from Italy into France. While the Albigensian Crusade worked in his favor against Toulouse, Ramon was concerned that its resolution in the Treaty of Paris left him in a precarious position, Raymond turned his troops from fighting France to attempting to claim lands from Provence. When Blanche of Castile sent her knight to both Toulouse and Provence in 1233, Ramon entertained him lavishly, and the knight left well impressed by both the count and his eldest daughter, Margaret. Soon after, Blanche negotiated the marriage between Margaret and her son, Louis, with a dowry of ten thousand silver marks, Ramon had to get contributions from allies for a portion, and had to pledge several of his castles to cover the rest. Ramon and Beatrice travelled with their daughter to Lyon in 1234 to sign the marriage treaty, shortly after, William began negotiating on Ramons behalf with Henry III of England to marry his daughter Eleanor. Henry sent his own knight to Provence early in 1235, and again Ramon, Henry wrote to William on June 22 that he was very interested, and sent a delegation to negotiate the marriage in October. Henry was seeking a dowry of up to twenty thousand marks to help offset the dowry he had just paid for his sister. However, he had drafted seven different versions of the contract, with different amounts for the dowry. Ramon shrewdly negotiated for that option, offering as consolation a promise to leave her ten thousand marks when he died, in 1238, Ramon joined his brother-in-law, Amadeus IV at the court of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor in Turin. Frederick was gathering forces to more control in Italy
2.
Troubadour
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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, the troubadour school or tradition began in the late 11th century in Occitania, but it subsequently spread into Italy and Spain. Under the influence of the troubadours, related movements sprang up throughout Europe, the Minnesang in Germany, trovadorismo in Galicia and Portugal, dante Alighieri in his De vulgari eloquentia defined the troubadour lyric as fictio rethorica musicaque poita, rhetorical, musical, and poetical fiction. The texts of troubadour songs deal mainly with themes of chivalry, most were metaphysical, intellectual, and formulaic. Many were humorous or vulgar satires, works can be grouped into three styles, the trobar leu, trobar ric, and trobar clus. The oldest mention of the word troubadour as trobadors is found in a 12th-century Occitan text by Cercamon. The English word troubadour is a rendition from a French word first recorded in 1575 in an historical context to mean langue doc poet at the court in the 12th and 13th century. The French word is borrowed itself from the Occitan word trobador and this recreated form is deduced from the Latin root tropus, meaning a trope and the various meanings of the Old Occitan related words. In turn, the Latin word derives ultimately from Greek τρόπος, meaning turn, B Intervocal Latin shifted regularly to in Occitan. The Latin suffix -ātor, -atōris explains the Occitan suffix, according to its declension and accentuation, Gallo-Romance *TROPĀTOR > Occitan trobaire, there is an alternative theory to explain the meaning of trobar as “to compose, to discuss, to invent. It has the support of some historians, specialists of literature, According to them, the Arabic word ṭaraba “song could partly be the etymon of the verb trobar. Another Arabic root had already been proposed before, Ḍ-R-B “strike and they entertain the possibility that the nearly homophonous Ḍ-R-B root may have contributed to the sense of the newly coined Romance verb trobar. In archaic and classical poetry, the word is only used in a mocking sense. Cercamon writes, Ist trobador, entre ver e mentir, Afollon drutz e molhers et espos, Peire dAlvernha also begins his famous mockery of contemporary authors cantarai daquest trobadors, after which he proceeds to explain why none of them is worth anything. When referring to themselves seriously, troubadours almost invariably use the word chantaire, the early study of the troubadours focused intensely on their origins. No academic consensus was achieved in the area. In his study, Lévi-Provençal is said to have found four Arabo-Hispanic verses nearly or completely recopied in Williams manuscript, trend admitted that the troubadours derived their sense of form and even the subject matter of their poetry from the Andalusian Muslims. Meg Bogin, American translator of the trobairitz, held this hypothesis, to such a strong and multi-faceted tradition of love literature and song nearby must be added the presence of the Toledo School of Translators starting in 1126
3.
