Guilhem Figueira

Who is Guilhem Figueira?

Guillem or Guilhem Figueira or Figera was a Languedocian jongleur and troubadour from Toulouse active at the court of the Emperor Frederick II in the 1230s. He was a close associate of both Aimery de Pégulhan and Guillem Augier Novella.

The son of a tailor and a tailor by trade, as a result of the Albigensian Crusade, he was exiled from his homeland and took refuge in Lombardy, where he eventually made his way to Frederick's court. In Italy he and Aimery, a fellow exile, helped to found a troubadour tradition of lamentation for the "good old days" of pre-Crusade Languedoc. The exiles' native Lombard successors continued to employ the Occitan language, however, and it was not until the time of Dante Alighieri that Italian got a significant vernacular literature of its own.

In 1228, Guilhem denied the efficacy of the crusade indulgence and blamed the death of "good" King Louis VIII, who died of dysentery at the siege of Avignon, on the false indulgence which had drawn him out of the safety of Paris. His most famous work, the sirventes contra Roma, was a strong reprimand for the papacy, its violent character probably engendered by the circumstances of its composition: Guilhem wrote it while he was in Toulouse besieged by the Crusaders in 1229. It was set to a famous hymn about the Virgin Mary and was therefore memorisable to the masses. A famous passage goes: