In "Li clerc si fan pastor" he condemned the "possession" of the laity by the clergy, for so long as the clergy order it, the laity will "draw their swords towards heaven and get into the saddle." This poem was written probably around 1245, after the First Council of Lyon, where the clergy took action against the Emperor Frederick II, but not against the Saracens. In "Atressi cum per fargar" Peire suggests that the clergy "protect their own swinish flesh from every blade", but they do not care how many knights die in battle. Peire was not an opponent of Christianity or even the Crusades. In "Totz lo mons es vestitiz et abrazatz" he urged Philip III of France, who had recently succeeded his father, Louis IX, who died in 1270 on the failed Eighth Crusade, to go to the aid of Edward Longshanks, then on the Ninth Crusade in Syria.