2. Fabre Si qu’a per pauc, auci; Bertoni follows C.

3. Following C Fabre accepted crotz as the subject, printing Quar, nos met jos la Crotz qu’aviam p., and translating «Car, elle nous trahit la Croix que nous avions prise» (Jeanroy «comment nous a mis bas cette croix», Nelli «comme nous abaisse cette croix qu’avions prise»). Bertoni (followed by De Bastard, with misprint avi for avia) preferred a1’s reading, considering the troubadour more likely to be expressing a personal feeling, «poichè non dovevano mancare coloro che avevano [sc. perso?] fede nella guerra, pur dopo le sconfitte dell’ a. 1265». It also follows on logically from the previous line.

5. a1 gives a more personal response, in line with the opening line(s); C, followed by Fabre, generalises: Que crotz ni ley nous val nius g..

6. All scholars have accepted C’s contr’als fels Turcs. a1 seems to have understood the singular here («against that Turk»): compare lo in line 8, though the inflected ending of sels suggests that the plural was in the archetype. – De Bastard (p. 362) comments that although «treacherous» is an epithet often applied by 11th-13th-c. romance poets to Moslems, here it may be related to specific recent betrayals referred to in the following stanzas, and perhaps also to one considered by Baibars in the summer of 1260. Egyptian Saracens obtained permission to cross territory controlled by crusaders to march against the Mongols, and Baibars suggested taking advantage of the light defence of Acre to seize possession of it (see Runciman, pp. 311-312; Guida, p. 369, suggests that Ricaut may well have heard of this plot, being involved in events in Palestine at the time).

7. Bertoni prefers a1’s en so c’om on the grounds that segon com is facilior. De Bastard adopts Jeanroy’s preference for C on the rather vague grounds that Bertoni exaggerates the value of a1 and that some of C’s readings should be preserved.

8. Jeanroy «que Dieu les protège contre nous». It is uncertain whether Jeanroy is right to see this as a case of the modal auxiliary + infinitive adding «no specific nuances over and above what could have been expressed through a finite verb form» (Frede Jensen, Syntaxe de l’Occitan médiéval, Tübingen 1994, § 475), or whether the poet is attributing an active wish on God’s part, but either way God is seen as actively supporting the Moslems. The context suggests that vol adds emphasis.

9. For the line to scan, Caesaria must be trisyllabic. – It is tempting to translate Al primier saut (Jeanroy «pour commencer») in line with Linskill’s interpretation of BdT 392.10, 17, Sol que·l plagues emblar lo premier saut, «If only she consented to desist from the first attack» (Joseph Linskill, The Poems of the Troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, The Hague 1964, V, and see his note). However this sense does not appear possible in Al premier saut que venc en Ronsasvals, / dens la montanha dels Frances e dels fals, / a mort dels Frances mil e .v.c. vassals (Gérard Gouiran and Robert Lafont, Le Roland occitan: Roland à Saragosse; Ronsasvals, Paris 1991, Ronsasvals 437-439).

10. For the attestation elsewhere of the forms Alsuf, Arsur and Assur, see De Bastard, p. 363.

11-13. Previous editors follow C here, taking the nouns in 12 as nominative (Fabre «quel chemin ont donc pris / Tant de chevaliers», Bertoni «e quale strada hanno presa tanti cavalieri», Jeanroy «quel chemin ont-ils pris», Helen J. Nicholson, loosely, «and what was their end» (http://www.the-orb.net/encyclop/religion/monastic/ricaut.html). I have found only one analogous example of prendre la via, with a metaphorical sense: quar non an preza la via, / la quals mestiers y fazia, in Peter T. Ricketts, Le «Breviari d’amor» de Matfre Ermengaud, IV, Turnhout 2004, 17629-17630. a1 understood differently, with the Turks as the subject and the knights etc. having less agency. – tan…com (12-13): literally «as many…as». – The sirven here refer to all non-knightly brethren of the Order of the Hospitallers: a broad category including domestic servants and artisans as well as military sergeants. Describing their Templar equivalents, Malcolm Barber (The New Knighthood. A History of the Order of the Temple, Cambridge 1994, pp. 190-191) relates that in the course of the 12th and 13th centuries «the Templar knights hardened almost into a caste», and that by the 1260s «the community in which St Bernard had claimed that there was no distinction of persons had made lying about one’s social position in secular life at the time of entry an offence punishable by expulsion» (p. 191). Unlike the knights, who wore white mantles, the sergeants «wore a black tunic with a red cross on the front and back and a black or brown mantle. Their armour was less elaborate, consisting of an iron cap, a sleeveless coat of mail and hose without feet, reflecting their actual military function which rarely involved the cavalry actions of the knights.» In the East there were five sergeants who held positions of authority and were entitled to two horses and a squire, while ordinary sergeants had one horse each. He suggests (p. 192) that there may have been a further gradation among sergeants: «The Rule shows that they were intended to form an integral part of the Templar fighting force, but this did not necessarily apply to all of them. The trial depositions demonstrate that, in the west, there was an extensive class of artisan Templars, identified by the trial notaries as serviens or serving brothers, often of an age and physical condition which would have precluded serious military activity. The term serviens is not used in the Rule, but references to the “craftsmen brothers of the stables” and “mason brothers”, as well as to blacksmiths and cooks, underline the obvious fact that such functions were equally necessary in the east as well». He mentions that in the Hospital the designations sergens and serviens were used to indicate two separate groups within the sergeant class, a distinction apparently not made by the Templars. –The borzes must designate all those living in Arsuf who did not belong to the Order. – Bertoni, p. 705, concludes from the present text, presumably 41, that some of the captives were sold into slavery.

15. Roques (also Jeanroy, De Bastard) prefers C, n’a tant. Fabre «a subi tant de pertes».

18. Fabre’s translation «puisque rien ne leur rend Jésus-Christ contraire» has been rightly rejected. Bertoni observes that contrastar can take either accusative or dative; compare SW, I, 350; as Fabre (also De Bastard) he chose to print C’s lor. De Bastard emends to Ihesus Christs, unnecessarily.

19. C quels (Fabre Qu’els, «Ils ont vaincu») is an obl. pl. form, inappropriate here.

20. As De Bastard rightly observes (pp. 364-65), the troubadour distinguishes between francs, «Franks» (Latins who had settled in the Orient), and the segnor frances (41), Frenchmen who have abandoned «pilgrimage» to the Holy Land. – Neither tartres nor tartanz is found on COM. Antoni M. Alcover and Francesc de B. Moll, Diccionari Català-Valencià-Balear, 2nd ed., 10 voll., Palma de Mallorca 1980 = DCVB), X, p. 166 gives the Catalan forms tartre, tartra or tartar, tartara. As De Bastard observes (p. 365), the word Tartari is attested twice in the troubadours: BdT 335.53, 28, Peire Cardenal, Poésies complètes du troubadour Peire Cardenal (1180-1278), éd. René Lavaud, Toulouse 1957, XXII, ardimen de Tartari, possibly in 1233 before the great Mongolian invasions of Europe in 1240; and BdT 225.12, 6-7, Guilhem Montanhagol, Les Poésies de Guilhem de Montanhagol, troubadour provençal du XIIIe siècle, éd. Peter T. Ricketts, Toronto 1964, XIV, mas ar venon sai deves Orien / li Tartari, si Dieus non o defen, which Ricketts (p. 136) dates to 1257. However, it is hard to see how this trisyllabic word could have been part of the line in Ricaut’s piece. Perhaps a source of a1 had tartarz. The Règle du Temple (éd. Henri de Curzon, Paris 1886, § 576, p. 299, cited by De Bastard, p. 366) refers to them as tartars (Car il avint que tartars furent en cest païs). – Bertoni, who prints Armenis, plausibly suggests that carminz of a1 may have been miscopied from e arminiz: compare DCVB, I, 871, armeni; Lessico Etimologico Italiano, ed. Max Pfister, voll. 1-, Wiesbaden 1984-, III.1, 1303 armeno, armena. As De Bastard, I prefer to follow C’s ermenis since this is securely attested in Occitan. Compare Le roman de Flamenca: nouvelle occitane du XIIIe siècle, éd. Ulrich Gschwind, 2 voll, Bern 1976, 4169-4171, Be·m fora melz esclava fos / ab Erminis o ab Grifos, / en Corsega o en Sardeina.

23-24. Guida suggests that Bafometz is a sarcastic distortion of the name of Mahomet, based on the onomatopoeic root baf, expressing the puffing sound made by the lips. De Bastard (p. 367) cites other examples of troubadour use of the form Bafomet, and mentions as a curiosity that one of the spurious accusations made against the Templars in 1305 was that they worshipped an idol named Bafomet. – Jeanroy «agit à sa guise ou fait agir pour lui…». – Fabre and Bertoni identified C’s lo melica de|ser as Baibars, who was known as El-Melik-ed-Daher (see historical note above). De Bartholomaeis (p. 223) disagreed, considering the reference to be to his predecessor El Malec el-Muzzafer Seid ed-Din Kutuz who came to the throne 11 or 12 November 1259 and was assassinated by Baibars on 22 October 1260; he suggested that the troubadour was recalling a dead man in order to say that he is «l’ombra di lui quella che opera per conto di Maometto», though he did not explain why he considered the other identification wrong. (He attributed this to Joseph François Michaud, Storia delle Crociate, Italian translation, p. 440, though the Milan edition of 1878 I have seen does not have such a page.) De Bastard (pp. 367-368) sees De Bartholomaies’s explanation as unacceptable in the historical context (and indeed the interpretation seems odd). He apparently deduces that De Bartholomaeis rejected Michaud’s identification because of the presence of an «h» in Daher which is not reproduced in the Occitan, and comments that the problem of the change of h to f (or s) is unresolved. «Nous ne chercherons à l’éclaircir, tout en maintenant l’identification de Melicadefer (Califa de Fer) avec Baibars.» Given that forms of medieval names are notoriously unstable this does not appear to be a barrier to Michaud’s identification, and in any case ed-Daher is closer to the Occitan than el-Muzzafer. a1’s facilior reading gives «the iron caliph», making perfectly good sense, and may represent an explanatory intervention. Although califa is otherwise unattested in the dictionaries and COM, compare DCVB, II, 857, califa. As De Bastard (p. 367) remarks, the feminine article is in line with troubadour examples of la papa (regarded as a solecism by the Leys d’Amors: see Joseph Anglade, Las flors del gay saber, Barcelona, 1926, 3356, 4440). – Fabre relates that Baibars’s successes earned him the soubriquets «Father of victories» (Aboul Foutouh) and his piety «the support of religion» (Rokn-ed-Din), observing that the troubadour, in saying that Mahomet «makes him work», is alluding to this well-known religious fervour.

25. The mss. show indifferent variants here; Bertoni sees pros and cons for each, adopting a1’s on the grounds that it has some indubitably better readings (34 for example). Fabre «Et ne croyez pas que par tant de maux».

29-30. The reference is to the basilica of the Annunication in Nazareth, one of the oldest and most precious Christian temples. De Bastard notes that in 1187 Saladin reconquered Nazareth without destroying the holy places; Frederick II restored it [the church?] in 1229, and in 1254 St Louis went there to celebrate the Annunciation, a month before returning to France, without having been able to visit Jerusalem or Bethlehem. However Baibars sacked Nazareth and destroyed the church in 1263 (see Runciman, History, p. 317), so a1’s el mostier, «in the church» (Bertoni «farà professione maomettana nella Chiesa di S. M.») is not historically possible; as previous scholars I adopt C’s del. – The Mameluks, and Baibars in particular, used the appropriation of Frankish building materials to convey a triumphalist message, as a visual counterpart to textual propaganda: «Like the transfer of ownership of important fortresses and the substitution of the call to prayer for the church bell, building materials were redefined in their secondary contexts, symbolizing the acquisition of the enemy’s strength. The removal of these materials left a scar of absence on the conquered city and, in essence, disgraced the defeated culture» (Karen R. Mathews, «Mamluks and Crusaders: Architectural Appropriation and Cultural Encounter in Mamluk Monuments», in Languages of Love and Hate. Conflict, Communication, and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. Sarah Lambert and Helen Nicholson, Turnhout 2012, pp. 177-200, especially pp. 181-183. This is certainly evident in Ricaut’s lament; compare also Calega Panzan (BdT 107.1, 60-62) in 1267-1268, e podon be «Bafumet!» aut cridar; / q’ar jes de Dieu ni de Sancta Maria / no·i a mostier (my Rialto edition).

33. Previous scholars follow C’s fa de perdon, «the pope is very generous with indulgences». The sense of a1 is different, more specific and to my mind preferable: the pope is offering a particularly generous indulgence.

34. Bertoni adopts a1’s contrals lombartz and maintains that the troubadours referred to Italy solely as «Lombardy». Fabre and Jeanroy follow C, Contr’Alamans, «qui vont combattre les Allemands», rejected by De Bastard («La colère», p. 370), who claims that Frederick was more Italian than German and that his son Manfred was totally Italian. «La version de a est la seule conforme aux faits historiques. La mention du mot Alamans ou Lamans dans C peut s’expliquer à la rigueur par la présence de contingents de mercenaires dans l’armée de Manfred» (see Peire de Castelnou, BdT 336.1, 32-36, car pot saber chascus, segon q’eu cre, / consi n’es pres de lai, al rei Poile, / c’ab Alamanz, a lei de mercadiers, / intret el camp, per qe lui e·ls destriers / an retengut li nostre ses faillenza, in Antoine De Bastard, «La bataille de Bénévent (1266) et la mort de Manfred», Revue des langues romanes, 80, 1972, text on p. 246, comments on p. 236 and p. 240, note 21). Even if his interpretation of Peire de Castelnou’s sirventes is correct, this does not mean that Alamans is historically impossible in the present context. Frederick was perceived as Emperor of Germany by Tomier and Palaizi: BdT 442.1, 33-36 (éd. Istvan Frank, «Tomier e Palaizi, troubadours tarasconais (1199-1226)», Romania, 78, 1957, pp. 46-85, p. 75), E se Frederics, / q’es reis d’Alamaigna, / soffre que Loics / son emperi fraigna; compare Aimeric de Peguilhan (William P. Shepard and Frank M. Chambers, The poems of Aimeric de Peguilhan, Evanston, Illinois 1950), BdT 10.15, 41-44, Chanssos, vai t’en de ma part e d’Amor / Al bon, al bel, al valen, al prezan / A cui servon Latin et Alaman / E·l sopleion cum bon emperador. Raimon de Tors de Marseilla, in a sirventes in praise of Manfred (BdT 410.2, 42, ed. Amos Parducci, Studj Romanzi, 7, 1911, pp. 5-59, II), names his supporters as Lombards and Germans: Lonbar neis e Alaman, / en cui si pleu e si plec, / faran colps pesans e fers / ab lui de fustz e de fers. – As Bertoni observes, Carle (a1) is clearly preferable to Arles (C; Fabre «les Arlésiens»). It is well known how much Clement IV helped Charles of Anjou financially: see the general note, above.

35. Fabre wrongly emends to mostram, «et ici, entre nous, nous montrons une grande convoitise».

36. C’s van per causes difficulty to those following this ms. Fabre prints 36-39 as Quar, nostras crotz van, per crotz de tornes, / A qui vol camjar Romania / Per la guerra de Lombardia / Nostres legatz, translating loosely «Car nos croix se transforment en croix de livres tournois, / Et vont vers ceux qui veulent sacrifier la Terre-Sainte / Pour la guerre de Lombardie, / (Vers) nos légats». Jeanroy translates 35-36 even more loosely and unconvincingly as «ici, ils étalent leur cupidité, ceux qui, pour des croix de tournois, suppriment nos croix». While PD’s anar per = «passer pour, être censé» (s.v. anar) might suggest some kind of sense «for our crosses [the crosses sewn onto our garments] pass for [are equivalent to] tournoi crosses», there appears to be no support for this in LR, SW or COM (va per, van per). C’s version was rejected by Bertoni and De Bastard in favour of a1’s. The troubadour is punning on crotz, the crusaders’ crosses sewn on to their garments, and tornes, a coin with a cross on it. De Bastard translates «Car il accorde des indulgences et donne nos croix pour des sous tournois», bringing out the double sense of perdonar as «to grant» and «to pardon, grant dispensation for» (compare perdon in 40, «indulgence»).

37-40. Another element confusing Fabre (and surprisingly, De Bartholomaeis) was the error romania (37), which Roques emended to romavia pilgrimage to the Holy Land (compare LR, V, 108), and by De Bastard and Guida to romaria. I have preferred romavia as paleographically closer to the Mss.; both are attested on COM. De Bastard (p. 371) notes that the spelling confusion of romania and romaria is also found in Gaucelm Faidit, BdT 167.9, (Jean Mouzat, Les poèmes de Gaucelm Faidit, Paris 1965, p. 55), 27 (romania ACEa). – Jeanroy’s 1927 translation of Raynouard’s text of 39-40 based on C (e | qui uol camiar romania . p(er) la | guerra de lombardia . nostres le|gatz don yeu uos dic per uer . q(ue)ls | uendon dieu el perdon p(er) auer .) reads «car quiconque le veut remplace son pélerinage par une expédition an Lombardie. Nos légats, je vous le dis en vérité vendent Dieu», taking C’s nostres legatz as a nom. pl. form. All other scholars reject C’s don yeu uos dic per uer, which disrupts the syntax and is clearly facilior, but choose C’s legatz and take it as nom. sg. The reference is certainly to a single particular legate, Simon de Brie (see the general note), whom Charles of Anjou managed to have elected pope in 1281 under the name of Martin V (1281-1284). (It is unclear why De Bastard (p. 224) refers to him as an «homme lige» of the Angevin). – De Bartholomaeis suggests that the poet refers to him as «our legate» because of his French provenance, but this seems unlikely given that the troubadour distances himself from the Frances (34 and possibly 41). De Bastard proposes, more convincingly, to explain it as appropriate for a legate whose task concerns all those qui votum crucis emiserunt in Terrae Sanctae succursum. He underscrores the bitter irony for the troubadour and his eastern companions that Simon de Brie was the person responsible for the arrival of reinforcements to the Holy Land, whereas the papal bull of 5 March 1265 was diverting the crusaders to Sicily. – As De Bastard, I retain a1’s nostre; neither is it necessary to reject its legat (see Ruth Harvey and Linda Paterson, The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens: A Critical Edition, 3 vols, Cambridge 2010, pp. xxii-xxvi), the singular here being clear from the verb. – The Jeanroy-Boelcke translation «Notre légat leur donne [for “donnera”?] le pouvoir de vendre Dieu et les indulgences contre l’argent comptant» presupposes that en in 39 anticipates what follows in 40, but fails to make sense, since those wishing to serve in Lombardy rather than the Holy Land would be receiving the indulgence, not the power to grant it to others.

40. The subject of the plural vendon (38) must be the pope and the legate together, as De Bastard (p. 373) suggests. – As Bertoni observes, perdon (40) can also be the 3 p. pl. indic. pres. of perdre («Vendono dio e lo perdono per danaro»): yet another example of wordplay in this stanza.

41-43. See the general note, above.

44. De Bastard notes that the echo from 40 of aver at the rhyme creates a sarcastic parallel between the pope and his legate who sell God and indulgences, and the Turks who sold their prisoners from Arsuf into slavery.