Guilhem Ademar

Who is Guilhem Ademar?

Guilhem Ademar was a troubadour from the Gévaudan.He travelled between the courts of Albi, Toulouse, Narbonne, and Spain. He achieved fame enough in his lifetime to be satirised by the Monge de Montaudon. He entered holy orders towards the end of his life. Sixteen poems—fourteen cansos, a sirventes, and a partimen with Eble d'Ussel—form his surviving corpus. His cansos are his most famous pieces. Usually humorous, several mock the poetry of Ademar's more illustrious contemporary Arnaut Daniel. One canso survives with a tune.

According to his vida, Guilhem was the son of a poor knight from Meyrueis, the lord of which castle created him a knight. He was an eloquent man who "knew well how to invent poetry." When he was no longer able to support himself as a knight he took to minstrelsy and "was greatly honoured by all the high society." Towards the end of his life he joined the Order of Grandmont.

Guilhem Ademar's career can be dated from a reference in a poetic satire of contemporary troubadours by the Monge de Montaudon around 1195. The Monge playfully insults Guilhem as a "bad joglar" who always wears old clothes and whose lady has thirty lovers. The earliest reference to a W. Ademars, a petty noble of the Gévaudan, occurs in 1192, though this figure, who appears in documents until 1217, cannot be definitively identified with the troubadour.