Folco

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Folco is the form by which Dante designates, at verse 94 of Canto IX of the Paradiso, the Provençal troubadour known as Folchetto da Marsiglia. The notes to the canto indicate that he was born in Marseille to a Genoese family in the second half of the twelfth century and that he died in 1231, after a life spent in several courts of Spain and Provence, with Barral du Baux, Raymond Berengar of Toulouse, Alfonso II of Aquitaine, and William of Montpellier. After the death of Azalais, wife of Barral and the lady he sang of, he became a Cistercian monk and in 1205 was elected bishop of Toulouse, distinguishing himself for the zeal with which he led the struggle against the Albigensians. The same notes explicitly connect his presence in the Heaven of Venus to the memory of the capture of the fortress of Lavaur by the crusaders, which took place during his crusade against the heretics. On that occasion, according to the chroniclers, the walls fell while the clergy intoned the Veni Creator Spiritus, thus repeating the episode of the taking of Jericho narrated in Scripture.