Legends & Romances of Spain

During the persecution they suffered at the period of the Albigensian wars numbers of them fled into Spain, where they found a refuge from their intolerant enemies. Thus Aimeric de Bellinai fled to the Court of Alfonso IX, [6] and was later at the Court of Alfonso X, as were Montagnagunt and Folquet de Lunel, as well as Raimond de Tours and Bertrand Carbunel, who, with Riquier, either dedicated their works to that monarch or composed elegies on the occasion of his death. King Alfonso himself wrote verses of a decidedly Provençal cast, and even as late as 1433 the Marquis de Villena, a kinsman of the famous Marquis de Santillana, whom we shall encounter later, wrote a treatise upon the art of the Troubadours, [7] which, following the instincts of a pedant, he desired to see resuscitated in Castile. [8]

The Galician, a Romance language which sprang from the same root as the Portuguese, is nearly allied to the Castilian. But it is not so rich in guttural sounds, from which we may be correct in sur