This efflorescence of the French language must be connected with the great prosperity of Walloon Flanders and the development, in Arras, Douai, Lille, Tournai and Valenciennes, of an intense literary movement, including poets, chroniclers and translators endowed with a distinct originality. As late as the thirteenth century these writers, who had adopted the Picard dialect, proclaimed their independence from purely French literature, so that, in their own domain, they play a similar part to that played by the Tournai master-builders in theirs. The counts of Flanders and Hainault, among them Philip of Alsace, Baldwin V and Baldwin VI, patronized native literature and even attracted to their courts some of the greatest French poets of the period, such as Chretien de Troyes and Gautier d'Epinal. The dukes of Brabant imitated this example and patronized Adenet le Roi, who was considered the most eminent Belgian trouvere. We still possess a few songs composed by Duke Henry III. Nothing can give us a better insight into the intellectual life of some of the nobles of the time than the following lines in which Lambert d'Ardres describes the manifold activities of Baldwin II, Count of Guines (1169-1206). This prince "surrounded himself with clerks and masters, asked them questions unceasingly and listened to them attentively. But, as he would have liked to know everything and could not remember everything by heart, he ordered Master Landri de Waben to translate for him from the Latin into Romance the Song of Solomon, together with its mystic interpretation, and often had it read aloud to him. He learned, in the same way, the Gospels, accompanied by appropriate sermons, which had been translated, as well as the life of St. Anthony Abbot, by a certain Alfred. He also received from Master Godfrey a great portion of the Physic translated from Latin into Romance. Everyone knows that the venerable Father Simon of Bologna translated for him from the Latin into Romance the book of Solinus on natural history and, in order to obtain a reward for his labour, offered the book to him publicly and read it to him aloud."