Peire Cardenal

Peire Cardenal (or Cardinal) (c. 1180 – c. 1278) was a troubadour (fl. 1204–1272) known for his satirical sirventes and his dislike of the clergy. Ninety-six pieces of his remain, a number rarely matched by other poets of the age.

Peire Cardenal was born in Le Puy-en-Velay, apparently of a noble family; the family name Cardenal appears in many documents of the region in the 13th and 14th centuries. He was educated as a canon, which education directed him to vernacular lyric poetry and he abandoned his career in the church for "the vanity of this world", according to his vida. Peire began his career at the court of Raymond VI of Toulouse—from whom he sought patronage—and a document of 1204 refers to a Petrus Cardinalis as a scribe of Raymond's chancery. At Raymond's court, however, he appears to have been known as Peire del Puoi or Puei (French: Pierre du Puy). Around 1238 he wrote a partimen beginning Peire del Puei, li trobador with Aimeric de Pegulhan.

At Raymond's court also perhaps, probably in 1213, Peire composed a sirventes, Las amairitz, qui encolpar las vol, which may have encouraged Peter II of Aragon to help Toulouse in the Battle of Muret, where Peter died. In this sirventes Peire alludes first perhaps to the accusations of adultery that Peter had leveled against Peter's wife Maria of Montpellier but also perhaps to the various changes in law governing women. In the second stanza Peire mentions Peter's success in the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa; in the third he alludes to the sacking of Béziers (whose count Raymond Roger Trencavel was supposed to have been Peter's vassal): at Béziers the poorer soldiers of the Inquisition were flogged by the wealthier, and this is the theme of the stanza. Peire's mention of the court of Constantine may also again evoke the divorce proceedings of Peter and Marie where Peire ultimately lost. Peire later alludes to the death of someone (perhaps a daughter or perhaps Peire's wife Marie) and then apparently to the couple's son James I of Aragon, born at Candlemas, according to James's Chronicle. It's not clear who the crois hom or "dreadful man" is in the final couplet, whose deeds are "piggish": Peire has really never addressed anyone in this verse but Peter II and those close to him. (But dualism had by then made its way into some of the local religious views of Medieval Languedoc: in dualist philosophy worldy deeds might be seen as "piggish".)

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