Levy (p. 5) dates the piece to 1238 on the grounds that vv. 29-30 reflect the fall to Frederick of Savona, Alberga, Porto Maurizio, Ventimiglia and nearly the whole Riviera to the west of Genoa, and this was accepted by Schultz-Gora (Oskar Schultz-Gora, Ein Sirventes von Guilhem Figueira gegen Friedrich II, Halle 1902, pp. 10 and 36). De Bartholomaeis corrects this to March-April 1240, at or near Barletta in Apulia, southern Italy (v. 27). He notes that after the Emperor’s victory at Cortenuova Frederick only once visited Barletta, precisely at this time: although there is no dated document from Barletta itself, there are several from the vicinity. Guillem’s is the only testimony of the presence of Lombard ambassadors going to Barletta, but a document sent from Orta and another from Foggia show that Frederick had arranged for a number of Lombards, who had been captured at Cortenuova and dispersed throughout the Regno into the custody of various barons, to be brought to him. De Bartholomaeis argues that the meeting at Barletta will have dealt with the restitution of these prisoners, and that some people unfamiliar with the diplomatic details may have taken this to involve recognition on the part of the Lombards of «all the rights» of the imperial crown (v. 28, see his «Osservazioni sulle poesie provenzali relative a Federico II», Memorie della R. Accademia delle scienze dell’Istituto di Bologna, Classe di scienze morali. Sezione storico-filologica, 6, 1911/1912, pp. 97-124, on p. 155 and Poesie provenzali, II, pp. 147 and 149, notes). Since Guillem is hoping to be retained in the Emperor’s service (v. 3), he would seem to be in the same place as the Emperor. Near to Barletta on Palm Sunday, in Foggia, Frederick held a great parliament to which people came from all over the Regno, and as De Bartholomaeis observes (Poesie provenzali, p. 147), this could easily explain the presence of a troubadour. It would appear that Taurel and «madona Dia» were helping him to make contact with the Emperor (11-12, 61-64). – This and BdT 217.4a are the only two troubadour songs to refer to John of Ibelin, half-brother to Queen Isabella of Jerusalem. The «Old Lord of Beirut» had been enfeoffed with that city forty years earlier, and became regent of Jerusalem in 1197. By 1227 he was «the greatest person in Outremer. [. . .] He was rich; he owned the city of Beirut, and his wife was heiress of Arsuf. His personal qualities won him general respect. His birth, wealth and integrity had made him for some decades already the accepted leader of the baronage of Outremer. Half Levantine-French and half-Greek, he understood the East and its peoples and he was equally versed in the history and the laws of the Frankish kingdom» (Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, 3 voll., Harmondsworth 1971, first published Cambridge 1951-1954, vol. III, pp. 180-181). When Frederick met with him at Limassol in Cyprus on his way to the East, the Emperor behaved treacherously, making him rich gifts and inviting him to a feast in his honour. There his soldiers crept in and stood behind each of the guests, with their swords drawn, whereupon Frederick demanded that John «surrender his fief of Beirut and hand over all the revenues of Cyprus that had come in since the death of King Hugh» (p. 181). John stood firm in the face of open threats, declaring that «even should he be slain for it he would not break the laws of the land». Frederick had insufficient troops to risk an open breach, but demanded that twenty nobles, including John’s two sons, should be left with him as hostages and that John should come with him to Palestine (p. 181). John «cautiously retired to the castle that the Greeks called the Twin Peaks, Didymi, and the Franks Dieu d’Amour and today we call Saint Hilarion. He had already sent the ladies and the children of his household there, with ample stores of provisions. Feudal law laid down that, during a regency, the barons could not be ejected from castles entrusted to them by the late monarch. Frederick did not attempt now to flout the law». During the subsequent arrangements, John accompanied the Emperor to Acre, where John was to defend his right to Beirut before the High Court. When Frederick returned to Acre in 1229 after his entry into Jerusalem, news from Italy forced him to compromise with the barons and the Templars, and to leave for Italy. In Cyprus he left