Lanfranc Cigala

Who was Lanfranc Cigala?

Lanfranc Cigala was a Genoese nobleman, knight, judge, and man of letters of the mid thirteenth century. He remains one of the most famous Occitan troubadours of Lombardy. Thirty-two of his poems survive, dealing with Crusading, heresy, papal power, peace in Christendom, and loyalty in love. Lanfranc represented a tradition of Italian, Occitan-language trovatori who berated the Papacy for its handling of the Crusades.

Lanfranc's surviving corpus consists of thirty-two poems, including seven cansos of courtly love; four religious cansos; three sirventes; two crusading songs; and one planh. Among the thirty works attributed to him are nine tensos composed with other troubadours: four with Simon Doria and one each with Jacme Grils, Guilleuma de Rosers, Lantelm, Rubaut, and an otherwise unknown "Guilhem".