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| (a page from the surviving manuscript, from Wikipedia) |
A unique and interesting document, the Canso is composed of two parts. The first quarter or so written by the cleric William (or Guilhem) of Tudela and strongly reflects the point of view of the Crusaders. The remaining three quarters, by the Anonymous Continuator, picks up where William left off in mid-sentence but strongly reflects the point of view of the other side. I do not know of any other single documents written by two authors on either side of a war.
The two authors are also strikingly different. William of Tudela describes himself as "a clerk in holy orders" and also as a geomancer whose divinations predicted the course of the Albigensian Crusade. He is no great poet, but I often find him funny is his manner of description, and in his seeming obsession with comparing the importance of things to apples. The Anonymous Continuator does not describe himself and what is claimed to be known about him is all speculation. He is, however, a wonderfully descriptive author -- the inheritor of a brilliant tradition of Occitan poets.
The epic Canso runs to nearly 10,000 lines and is one of the three main primary sources about what happened in the Albigensian Crusade. In many cases it is the most extensive source and in some cases, it is the only source.
-- Sam Taylor
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