Obs de Biguli

Who is Obs de Biguli?

Obs de Biguli was a troubadour from Lombardy and one of the few troubadours known by name none of whose works survive. He is mentioned by name only in a poem by Guilhem Raimon:

This was probably written in Venetia at the court of the Da Romano family on the occasion of the Emperor Frederick II in 1220. Though the poem does not explicitly identify Obs as a troubadour, many subsequent scholars of the trovatori have suspected that he was.

While his first name is probably an Occitan translation of the Italian Obizzo, his surname is an Occitanisation of either Bigolini, a family from Treviso that moved to Padua, or Bigoli, a family of Piacenza. Unfortunately, no Obizzo is known from the twelfth century in either family.