Although contemporary with the great development of Judaism in southern France, the poetry of the Provençal troubadours (12th-14th centuries) does not seem to denounce particularly relevant points of contact with the Hebrew culture of the time. However, a recent contribution has been interpreted as anti-Jewish, in the only preserved poem by the otherwise unknown troubadour Guilhem Peire Gaudi, Si-l gen cors d’estieu es remas (BdT 219.1), and with the author of the poem identified as the homonymous cardinal, a native of Gascony, Guillaume de Pierre Godi (Bayonne 1260-Avignon 1336), Provincial Superior of the Order of Predicates of Toulouse in the years 1301-1306 and papal legate to Spain in 1320. The proposed identification and reading of the text are convincing and solidly argued but the Romanists still lacked interest in medieval Judaism and, in the specific case of this poem, in the historical context in which the troubadour acted did not allow for some of the important facets highlighted in the interpretation of the text and, above all, for its dating. In the first half of the 13th century, in fact, the great period of French and Provençal Hebraism began coming to an end: from the reign of Louis IX, French Jews were increasingly the object of social and legal discrimination which culminated, at the beginning of the following century, with the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of France, as decreed by Philip IV in 1306. Between the end of the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century, Toulouse itself was the scene of numerous violent actions against the Jewish community, including the death sentence for Rabbi Isaac Malès (executed in 1278) on accusations of proselytizing. Putting forward more detailed analysis of this historical context, this presentation holds two objectives: 1) to clarify the interpretation of the text; 2) to propose a dating hypothesis.

Biographical note:
Fábio Barberini – PhD in Gallo-Romanesque Philology from the University of Messina (2014), is a researcher under contract at NOVA University – FCSH on the project From song to writing – material production and paths in Galician-Portuguese song (PTDC/LLT-EGL/30984/2017) and an integrated member of the Institute of Medieval Studies. Since 2013 he has been a member of the Editorial Committee of the journal Cultura Neolatina. He works on medieval Romanesque lyrics, especially Provençal, French and Galician-Portuguese (manuscript tradition and edition of texts); Anglo-Norman literature and relations between Jews and Christians in England and southern France in the 13th-14th centuries. He has been a contract researcher on several international projects, including: Manuscript Heritage of the Troubadours (MHT). Le Patrimoine manuscrit des Troubadours en pays d’Oc. Édition numérique du Chansonnier provençal R (2016-2017: Université de Toulouse 2 “Jean Jaurès” – CNRS); CAO “Corpus dell’Antico Occitanico” (2018: Università di Chieti-Pescara); Mecenazgo y creación literaria en la corte catalano-aragonesa (s. XIII-XV): evolución, contexto y biblioteca digital de referencia (2018: Universitat de Girona – Institut de Llengua i Cultura Catalanes) and Troubadours and European Identity: The Role of Catalan Courts (2018: Universitat de Girona – Institut de Llengua i Cultura Catalanes).