Note 17 — Chapter XIII · THE SIRVENTES.

Attacks on the morals of the clergy are frequent in Provençal literature; but of poems containing heretical opinions in matters of dogma I know only one, by Peire Cardinal. It is a passionate plea against the eternity of punishment, and might have been quoted with advantage in a recent ecclesiastical trial. It is, however, by no means unlikely that other poems of heterodox import may have been accidentally or wilfully destroyed in the course of ages. The fact that a bull of Pope Innocent IV., dated 1245, prohibits to students the use of Provençal, as a language of heretics, tends to confirm this surmise.