Già mai non mi comforto, or ‘never will I be comforted’, by thirteenth-century Italian poet Rinaldo d’Aquino, details the emotional world, the sorrows and the frustrations of a woman who had just seen her lover off on crusade, most likely from the shores of Messina, Sicily. She expresses her feelings of abandonment, neglect; she asks what will happen to her, whether anyone had thought of her. She exclaims that while ‘the Cross’ may save others it ‘destroyed’ her and is her ‘undoing’. She denounces those whom she holds accountable – in addition to her lover – including the emperor (Frederick II) who called the crusade, the Cross (i.e., the mission), and God.

The poem belongs to a genre of thirteenth-century Sicilian lyric love poetry. In this particular example, several broad themes converge: first, the crusades in the Mediterranean; next, Sicily and the kingdom of southern Italy, or the Regno; and finally the impact of the crusades on those left behind.