Aix-en-Provence
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Aix-en-Provence, or simply Aix, is a city-commune in the south of France, about 30 km north of Marseille. It is in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte dAzur, in the department of Bouches-du-Rhône, the population of Aix numbers approximately 143,000. Its inhabitants are called Aixois or, less commonly, Aquisextains, Aix was founded in 123 BC by the Roman consul Sextius Calvinus, who gave his name to its springs, following the destruction of the nearby Gallic oppidum at Entremont. In the 4th century AD it became the metropolis of Narbonensis Secunda and it was occupied by the Visigoths in 477. In the succeeding century, the town was plundered by the Franks and Lombards. Aix passed to the crown of France with the rest of Provence in 1487, and in 1501 Louis XII established there the parliament of Provence, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the town was the seat of the Intendance of Provence. Current archeological excavations in the Ville des Tours, a suburb of Aix, have unearthed the remains of a Roman amphitheatre. The city slopes gently north to south and the Montagne Sainte-Victoire can easily be seen to the east. Aixs position in the south of France gives it a warm climate and it has an average January temperature of 5 °C and a July average of 23 °C. It has an average of 300 days of sunshine and only 91 days of rain, while it is partially protected from the Mistral, Aix still occasionally experiences the cooler and gusty conditions it brings. Unlike most of France which has a climate, Aix-en-Provence has a Mediterranean climate. The Cours Mirabeau is a thoroughfare, planted with double rows of plane-trees, bordered by fine houses. It follows the line of the old city wall and divides the town into two sections. The new town extends to the south and west, the old town, with its narrow, along this avenue, which is lined on one side with banks and on the other with cafés, is the Deux Garçons, the most famous brasserie in Aix. Built in 1792, it has been frequented by the likes of Paul Cézanne, Émile Zola, the Cathedral of the Holy Saviour is situated to the north in the medieval part of Aix. The archbishops palace and a Romanesque cloister adjoin the cathedral on its south side, the Archbishopric of Aix is now shared with Arles. Among its other public institutions, Aix also has the second most important Appeal Court outside of Paris, the Hôtel de Ville, a building in the classical style of the middle of the 17th century, looks onto a picturesque square. It contains some fine woodwork and tapestries, at its side rises a handsome clock-tower erected in 1510
4.
County of Toulouse
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The County of Toulouse was a territory in southern France consisting of the city of Toulouse and its environs, ruled by the Count of Toulouse from the late 9th century until the late 13th century. The territory is the center of a known as Occitania. Under the Carolingians, counts and dukes were appointed by the royal court, the Counts of Toulouse ruled the city of Toulouse and its surrounding county from the late 9th century until 1271. At times, the Counts of Toulouse or family members were also Counts of Quercy, Rouergue, Albi, and Nîmes, the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis fell to the Visigothic Kingdom in the 5th century. Septimania within the Frankish realm would become known as Gothia or Marca Gothica by the end of the 9th century, Pippin died in 768 and was followed by his sons Charlemagne and Carloman. Because of this event, Hunald, son of the late Duke Waifer, Charlemagne soon intervened and defeated him. In 771, Carloman died and Charlemagne was left as the ruler of the Frankish realm. In 778, Charlemagne led his army into Spain against the Arabs, on his way back the famous event of Roncesvalles occurred, Charlemagnes rear-guard was attacked in the pass of the same name by some Basque warriors. This led him to realize that Frankish power in Gascony and Aquitaine was still feeble, and that the local populations were not entirely loyal to the Franks. In 781, he set up the Kingdom of Aquitaine, comprising the whole of Aquitaine plus the Mediterranean coast from Narbonne to Nîmes, other such sub-kingdoms were created inside the wider Carolingian empire in places such as Bavaria or Lombardy. They were meant to ensure the loyalty of local populations in territories freshly conquered, crowns were given to the sons of Charlemagne. General supervision of this Basque frontier seems to have placed in the hands of Chorson. Toulouse was a major Carolingian military stronghold close to Muslim Spain, military campaigns against the Muslims were launched from Toulouse almost every year during Charlemagnes reign. Barcelona was conquered in 801, as well as a part of Catalonia. Together with the areas of Aragon and Navarre along the Pyrenees. In 814, Charlemagne died, and his surviving son was Louis, king of Aquitaine. The Kingdom of Aquitaine was transmitted to Pippin, the son of Louis the Pious. Gothia was detached from the Kingdom of Aquitaine and administered directly by the emperor, in 823, Charles the Bald was born from the second wife of Louis the Pious
5.