five baillis who had been instructed to exile all the friends of the Ibelins from the island (p. 194). This led to immediate civil war, the outcome of which was that John took over the government after making generous peace terms. In 1231, after Frederick had made peace with the Pope by the Treaty of San Germano on 23 July 1230, the Emperor sent an army to the East under his Marshal, the Neapolitan Richard Filangieri (Runciman, History, vol. III, p. 196). John left a small garrison in the castle of Beirut and sailed to Cyprus. Filangieri sent an ambassador to see King Henry of Cyprus with a message from Frederick telling him to banish the Ibelins and confiscate their lands; Henry replied that John was his uncle and that in any case he would not dispossess his own vassals. Filangieri then sailed straight for Beirut. The town which was ungarrisoned was handed over to him by its «timorous bishop», and he set siege to the castle. Back in Acre, he called a meeting of the High Court and showed it letters from Frederick appointing him as bailli. The barons confirmed the appointment, then Filangieri proclaimed the forfeiture of Ibelin lands. This provoked protests from the barons: «Estates could not be confiscated unless the High Court so decided, after the owner had had the chance of defending his case». After a long struggle Filangieri eventually surrendered to Ibelins and others in April 1233 (Runciman, History, vol. III, p. 202), Cyprus was wholly restored to the rule of Henry and his Ibelin cousins, and the High Court accepted John’s leadership, though this was still not the end of the story since Pope Gregory, trying to act correctly, declared that the Ibelins must stand trial before the High Court. The terms were unacceptable to the barons and the Commune, who ignored them, and at this point John died as the result of a riding accident (Runciman, History, vol. III, p. 204). – In his censorious attack on the Emperor the author of BdT 217.4a, Ja de far un sirventes, is factually correct when he says that Frederick wished to disinherit the Lord of Beirut and was unable to do so. In the present piece Figueira, glossing conveniently over Frederick’s treacherous behaviour at the feast he gave in John’s honour, puts a positive and more subtle spin on these events, claiming that Frederick acted with complete good faith, lialtatz and gentil cortezia by handing John back his lands. I have interpreted lialtatz to mean ‘legality, lawfulness’, since Runciman’s account makes clear the rôle legal arguments played at each stage of the conflict, and Abulafia stresses the Ibelins’ respect for legal requirements: «It was precisely their attention to the law, as they interpreted it, that brought them bitterly into conflict with Frederick», adding that Frederick tried, «as his final revenge against the Ibelins, to exclude them from Cyprus» (David Abulafia, Frederick II, a Medieval Emperor, London 1988, pp. 175-178 and 190-193). Also in contrast to Ja de far un sirventes, whose observations on Frederick’s crusade of 1228-1229, undertaken while he was excommunicate, are confined to his behaviour to the franc baro d’outramar, Figueira here praises him for an honourable and bloodless conquest of Jerusalem and Ascalon which concluded in a peace treaty with the Sultan al-Kamil on 18 February 1229. Such a positive spin seems to have been unusual: Runciman relates that the treaty met with «immediate and universal disapproval», and «the recovery of Jerusalem was of little profit to the kingdom», since Frederick’s hurried departure left it an open city, impossible to police and open to recapture at any time (Runciman, History, vol. III, pp. 187 and 193). If Guillem Figueira was indeed the author of Ja de far un sirventes, the hope expressed in Un nou sirventes of entering his service (v. 3) appears to have spurred him to recant from his previous criticisms in quite specific detail. What seems more likely is that he is responding in detail to the negative propaganda of another unidentified troubadour (see the discussion of the attribution of BdT 217.4a in my edition on Rialto) and at the same time to Frederick’s excommunication. Perhaps the peace treaty with al-Kamil lay behind the earlier sirventes’ accusation that Frederick was coartz / et avols guerreiaire (vv. 49-50), and that this prompted Figueira to lay special emphasis on the Emperor’s positive achievements during his crusade.