Peire d'Alvernha

Peire d'Alvernhe or d'Alvernha (Pèire in modern Occitan; b. c. 1130) was an Auvergnat troubadour (active 1149–1170) with twenty-one or twenty-four surviving works. He composed in an "esoteric" and "formally complex" style known as the trobar clus. He stands out as the earliest troubadour mentioned by name in Dante's Divine Comedy.

According to his vida, Peire was a burgher's son from the Diocese of Clermont. As testified to by his vida, his popularity was great within his lifetime and afterwards. Said to be handsome, charming, wise, and learned, he was "the first good inventor of poetry to go beyond the mountains" (i.e. the Pyrenees) and travel in Spain. He passed his time in Spain at the court of Alfonso VII of Castile and that of his son Sancho III in 1157–1158. It is possible that he was present at a meeting between Sancho of Castile, Sancho VI of Navarre and Raymond Berengar IV of Barcelona in 1158. The author of his vida, editorialising, considers his poems to have been the greatest until Giraut de Borneill and his melodies to have been the best ever. The anonymous biographer records that his information about Peire's later years comes from Dalfi d'Alvernha. It has been suggested that Dalfi was the author of the vida.

According to an accusation of fellow troubadour Bernart Marti, Peire entered upon a religious life early, but quit Holy Orders for a life of itinerant minstrelsy. He may be the same person as the Petrus d'Alvengue and Petrus de Alvernia who appear in surviving documents from Montpellier dated to the year 1148. Peire appears to have cultivated the favour of the ruling family of the Crown of Aragon, and his poems contain allusions to the counts of Barcelona and Provence. Perhaps he was following the fashion of the lords of Montpellier of his time, who, though vassals of the Count of Toulouse, were partial to the Aragonese. At the same time Peire did garner the support of Raymond V of Toulouse. In his wanderings he may have spent some time at Cortezon, at the court of the minor nobleman and troubadour Raimbaut d'Aurenga.

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