Henry III of England
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Henry III, also known as Henry of Winchester, was King of England, Lord of Ireland and Duke of Aquitaine from 1216 until his death. The son of King John and Isabella of Angoulême, Henry assumed the throne when he was nine in the middle of the First Barons War. Cardinal Guala declared the war against the barons to be a religious crusade and Henrys forces, led by William Marshal, defeated the rebels at the battles of Lincoln. Henry promised to abide by the Great Charter of 1225, which limited royal power and his early rule was dominated first by Hubert de Burgh and then Peter des Roches, who re-established royal authority after the war. In 1230 the King attempted to reconquer the provinces of France that had belonged to his father. A revolt led by William Marshals son, Richard, broke out in 1232, following the revolt, Henry ruled England personally, rather than governing through senior ministers. He travelled less than previous monarchs, investing heavily in a handful of his palaces and castles. He married Eleanor of Provence, with whom he had five children, in a fresh attempt to reclaim his familys lands in France, he invaded Poitou in 1242, leading to the disastrous Battle of Taillebourg. After this, Henry relied on diplomacy, cultivating an alliance with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II. Henry supported his brother Richard in his bid to become King of the Romans in 1256 and he planned to go on crusade to the Levant, but was prevented from doing so by rebellions in Gascony. The baronial regime collapsed but Henry was unable to reform a stable government, in 1263 one of the more radical barons, Simon de Montfort, seized power, resulting in the Second Barons War. Henry persuaded Louis to support his cause and mobilised an army, the Battle of Lewes occurred in 1264, where Henry was defeated and taken prisoner. Henrys eldest son, Edward, escaped captivity to defeat de Montfort at the Battle of Evesham the following year. Henry initially enacted a harsh revenge on the rebels, but was persuaded by the Church to mollify his policies through the Dictum of Kenilworth. Reconstruction was slow and Henry had to acquiesce to various measures, including suppression of the Jews, to maintain baronial. Henry died in 1272, leaving Edward as his successor and he was buried in Westminster Abbey, which he had rebuilt in the second half of his reign, and was moved to his current tomb in 1290. Some miracles were declared after his death but he was not canonised, Henry was born in Winchester Castle on 1 October 1207. He was the eldest son of King John and Isabella of Angoulême, little is known of Henrys early life
6.
Crown of Aragon
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Put in contemporary terms, it has sometimes been considered that the different lands of the Crown of Aragon functioned more as a confederation than as a single kingdom. In this sense, the larger Crown of Aragon must not be confused with one of its constituent parts, formally, the political center of the Crown of Aragon was Zaragoza, where kings were crowned at La Seo Cathedral. The de facto capital and leading cultural, administrative and economic centre of the Crown of Aragon was Barcelona followed by Valencia, finally, Palma was an additional important city and seaport. For brief periods the Crown of Aragon also controlled Montpellier, Provence, Corsica, the countries that are today known as Spain and Portugal spent the Middle Ages after 722 in an intermittent struggle called the Reconquista. This struggle pitted the northern Christian kingdoms against the Islamic taifa petty kingdoms of the South, in the Late Middle Ages, the expansion of the Aragonese Crown southwards met with the Castilian advance eastward in the region of Murcia. Afterward, the Aragonese Crown focused on the Mediterranean, acting as far as Greece and Barbary, whereas Portugal, mercenaries from the territories in the Crown, known as almogàvers participated in the creation of this Mediterranean empire, and later found employment in countries all across southern Europe. The Crown of Aragon has been considered by some as an empire which ruled in the Mediterranean for hundreds of years and it was indeed, at its height, one of the major powers in Europe. However, its different territories were connected through the person of the monarch. A modern historian, Juan de Contreras y Lopez de Ayala, Marqués de Lozoya described the Crown of Aragon as being more like a confederacy than a centralised kingdom, let alone an empire. Nor did official documents refer to it as an empire, instead. This union respected the institutions and parliaments of both territories. This was due to the loss of Catalan influence, the renunciation of the family rights of the counts of Barcelona in Occitania. Petronillas father King Ramiro, The Monk who was raised in the Saint Pons de Thomières Monastery and his brothers Peter I and Alfonso I El Batallador had bravely fought against Castile for hegemony in the Iberian peninsula. After the death of Alfonso I, the Aragonese nobility that campaigned close him feared being overwhelmed by the influence of Castile, and so, Ramiro was forced to leave his monastic life and proclaim himself King of Aragon. He married Agnes, sister of the Duke of Aquitaine and betrothed his daughter to Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona. The wedding agreement provided Raymond Berengar IV the title of Princeps Aragonum and Dominator Aragonenesis and kept the title, Raymond Berengar IV, the first ruler of the united dynasty, called himself Count of Barcelona and Prince of Aragon. Alfonso II inherited two realms and with them, two different expansion processes, the House of Jiménez looked south in a battle against Castile for the control of the Mediterranean coast in the Iberian peninsula. The House of Barcelona looked north to its origins, Occitania, soon, Alfonso II of Aragon and Barcelona committed himself to conquer Valencia as the Aragonese nobility demanded
7.
