Crusade Against the Grail - Rennes-le-Chateau Research and ...

16 PART ONE
eighty-six years earlier during the First Crusade when, as Torcuato Tasso wrote,
they "filled the city and the temple with corpses."
Saladin's victory sowed fury and panic throughout the Western world. Rome
preached another crusade. The clergy's sermons were accompanied by the harps of
the troubadours. The most renowned poets, such as Bertran de Born, Peire Vidal,
Guiraut de Bornelh, and Peire Cardenal, called on the faithful to take part in the
holy war. What really motivated the troubadours was not nostalgia for the holy
places of Palestine, rather the desire to visit foreign lands and sing about their
adventures in ballads and quatrains before ladies, desolate at having been left at
home. How many feminine tears must have flowed when rhymers and knights
departed their native lands with the cross on the armor and shields!
The other day I found seated on a carpet of grass and white flowers, close to
the fountain of an orchard in whose fruit trees the birds sang, a noble lady, the
daughter of the lord of the castle. I thought that she had come to bask in the
springtime, the green foliage, and the songs of the birds; but it was not so.
With profound sighs, she complained saying: "Jesus, for You, I suffer such
pain. Why do you want the most valiant of this world to cross the sea, and go
to serve you! My friend, his graces so genteel and valiant, has gone. And I
stay here alone with my desire, my tears, and my affliction."
Upon hearing such lament, I approached the brook of crystal water, and told
her: "Sweet lady, tears cloud your beauty. You should not lose hope. God who
lets the trees flower can also give you back your happiness."
"Sir," she answered, "I believe that one day in another life God will have
mercy with me and other sinners. But why take it from me in this life? He who
was my happiness and now who is so far from me."
TROUBADOUR MARCABRU