I am still writing about the Cathars.

Urm – well. I write a sentence, check the facts, find something else….and 3 hours later realised I’ve been sidetracked again!

Anyhoo – ‘t’is all good. Especially when a big connection has been made between dates, Cathars and Troubadours. If I am right then the “13thCentury” troubadour verse below, written by a man of Toulouse(!) begins to make absolute sense. No matter what century we are dealing with.

 

I do not wish to hold back from composing a sirventés using this melody (which seems suitable to me), nor do I want to prevaricate, and I am sure that I will be badly regarded afterwards because I am making this sirventés against those people who are full of deceit, who are from Rome, which is the head of decadence, and the place where all good things fall down.

Rome, you set your fishnet with false bait, and you eat many ill-gotten morsels (regardless of who finds it tolerable), for you have lambs with innocent faces who are ravenous wolves within, and crowned serpents who are born of vipers. That is why the Devil protects you as one of His closest advisers.

I no longer wonder, Rome, if people are sinning, because you have plunged the secular world into torment and war, and Worth and Mercy are killed and buried at your hands. Deceitful Rome! You are the guide, the tree-top and the root of every form of evil, to the point that the King of England was betrayed by you.

Cheating Rome! Greed deceives you because you are shearing too much wool from your ewes. May the Holy Spirit, who took human form, hear my prayer and smash your beak! Rome, there’ll be no respite from me because you are lying and malicious with us, just as you are with the Greeks.

Rome, you gnaw on the flesh and the bones of weak men, and you lead the blind with you into the ditch; you break the Commandments of God because your cupidity is too vast, for you forgive sins in exchange for coins. Rome, you are loading your back with a heavy burden of evil.

Rome, you should know that your bad negotiations and your folly lost us Damietta. You reign badly, Rome. May God strike you down into a fall, because you reign too falsely through money, Rome, you [are] of a bad seed and a bad promise.

Rome! Truly, I know for sure that you delivered the army of France into torment through the trick of a false pardon. Far from Paradise – and as for King Louis, Rome, you have killed him because your false preaching lured him away from Paris.

There is much more to the song :o)