Sisteron
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Sisteron is a commune in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte dAzur region in southeastern France. Sisteron is situated on the banks of the River Durance just after the confluence of the rivers Buëch and it is sometimes called the Gateway to Provence because it is in a narrow gap between two long mountain ridges. It is 135 km from Marseille, also 135 km from Grenoble,180 km from Nice and 40 km from Forcalquier, Sisteron has been inhabited for 4000 years. The Romans used the route through Sisteron as can be shown by a Latin inscription in the rocks near the road to Authon and it escaped the barbarian invasions after the fall of Rome, but was ravaged by the Saracens. It was first fortified by the Counts of Forcalquier in the 11th century, in 1483 during the reign of Louis XI, Sisteron re-joined the kingdom of France. Around this time there were seven plagues that killed two thirds of the population, between 1562 and 1594 the town and its citadelle was fought over by Protestants and Catholics including two sieges. During this time the walls of the town were built, the plague returned in 1630, and typhus in 1744, killing many of the towns population. During the French Revolution the town remained Royalist, consequently, when Napoleon arrived on his march north after his escape from Elba in 1815, the town ignored him and let him through. On 15 August 1944 French B-26 Marauder bombers and American B-17 Flying Fortresses of the 42nd Bomber Wing tried to destroy the railway bridge, the weather was unfavorable and the bridges were not destroyed. A bomber during a manoeuvre to avoid a collision accidentally dropped bombs on the town, including a full church, causing about 100 fatalities. On August 17, the French aircraft returned and destroyed the bridges, the towns buildings include the citadel and the 12th century former Sisteron Cathedral dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and Saint Thyrsus. There is a festival with many events throughout the summer months. There is a market every Wednesday, a long distance walk, the GR6 passes east–west through Sisteron. Sisteron is served by the A51 autoroute, which now by-passes the town, there is also a railway station on the line from Marseille to Briançon and Grenoble. Jean-Baptiste dOrnano, an illustrious French noble, governor of Gaston, Duke of Orléans and instigator of the Chalais conspiracy was born in Sisteron The poet Paul Arène was born in the town
8.
