Lanfranc Cigala

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Lanfranc Cigala or Cicala (Italian: Lanfranco, Occitan: Lafranc; fl. 1235–1257) was a Genoese nobleman, knight, judge, and man of letters of the mid thirteenth century. He is one of the most famous Occitan troubadour of Lombardy. Thirty two of his poems survive, dealing with Crusading, heresy, papal power, peace in Christendom, and loyalty in love. He stood in a tradition of Occitan-language trovatori in Italy who berated the papacy for its handling of the Crusades.

Lanfranc's surviving corpus consists in thirty-two poems, including seven cansos of courtly love, four religious cansos, three sirventes, two crusading songs, and one planh. Among his thirty-works under his name are nine tensos composed with other troubadours: four with Simon Doria and one each with Jacme Grils, Guilleuma de Rosers, Lantelm, Rubaut, and an otherwise unknown Guilhem.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Religious poetry 3 Love poetry 4 Other work 5 References 5.1 Notes 5.2 Bibliography

[edit] Biography

Lanfranc was first mentioned in 1235 as a iudex (judge). In 1241 he was an ambassador of the Republic of Genoa to the court of Raymond Berengar IV of Provence, where he probably met Bertran d'Alamanon. In 1248 he was in Ceuta on a mercantile expedition. He is last mentioned alive in a document dated 16 March 1257 and he is first recorded as deceased on 24 September 1258. Contrary to a long-standing story, he was not assassinated in Monaco in 1278.

[edit] Religious poetry

Lanfranc was both a critic of the Crusade policy of the contemporary Papacy and a supporter of the Albigensian Crusade.^[1] Echoing Innocent III's declaration that the Cathars were worse than the Saracens (1208), in his poem Si mos chans fos de joi ni de solatz, directed at the Count of Provence, then Charles of Anjou, Lanfranc wrote:

Coms Proensals, tost fora deliuratz Lo Sepulchres si vostra manentia Poges tan aut com lo prets qui vos guia, . . . Mas del passar non ai cor que'us destregna, C'obs es qe sai vostra valors pro tegna A la gleiza d'aitals guerreiadors. Ja de lai mar non queiratz Turcs peiors!

Count of Provence, would soon be freed The [Holy] Sepulchre if your means Corresponded to the esteem you inspire, . . . But I do not have the heart to urge you to cross [the sea], Because there is need for you valour to defend The Church from its attackers. On the other side of the sea there are not Turks who are worse![1]

This poem was written immediately after the loss of Jerusalem to the Mamelukes in 1244 and concurrent with the last Albigensian rising.^[2] More securely, it can be dated to between August 1244 and 17 July 1245.^[3] Lanfranc blamed the loss of Jerusalem on the lack of peace between Christian states, which was the first prerequisite of a successful Crusade in the East. Though he explicitly refused to lay the blame at the feet of either emperor (Frederick II) or pope (Innocent IV), his last words attack the pope's policy as war for profit.^[2]

In another poem, Quan vei far bon fag plazentier, written early in 1248, Lanfranc bemoans the coming fall of Christianity with a metaphorical Sepulchre, which the Saracens, he says, have already destroyed. Christianity, therefore, is doomed and cannot be recovered because it has already been brought down by the infidels. This extreme metaphor is only part, however, of his agendum of encouraging peace amongst Christians for the very survival of their religion.^[4]

Among his religious songs (cansos) are three on Marian themes, the most prominent of which is Gloriosa sainta Maria.

[edit] Love poetry

Some of Lanfranc's work presages the dolce stil nuovo,^[5] as when he writes in his poem Quant en bon luec that ques amors pren en lejal cor naissenza (love is born in loyal hearts).^[6] His poetry idealises women and emphasis the need for loyalty. In another poem, Lanfranc praises the deceased countess of Este thus:

. . . la vol dieus en cel far regnar,
e si tot sai en reman dechaenza
li saint angel la'n portaran chantan.^[7]

Among the ladies (dompnas) Lanfranc celebrates in his poetry are Berlenda and one de Villafranca, on whose surname the poet composes many puns, such as in Tan franc cors de dompn'ai trobat. This last woman may have been Alasia, the daughter of Guglielmo Malaspina. Lanfranc's only planh was composed for a lady named Luresana, whom Lanfranc called chan-plor. It begins Eu non chant ges per talan de chantar.

In Francesco da Barberino's Flores novellarum, a collectin of Boccaccian novellas, there is a short biography of Lanfranc in which the troubadour is torn by the "duties of hospitality" and the "claims of lady-service". This novella is taken as an example of the early date at which the scene was transferred "from the street to the human soul."^[8]

[edit] Other work

Lanfranc also wrote a violent sirventes beginning Estier mon grat mi fan dir vilanatge attacking Boniface II of Montferrat in July 1245. On the lighter side, he composed Escur prim chantar e sotil, a defence of the trobar leu genre.

[edit] References

[edit] Notes

[edit] Bibliography