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arles 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. Del rey engles me platz, quar es paue coratjos, Que manje pro del cor, pueys er valens e bos, E cobrara la terra, per que viu de pretz blos, Que.l tol lo reys de Fransa, quar lo sap nualhos; E lo reys castelas tanh qu'en manje per dos, [104] Quar dos regismes ten, e per l'un non es pros; Mas, s'elh en vol manjar, tanh qu'en manj'a rescos, Que, si.l mair'o sabra, batria.l ab bastos. "As concerns the English King (Henry III.) it pleases me, for he is little courageous, that he should eat well of the heart; then he will be valiant and good and will recover the land (for loss of which he lives bereft of worth), which the King of France took from him, for he knows him to be of no account. And the King of Castile (Ferdinand III. of Castile and Leon), it is fitting that he eat of it for two, for he holds two realms and he is not sufficient for one; but if he will eat of it, 'twere well that he eat in secret: for if his mother were to know it, she would beat him with staves
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