Lyric poetry
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Lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. The term derives from a form of Ancient Greek literature, the lyric, the term owes its importance in literary theory to the division developed by Aristotle between three broad categories of poetry, lyrical, dramatic and epic. Much lyric poetry depends on regular meter based either on number of syllables or on stress, the most common meters are as follows, Iambic – two syllables, with the short or unstressed syllable followed by the long or stressed syllable. Trochaic – two syllables, with the long or stressed syllable followed by the short or unstressed syllable, in English, this metre is found almost entirely in lyric poetry. Pyrrhic – Two unstressed syllables Anapestic – three syllables, with the first two short or unstressed and the last long or stressed, dactylic – three syllables, with the first one long or stressed and the other two short or unstressed. Spondaic – two syllables, with two successive long or stressed syllables, some forms have a combination of meters, often using a different meter for the refrain. For the ancient Greeks, lyric poetry had a technical meaning, verse that was accompanied by a lyre, cithara. Because such works were sung, it was also known as melic poetry. The lyric or melic poet was distinguished from the writer of plays, the writer of trochaic and iambic verses, the writer of elegies, the scholars of Hellenistic Alexandria created a canon of nine lyric poets deemed especially worthy of critical study. These archaic and classical musician-poets included Sappho, Alcaeus, Anacreon, archaic lyric was characterized by strophic composition and live musical performance. Some poets, like Pindar extended the metrical forms to a triad, including strophe, antistrophe, among the major extant Roman poets of the classical period, only Catullus and Horace wrote lyric poetry, which however was no longer meant to be sung but instead read or recited. What remained were the forms, the meters of the Greeks adapted to Latin. Catullus was influenced by both archaic and Hellenistic Greek verse and belonged to a group of Roman poets called the Neoteroi who spurned epic poetry following the lead of Callimachus, instead, they composed brief, highly polished poems in various thematic and metrical genres. The varying forms of the new Chu ci provided more rhythm, originating in 10th-century Persian, a ghazal is a poetic form consisting of couplets that share a rhyme and a refrain. Formally, it consists of a short lyric composed in a meter with a single rhyme throughout. Notable authors include Hafiz, Amir Khusro, Auhadi of Maragheh, Alisher Navoi, Obeid e zakani, Khaqani Shirvani, Anvari, Farid al-Din Attar, Omar Khayyam, and Rudaki. The ghazal was introduced to European poetry in the early 19th century by the Germans Schlegel, Von Hammer-Purgstall, and Goethe, lyric in European literature of the medieval or Renaissance period means a poem written so that it could be set to music—whether or not it actually was. A poems particular structure, function, or theme might all vary, the lyric poetry of Europe in this period was created by the pioneers of courtly poetry and courtly love largely without reference to the classical past
9.
Trobairitz
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The trobairises were Occitan female troubadours of the 12th and 13th centuries, active from around 1170 to approximately 1260. The word trobairitz was first used in the 13th-century romance Flamenca and it comes from the Provençal word trobar, the literal meaning of which is to find, and the technical meaning of which is to compose. The word trobairitz is used rarely in medieval Occitan, as it does not occur in lyrical poetry, grammatical treatises. Trobairitz composed, wrote verses, and performed for the Occitan noble courts and they are exceptional in musical history as the first known female composers of Western secular music, all earlier known female composers wrote sacred music. The trobairitz were part of society, as opposed to their lower class counterparts the joglaressas. Although troubadours sometimes came from humble origins—Bernart de Ventadorn may have been the son of a castles baker—the trobairitz were nobly born. The most important trobairitz are Alamanda de Castelnau, Azalais de Porcairagues, Maria de Ventadorn, Tibors, Castelloza, Garsenda de Proença, Gormonda de Monpeslier, there are very few extant sources of information on the individual trobairitz. Almost all information which exists about them come from their vidas and razós, the vidas are notoriously unreliable, since they frequently consisted of little more than romanticized extrapolations from the poems of the trobairitz themselves. The names of about twenty female poets from the 12th and 13th centuries survive, there are about 5 percent as many trobairitz as there are troubadours, and the number of surviving compositions by trobairitz amounts to around 1 percent of those we have by the troubadours. The earliest surviving lyric written by a trobairitz is that of Bels dous amics, only one survives with musical notation intact, A chantar by Comtessa de Diá. Some works which are anonymous in the sources are ascribed by certain modern editors to women, for comparison, of the 460 male troubadours, about 2600 of their poems survive. Of these, about one in 10 survive with musical notation intact, only two trobairitz have left us with more than one song apiece. Those two women are Comtessa de Dia, who leaves us with four cansos, and Castelloza, the early chansonniers did not separate the works of the male troubadours from those of the trobairitz. It was only in later Italian and Catalan chansonniers that the works of the trobairitz were found in different sections than those of their male counterparts. Throughout the 13th century, women of the court were expected to be able to sing, play instruments, the cultivation of these womanly skills may have led to the writings of the trobairitz. The trobairitz may also have arisen due the women held in southern France during the 12th and 13th centuries. Women had far more control over land ownership, and Occitan society was far more accepting of women than were most other societies of the time, during the Crusades many men were away, which left women with more administrative responsibility, and thus, power. Nevertheless, this society was not feminist, nor was fin amor, there is difficulty in labeling the trobairitz as either amateurs or professionals
10.
