Song of the Albigensian Crusade
A verse narrative of the crusade in the language of the south, begun by William of Tudela, a cleric who supported the crusaders, and continued by an anonymous poet. William’s part gives an account of the sack of Béziers written within a few years.
Read the text at archive.org ↗The Occitan text, volume 1 of the same edition (Internet Archive) ↗
The poem is in two parts by two hands. The first, down to the spring of 1213, is by a “master William” from Tudela in Navarre, who by his own account began it in 1210; so his editor Paul Meyer, who describes him as a cleric and canon. Meyer observes that William supports the crusade but lacks the hatred of its opponents that marks Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, and that pity shows through his account of Béziers. It is William who says that the barons had agreed beforehand to put to the sword any town that resisted.
The second part is the work of an anonymous continuator and is not cited in this wiki.
Cited in
- 1209 to 1229, firm date