Obs de Biguli was a troubadour

Troubadour

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

 from Lombardy

Lombardy

Lombardy is one of the 20 regions of Italy. The capital is Milan. One-sixth of Italy's population lives in Lombardy and about one fifth of Italy's GDP is produced in this region, making it the most populous and richest region in the country and one of the richest in the whole of Europe...

 and one of the few troubadours known by name none of whose works survive. He is mentioned by name only in a poem by Guilhem Raimon:

N'Obs de Biguli se plaing

Tant es iratz e dolenz,

A Deu e pois a las genz

Del rei car chantar vol dir. . .

This was probably written in Venetia at the court of the Da Romano family on the occasion of the Emperor Frederick II (the rei [king] of the song) in 1220. Though the poem does not explicitly identify Obs as a troubadour, many subsequent scholars of the trovatori (Italian troubadours) have suspected that he was.

While his first name is probably an Occitan translation of the Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 Obizzo, his surname is an Occitanisation of either Bigolini, a family from Treviso

Treviso

Treviso is a city and comune in Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 82,854 inhabitants : some 3,000 live within the Venetian walls or in the historical and monumental center, some 80,000 live in the urban center proper, while the city...

 that moved to Padua

Padua

Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

, or Bigoli, a family of Piacenza

Piacenza

Piacenza is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Piacenza...

. Unfortunately, no Obizzo is known from the twelfth century in either family.

Sources

• Bertoni, Giulio. I Trovatori d'Italia: Biografie, testi, tradizioni, note. Rome: Società Multigrafica Editrice Somu, 1967 [1915].