rom Antioch, and he made many poems concerning her with good tunes
but poor words.[18] And from desire to see her, he took the cross and
went to sea. And in the ship great illness came upon him so that those
who were with him thought that he was dead in the ship; but they [45]
succeeded in bringing him to Tripoli, to an inn, as one dead. And it was
told to the countess, and she came to him, to his bed, and took him in
her arms; and he knew that she was the countess, and recovering his
senses, he praised God and gave thanks that his life had been sustained
until he had seen her; and then he died in the lady's arms. And she gave
him honourable burial in the house of the Temple, and then, on that day,
she took the veil for the grief that she had for him and for his death."
Jaufre's poems contain many references to a "distant love" which he will
never see, "for his destiny is to love without being loved." Those
critics who accept the truth of the story regard Melisanda, daughter of
Raimon I., Count of Tripoli, as the heroine; but the biography must be
used with great caution as a historical source, and the mention of the
house of the order of Templars in which Jaufre is said to have been
buried raises a difficulty; it was erected in 1118, and in the year 1200
the County of Tripoli was merged in that of Antioch; of the Rudels of
Blaya, historically known to us, there is none who falls reasonably
within these dates. The probability is that the constant references in
Jaufre's poems to an unknown distant love, and the fact of his crusading
expedition to the Holy Land, formed in conjunction the nucleus of the [46]
legend which grew round his name, and which is known to all readers of
Carducci, Uhland and Heine.

Contemporary with Jaufre Rudel was Bernard de Ventadour, one of the
greatest names in Provencal poetry. According to the biography, which
betrays its untrustworthiness by contradicting the facts of history,
Bernard was the son of the furnace stoker at the castle of Ventadour,
under the Viscount Ebles II., himself a troubadour and a patron of
troubadours. It was from the viscount that Bernard received instruction
in the troubadours' art, and to his patron's interest in his talents he
doubtless owed the opportunities which he enjoyed of learning to read
and write, and of making acquaintance with such Latin authors as were
currently read, or with the anthologies and books of "sentences" then
used for instruction