Dating and historical circumstances:
Peire Bremon lo Tort was from the Dauphiné, according to his vida (Boutière and Schutz, p. 497) and may be the same man as the Petrus Bermundi who witnessed donations to the Templars of Roaix between 1163 and 1168, and in two acts in 1176 (Boutière, p. 427; Marshall, p. 75). − In this song, the poet/lover has been obliged to leave his lady overseas (43) in Syria (stanza IV) and he sends an injunction to Guillem Longaespia to go her to comfort her (stanza VII). This was thought (Marshall, p. 73) to place the composition in the period between October 1176, when William Longsword, son of the marquis of Montferrat, landed in Sidon to marry Princess Sibilla of Jersusalem, and June 1177, when he died at Ascalon (see now Jonathan Phillips, Defenders of the Holy Land. Relations between the Latin East and the West, 1119-1187, Oxford 1996, pp. 228-229 and Walter Haberstumpf, «Guglielmo Lungaspada di Monferrato, conte di Ascalone e di Giaffa (1176-77)», Studi piemontesi, 18, 1989, pp. 601-608). Marshall also argues that if stanza I is to be taken literally, the song would have been composed in April 1177. − The identification of Filippe de Monreal in the tornada preserved only in c is, however, not secure. Following a suggestion by De Bartholomaeis, Marshall saw here Philip de Milly, also known as Philip of Nablus, lord of Krak de Montréal (1161), lord of the Transjordan until late 1165 and Master of the Templars in 1169, an office he had resigned, according to William of Tyre (Willelmi Tyrensis archiepiscopi Chronicon, ed. Robert B. C. Huygens, Corpus Christianorum, Cont. Mediaevalis, t. LXIII-LXIII A, Turnhout 1986, XX, 22), by March 1171 when he led an advance party of King Amalric’s personal mission to Constantinople to seek the help of Manual Comnenus (see now Phillips, pp. 208-213; Bernard Hamilton, The Leper-King and his Heirs: Baldwin IV and the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, Cambridge 2000, pp. 37, 79 n. 70, 91-92; Marie Louise Bulst-Thiele, Sacrae Domus Militiae Templi Hierosolymitani Magistri. Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Tempelordens 1118/19 – 1314, Göttingen 1974, pp. 87-105, on pp. 80-83). Philip died on 2 or 3 April (Bulst-Thiele, p. 83), place and year unknown. Marshall argued that there is no proof Philip was not alive in 1177 and on some other mission in the service of the Kingdom of Jerusalem (on God’s business: compare stanza VI), somewhere across the sea (outra mar 43) from Syria, and accompanied by Peire Bremon. − Recent work on Philip of Nablus strongly suggests this interpretation is flawed (see Malcolm Barber, «The Career of Philip of Nablus in the Kingdom of Jerusalem», in The Experience of Crusading. II: Defining the Crusader Kingdom, ed. Peter Edbury and Jonathan Phillips, Cambridge 2003, pp. 60-75, p. 75). The biggest problem is the complete absence of Philip from the records after 1171. A member of one of the most important baronial families of the kingdom, an experienced warrior closely associated with King Amalric, Philip is referred to on several occasions by William of Tyre until 1171 and he appears in charters in the East first in 1138 and then often from 1144 onwards. Malcolm Barber has suggested (personal communication) that it is unlikely that Philip went to the West after 1171, and improbable that, if still alive, he would not have returned then to Syria. To these arguments may be added one concerning his name. If he is referred to in one grant made by King Amalric in 1165 as de Monte Regali (see Barber, p. 71 for details), he is most frequently designated in documentary sources as Philip of Nablus. Although vernacular usage in matters of names and titles may have differed from that employed in Latin charters, by the time of his last appearance (in William of Tyre’s account of 1171), Philip had not been lord of Monreal for some time, so it would be an odd way for a troubadour to refer to him in 1176-1177. It is most probable that this Philip died during the 1171 embassy to Constantinople and could not have been the man evoked as alive in the tornada of 331.1. These lines most likely refer to another Philip of Monreal, who is still to be identified. − While lines 45-49 show significant traces of disturbance in the MS transmission, and while the precise syntactical context of 47 diverges (compare the variants in CRc – D+ GIK), the reference here to William Longsword both seems secure and supplies the most reliable dating element for the piece. The interpretation of the period of composition may be refined a little more if we take the poet’s declaration that he needs to send his song outra mar to his lady (43-44) in the most straightforward way and place Peire in the West (compare Marshall, p. 75). Lines 47-49 indicate that William is either already overseas and able to go to the lady, or that it is known that he is about to leave for Syria. William’s marriage arrangements were settled in summer 1175 (the year prior to his arrival, according to William of Tyre XXI.13), when the invitation was made by the nobility of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and would then have become public knowledge in the West. Similarly, news of William’s death in June 1177 can be assumed to have first reached the West only some two months later, if the sailing season is taken into account, and this constitutes a terminus ante quem for Peire’s words.