Beatrice of England
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Beatrice of England, also known as Beatrice de Dreux, was a Princess of England as the daughter of King Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence. She and her family were members of the Royal house of Plantagenet, Beatrice was the second eldest daughter of King Henry III of England and Eleanor of Provence. According to Matthew Paris, she was born in Bordeaux, France on the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, Beatrices childhood was plagued by tragedy, and the stresses of her fathers reign coupled with her mothers unpopularity with the English people. Her oldest brother Edward became dangerously ill when she was very young, though he recovered, Beatrices youngest sister Katharine died at a very young age leaving Beatrices parents grief-stricken. Katharine, who possibly had a disease that had caused her to become deaf. The English were unhappy with King Henry III owing to the influence that Eleanor and her Savoyard kinsmen exercised on the monarchy, in 1263, Eleanor was sailing on a barge that was attacked by London citizens. This harsh, bitter dislike created several problems for Henry III, on the other hand, Eleanor and Henry enjoyed a happy marriage, and Beatrice grew up in a loving environment, close to her siblings. At one point, Henry conducted negotiations for Beatrice to marry the king of France, when she was eighteen she married John de Dreux, heir to the duchy of Brittany. Her death was said to have occurred in childbirth, but the dates do not bear out this theory. John II honoured his wife with a chantry, a chapel on private land or within a greater church. Beatrice was buried at Grey Friars Church in Greenwich, London and her husband succeeded as duke 11 years after her death, therefore Beatrice was never styled Duchess of Brittany. Though little information is available concerning Beatrices activities, she was an important part of English history and her marriage to John II helped forge an alliance with France, thus placing the Earldom of Richmond under the so-called shield of England. During Henrys reign, there was opposition to him in England. At a time when Simon de Montfort wanted to strip the king of some of his power to give more say to the barons, it was necessary for Henry to strengthen his rule via family marriages to useful people. His first daughter had married the King of Scotland, and Beatrices marriage to John II, moreover, a substantial number of French nobles came to England and could be appointed to political positions. When Henry was crowned, very few areas within the Angevin empire, the marriage of Beatrice and John II would prove to be useful for Henry III, if only to help Henry recover Poitou. Now Henry had English security and influence on the border. Though Henry was planning on regaining Poitou, he was defeated after his campaign, because he could not regain Poitou, his domains were small compared to the Angevin empire
11.
Occitan literature
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Occitan literature is a body of texts written in Occitan, mostly in the south of France. It was the first literature in a Romance language and inspired the rise of literature throughout medieval Europe. Occitan literatures Golden Age was in the 12th century, when a rich and complex body of poetry was produced by troubadours writing in Old Occitan, however. Although Catalan is considered by some a variety of Occitan, this article will not deal with Catalan literature, Occitan literature started in the 11th century in several centres. It gradually spread from there, first over the portion of southern France. In its rise Occitan literature stands completely by itself, and in its development it long continued to be highly original. It presents at several points analogies with French literature, but these analogies are due principally to certain elements common to both and only in a slight degree to mutual reaction. Occitan poetry first appeared in the 11th century, the oldest surviving text is the Provençal burden attached to a 10th-century Latin poem. The text has not yet been satisfactorily interpreted, the quality of the earliest remaining works suggest earlier work was lost. The earliest Occitan poem is a 10th-century, seventeen-line charm Tomida femina probably for dispersing the pain of childbirth, much longer is an 11th-century fragment of two hundred and fifty-seven decasyllabic verses preserved in an Orléans manuscript, first printed by Raynouard. It is believed to have come from Limousin or Marche in the north of the Occitan region, the unknown author takes Boethiuss treatise De consolatione philosophiae as the groundwork of his composition. The poem is a piece composed by a clerk. The Cançó de Santa Fe dates from 1054–76, but probably represents a Catalan dialect that evolved into a language from Occitan. From the same there is Las, qui non sun sparvir, astur. From the next century are the poems of William IX, the grandfather of Eleanor of Aquitaine and they consist of eleven diverse strophic pieces, and were consequently meant to be sung. The only one which can be approximately dated was composed around 1119 and it expresses the writers regret for the frivolity of his past life and his apprehensions as he bade farewell to his country and his young son. We also know from Ordericus Vitalis that William had composed poems on the incidents of his ill-fated Crusade of 1101. In one of his pieces he makes an allusion to the partimen, the origins of this poetry are uncertain
