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

PARSIFAL 23
king's "yes and no" instead of "yes or no." An intimate friendship united the
Sovereign of England and Aquitania with the Provencal poet of the "Guerra me
plai."
Bertran was without any doubt the most important troubadour of Occitania.
The influence of his songs and the sounds of his harp evoked the fables recounted
by the poets of antiquity. One day, Richard the Lionheart found himself with his
troops on the sandy dunes of the Poitou, not far from the Sables-d'Olonne. Hunger
had decimated both men and beasts: no bread for the soldiers and no grass for the
horses. Bertran picked up his harp and sang a romanza about Princess Laina
Plantagenet, Richard's sister, later the duchess of Saxony. It is said that the barons
and knights forgot their hunger, their thirst, and the storm that came in from the
sea, whipping their faces with hailstones.
In 1199, Richard laid siege to the Castle of Chalus-Charbrol that belonged to
his vassal, the Viscount Americ de Limoges. A treasure was kept inside Chalus'
walls, which Richard claimed was his as feudal lord.
He wanted to unite the useful and the agreeable. Americ de Limoges had sided
with France. The King of England hoped to simultaneously get the treasure and
punish a disloyal vassal. But while he was indicating to his soldiers the spot where
they should scale the castle walls, an arrow from an archer's bow pierced his
shoulder, near his heart. Mortally wounded, Richard fell into the arms of Bertran
de Born.
The furious assailants took the castle; the garrison's throats were cut, and the
able archer, who was none other than the lord of the castle, was lynched. 22 The
treasure that was found paid for the king's funeral.
All his vassals and troubadours, including Bertran, King of the Poets, escorted
the Poet-King to Fontevrault, where the mausoleum of the Plantagenets is located,
where that eternally restless King found his eternal rest. Perhaps it shouldn't
surprise us that Richard the Lionheart was lowered into his tomb without prayers,
holy water, or the blessings of the Church. The King of England, Ireland, Anjou,
Aries, and Cyprus remained excluded from the community of the Catholic Church.
All the harps, from the North to the South, wailed over the loss of this
Alexander, this Charlemagne, this King Arthur. All the troubadours intoned their
elegies of Richard's death—except for one.
The most tears were those of the poet Gaucelm Faidit, who had accompanied
the monarch to the Holy Land. From his elegy: