Dating and historical circumstances:
The only relatively secure date for Perdigon’s other songs relates to the three-way tenso with Ademar II of Poitiers and Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, BdT 392.15 (Ruth Harvey and Linda Paterson, The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens: A Critical Edition, 3 voll., Cambridge 2010, vol. III, p. 1082). This was composed after 1187-1189, when Raimbaut left Boniface’s court to spend nearly a year in Provence; Linskill places it in 1196, Saverio Guida, Trovatori Minori, Modena 2002, p. 91 and Ernest Hoepffner, «La Biographie de Perdigon», Romania, 53, 1927, pp. 343-364 (p. 348) in 1195-1196. − The present song is sent to a certain Arias (67), mentions the support Perdigon can expect from a member of the Baux family (34), and praises a king of Aragon and another king, Alfonso (51-54), enjoining them to act together «in peace» against the «renegades» (59-60). The member of the house of Baux is either Guillem III (1173-1218, not IV as Chaytor 1926, p. III proposed: see Florian Mazel, La Noblesse et l’Eglise en Provence, fin Xe-début XIVe siècle. L’exemple des familles d’Agoult-Simiane, de Baux et de Marseille, Paris 2002, p. 629), or his brother Uc (1171-1240), with whom he had a special friendship (Chaytor 1926, p. III). According to Stefano Asperti, BEdT, Arias is almost certainly a Galician, though not the troubadour Ayras Moniz de Asme (see the note to 67). − King Alfonso is almost certainly Alfonso VIII of Castille (1159-1214), since he is the only one for whom the epithet d’emperador is appropriate (his grandfather styled himself el Emperador: see Manuel Recuero Astray, Alfonso VII, Emperador: el imperio hispanico en el siglo XII, León 1979). The king of Aragon here is unlikely to be another Alfonso, since as Lewent observes, Perdigon would have referred to the rei n’Anfos in some other way, such as «the other king Anfos». He can hardly be his grandson James I (1213-1275) either, since it was only after 1230 that he was sufficiently old and established to be performing deeds justifying praise of his reputation and to be joining forces with Alfonso of Castile against the Muslims. The king of Aragon is therefore almost certainly Peter II (1196-1213) (see Lewent, pp. 676-678). − The renegatz have been identified with the Albigensians (Chaytor 1926, p. IV and Lewent p. 678), and the Muslims (Hoepffner, «La biographie», p. 350). Lewent arrives at his conclusion through a process of elimination: he can identify no community in Spain which would justify the epithet renegatz. He links this identification to Perdigon’s ties to the house of Baux and his vida which refers to him singing a crusade song against them (Biographies des troubadours: textes provençaux des XIIIe et XIVe siècles, ed. Jean Boutière and Alexander H. Schutz, second edition by Jean Boutière and Irénée-Marcel Cluzel, Paris 1973, p. 414). He also offers details to demonstrate that before Peter II of Aragon’s intervention on their side at Muret in 1213 the king showed himself to be an enemy of the heretics, in 1197 issuing a severe expulsion order against those who had fled to his lands. He adds that Alfonso of Castile had a firm foothold in the Midi, taking over Gascony, his wife’s inheritance, for a period during 1204-1206. But he concedes (p. 680) that there is no historical support for the troubadour’s wish to see the two kings uniting in peace to combat the Albigensians. He comments that at no time during their reigns were these rulers actually enemies, but there were sometimes tensions, for example over territorial boundaries, and he suggests that perhaps there existed such tensions at the time of composition of Perdigon’s piece, or that the poet simply wanted to say that he wished Alfonso of Castile, who hitherto had taken no part in opposition to the heretics, should join Peter in fighting against them. − While this identification of the renegatz with the southern heretics is not impossible, evidence to support any potential interest in combatting them on the part of Alfonso of Castile is weak, and moreover the focus of Perdigon’s song is on «the kingdoms» (vv. 47 and 71), which can only refer to the kingdoms of Spain. The name of the dedicatee Arias also points to Iberia. − As Hoepffner declares (pp. 350-351), the renegatz could apply to Muslims: the song could have been composed as Alfonso VIII of Castile was joining forces with Peter of Aragon, Sancho VII of Navarre and Alfonso II of Portugal to fight against the Almohad rulers, the fight culminating in the Christian victory of Las Navas de Tolosa on 16 July 1212. He therefore concludes that the song must date from before 1212 and the victory of Las Navas de Tolosa, since the unity desired by Perdigon had come into effect. He too concedes that no conflict between Peter and Alfonso is known at this time, but suggests that as Perdigon was on the spot, he may have known of some temporary conflict which was almost inevitable among neighbours. − Another possibility, of which Lewent and Hoepffner were unaware, is raised by Guida’s commentary on Gavaudan’s song Senhors, per los nostres peccatz (BdT 174.10, vv. 34-36): ab Luy venseretz totz los cas / cuy Bafometz a escarnitz / e·ls renegatz outrasalhitz. Guida sees these as the Leonese (Il trovatore Gavaudan, ed. Saverio Guida, Modena 1979, pp. 49-51 and Canzoni di crociata, p. 384, n. to 34-36, also on Rialto). Immediately after Alfonso VIII of Castile’s defeat at the battle of Alarcos on 18 July 1195, Alfonso IX of León joined forces with al-Mansūr against Castile, committing himself so deeply as to provoke his excommunication by Celestine III in October 1196, which was followed in April 1197 by exhortations to fight him as an Infidel and lay waste his kingdom. Guida also mentions an alliance between the Muslims and Sancho VIII of Navarre (pp. 49-50), who fought against Christians alongside al-Nasir and maintained an alliance with the Almohad dynasty until 1198 to defend his kingdom against Alfonso of Castile’s territorial ambitions. He observes that Gavaudan cannot be referring to the Navarrese as renegatz as he includes them in his list of those opposing the Muslims; but as far as Perdigon’s song goes, both of these episodes provide possible candidates for the renegatz. Perdigon’s stanza VI could be a response to the Pope’s call to fight the Leonese as infidels. If so, the song would date from 1196-1197. This could explain the desire for unity between the rulers of Castile and Aragon, since there had in fact been sufficient discord between them before Alarcos to the extent of vitiating an anti-Muslim alliance: see Stefano Asperti’s discussion of the dating of our piece on BEdT, and Julio González, El Reino de Castilla en la época de Alfonso VIII, 3 voll., Madrid 1960, vol. I, pp. 820-834. Between the defeat at Alarcos on 18 July 1195 and the death of Alfonso II of Aragon on 26 April 1196 Folquet de Marselha composed a song summoning the kings of Aragon and Castile fight for God (see BdT 155.15 on Rialto and the notes to the translations). Guida (Canzoni di crociata, p. 382, n. 37-44) observes that the faith the troubadour places in Alfonso of Aragon in Folquet’s piece was justified among other things by his committed efforts to bring peace between the Iberian rulers after the defeat at Alarcos, a necessary preliminary to any attempts at reconquista. Perdigon’s wish to see the kings acordatz...en patz fits very well with this earlier dating, in other words shortly after the accession of Peter of Aragon at the end of April 1196, whether in renewed efforts against the Muslims, for whom the designation renegatz might be accepted, or more plausibly against the renegade Leonese, given Gavaudan’s contemporaneous allusion to them by this term.