assert that the elopement took place with the connivance of Cunizza’s brother, the notorious Ezzelino III. (Inf. xii. 110):  the date is approximately 1225.  At any rate, Sordello and Cunizza betook themselves to Ezzelino’s court.  Then, according to the Provencal biography, follows his secret marriage with Otta, and his flight from Treviso, to escape the vengeance of her angry relatives.  He thus left Italy about the year 1229, and retired to the South of France, where he visited the courts of Provence, Toulouse, Roussillon, [102] penetrating also into Castile.  A chief authority for these wanderings is the troubadour Peire Bremen Ricas Novas, whose sirventes speaks of him as being in Spain at the court of the king of Leon:  this was Alfonso IX., who died in the year 1230.  He also visited Portugal, but for this no date can be assigned.  Allusions in his poems show that he was in Provence before 1235:  about ten years later we find him at the court of the Countess Beatrice (Par. vi. 133), daughter of Raimon Berengar, Count of Provence, and wife of Charles I. of Anjou.  Beatrice may have been the subject of several of his love poems:  but the “senhal” Restaur and Agradiva, which conceal the names possibly of more than one lady cannot be identified.  From 1252-1265 his name appears in several Angevin treaties and records, coupled with the names of other well-known nobles, and he would appear to have held a high place in Charles’ esteem.  It is uncertain whether he took part in the first crusade of St Louis, in 1248-1251, at which Charles was present:  but he followed Charles on his Italian expedition against Manfred in 1265, and seems to have been captured by the Ghibellines before reaching Naples.  At any rate, he was a prisoner at Novara in September 1266; Pope Clement IV. induced Charles to ransom him, and in 1269, as a recompense for his services, he received five castles in the Abruzzi, near the river Pescara:  shortly [103] afterwards he died.  The circumstances of his death are unknown, but from the fact that he is placed by Dante among those who were cut off before they could repent it has been conjectured that he came to a violent end.

Sordello’s restless life and his intrigues could be exemplified from the history of many another troubadour and neither his career nor his poetry, which with two exceptions, is of no special originality, seems to justify the portrait drawn of him by Dante; while Browning’s famous poem has nothing in common with the troubadour except the name.  These exceptions, however, are notable.  The first is a sirventes composed by Sordello on the death of his patron Blacatz in 1237.  He invites to the funeral feast the Roman emperor, Frederick II., the kings of France, England and Aragon, the counts of Champagne, Toulouse and Provence.  They are urged to eat of the dead man’s heart, that they may gain some tincture of his courage and nobility.  Each is invited in a separate stanza in which the poet reprehends the failings of the several potentates.