Amanieu de Sescars

The uncertainty about his origins stems from the fact that his poems refer extensively to Catalan people and places, but a singer of the same name is found signing a Gascon document of 1253.

Whether the signatory of 1253 and the troubadour are one and the same is left open to doubt, but it is possible that Amanieu was a Catalan who was either born in or lived in Gascony, which was not uncommon at the time.

It was addressed al comte gent apres En B. d'Astarac (to Bernard IV of Astarac) and must therefore have been written before the count's death in 1291.

Amanieu's second didactic work, the "Ensenhamen de la donsela" can be dated between 1291 and 1295 by a reference to James as King of Aragon and to the ongoing War of the Sicilian Vespers.

The later troubadour Peire Lunel de Montech wrote, in a letter of 1320, "I have heard it said that you [unknown] have [the book, i.e. the ensenhamens] of Sir Amanieu, who is called the god of love, where he teaches about the young woman and the squire."