Guilhem Figueira (1195–1250)
Born 1195 CE, died 1250 CE.
Guillem or Guilhem Figueira or Figera was a Languedocian jongleur and troubadour from Toulouse active at the court of the Emperor Frederick II in the 1230s. He was a close associate of both Aimery de Pégulhan and Guillem Augier Novella. The son of a tailor and a tailor by trade, as a result of the Albigensian Crusade, he was exiled from his homeland and took refuge in Lombardy, where he eventually made his way to Frederick's court. In Italy he and Aimery, a fellow exile, helped to found a troubadour tradition of lamentation for the "good old days" of pre-Crusade Languedoc. The exiles' native Lombard successors continued to employ the Occitan language, however, and it was not until the time of Dante Alighieri that Italian got a significant vernacular literature of its own. In 1228, Guilhem denied the efficacy of the crusade indulgence and blamed the death of "good" King Louis VIII, who died of dysentery at the siege of Avignon, on the false indulgence which had drawn him out of the safety of Paris.
Text from the Wikipedia article Guilhem_Figueira, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.