belonged to Puy Notre Dame in Velay, that he was the son of a noble and was intended for an ecclesiastical career:  when he was of age, he was attracted by the pleasures of the world, became a troubadour and [85] went from court to court, accompanied by a joglar:  he was especially favoured by King Jaime I. of Aragon and died at the age of nearly a hundred years.  He was no singer of love and the three of his chansos that remain are inspired by the misogyny that we have noted in the case of Marcabrun.  Peire Cardenal’s strength lay in the moral sirventes:  he was a fiery soul, aroused to wrath by the sight of injustice and immorality and the special objects of his animosity are the Roman Catholic clergy and the high nobles.  “The clergy call themselves shepherds and are murderers under a show of saintliness:  when I look upon their dress I remember Isengrin (the wolf in the romance of Reynard, the Fox) who wished one day to break into the sheep-fold:  but for fear of the dogs he dressed himself in a sheepskin and then devoured as many as he would.  Kings and emperors, dukes, counts and knights used to rule the world; now the priests have the power which they have gained by robbery and treachery, by hypocrisy, force and preaching.”  “Eagles and vultures smell not the carrion so readily as priests and preachers smell out the rich:  a rich man is their friend and should a sickness strike him down, he must make them presents to the loss of his relations.  Frenchmen and priests are reputed bad and rightly so:  usurers [86] and traitors possess the whole world, for with deceit have they so confounded the world that there is no class to whom their doctrine is unknown.”  Peire inveighs against the disgraces of particular orders; the Preaching Friars or Jacobin monks who discuss the relative merits of special wines after their feasts, whose lives are spent in disputes and who declare all who differ from them to be Vaudois heretics, who worm men’s private affairs out of them, that they may make themselves feared:  some of his charges against the monastic orders are quite unprintable.

No less vigorous are his invectives against the rich and the social evils of his time.  The tone of regret that underlies Guiraut de Bornelh’s satires in this theme is replaced in Peire Cardenal’s sirventes by a burning sense of injustice.  Covetousness, the love of pleasure, injustice to the poor, treachery and deceit and moral laxity are among his favourite themes.  “He who abhors truth and hates the right, careers to hell and directs his course to the abyss:  for many a man builds walls and palaces with the goods of others and yet the witless world says that he is on the right path, because he is clever and prosperous.  As silver is refined in the fire, so the patient poor are purified under grievous oppression:  and with what splendour the shameless rich man may feed and clothe himself, his riches bring him nought but pain, grief and vexation