GUILLEM FIGUEIRA AND PEIRE CARDINAL.
Against Folquet of Marseilles scores of troubadours might be named,
who boldly espoused the cause of their country and of liberty against
Frenchmen and priests. The opposition to the encroachments of the latter
was of course not confined to Provence. The weaknesses of the clergy
were known equally well to trouvères and troubadours, to Walther von der
Vogelweide and the German minnesingers, and to Chaucer, and the author
of ‘Piers the Ploughman.’ But nowhere was the conflict between clerical
and temporal powers more bitter, nowhere were the questions at stake
more important and more universally felt to be such, than in the South
of France. Moreover, the satire of many of the troubadours received
additional sting from personal injury. The prolonged siege which Guy of
Cavaillon had to sustain in his castle was not likely to incline him
favourably towards his oppressors, and the furious onslaught on the
avarice of the French conquerors from the pen of Boniface de Castellane
is evidently founded on bitterest and most immediate experience. Neither
is there cause for wonder that the gentry in black gowns and white
hoods, mentioned by Guillem de Montanhagol in his powerful _sirventes_
against the cruelties and folly of the Inquisition, were not an
altogether lovely sight in the eyes of that poet.
Amongst the troubadours prominently engaged in the great struggle of
their time, two distinct types may be recognised. One is the poetic
freelance impatient of all restraint, and therefore doubly incensed at
the oppression of both moral and religious liberties, the word ‘liberty,’
in his parlance, being not unfrequently a synonym of ‘licence.’ A man
of this stamp was Guillem Figueira, the hater of priests. ‘He was,’ the
manuscript says, ‘of Toulouse, the son of a tailor, and a tailor himself.
When the French took Toulouse, he went to live in Lombardy, and he knew
well how to make songs and how to sing them; and he became a joglar among
the citizens. He was not a man to get on with barons or gentle-folks,
but he made himself most agreeable to loose women and landlords and
pothouse-keepers; and whenever he saw a good courtier come near him he
grew wroth and melancholy, and at once he set about humiliating him.’
This by no means flattering portrait ought to be received with caution;
maybe it was drawn by one of the ‘good courtiers’ who had experienced
the poet’s cynical humour. A cynic Guillem no doubt was, a lover of
low-life realism, defying polite society among his boon companions of the
tavern, a genius akin to Rutebœuf, and Villon, and Rabelais. But there
is nothing debased or debauched in his poetry, as far as we can judge
by the specimens remaining to us, although the unreserved violence of
his invective is remarkable even amongst the works of those keenest of
satirists, the troubadours. One of his _sirventeses_ is noticeable by
the word ‘Rome,’ uttered with the emphasis of hatred at the beginning of
every stanza. In it the Church is held responsible for an infinitude of
political and moral crimes, and the climax of invective is reached in the
final outburst of angry passion.
‘Rome, with wily prudence thou layest thy snares, and many a vile morsel
thou devourest in spite of the hungry. Thou hast the semblance of the
lamb, thy countenance is so innocent, but in thy heart thou art a rabid
wolf, a crowned snake engendered by a viper, wherefore the devil greets
thee as the friend of his heart.’
It is a curious fact that the Church on this occasion was valiantly
defended by a lady, Gomonde of Montpelier, who pays the furious poet in
his own coin, and threatens him with the death of the heretic.
Another _sirventes_ by Guillem directed against the vices of the clergy
is marked by the same immoderate language, but a foundation of truth is
unmistakably at the bottom of his extravagant structure of abuse. The
following stanza, for instance, is eminently characteristic of orthodox
tactics:—
‘If you say a word against them (the priests), they accuse you, and you
find yourself excommunicated. If you refuse to pay, there is no peace or
friendship to be hoped from them. Holy Virgin, Lady Mary, let me see the
day when I need no longer go in fear of them.’
A man of a very different stamp from the well-meaning but somewhat
inconsiderate and irresponsible Guillem Figueira, was the great Peire
Cardinal, who may represent the second and much higher type of the
anti-clerical troubadour. A biographical notice of about twenty lines,
signed by one Michael de la Tor, is all the information we possess of the
poet’s life. According to this sketch, Peire Cardinal was born at Puy
Notre Dame, in the province of Velay, or Veillac, as the old manuscript
calls it. He was of good parentage, ‘the son of a knight and a lady,’
and was in his childhood destined for the Church. ‘And when he came to
man’s estate he was attracted by the vanity of the world, for he found
himself gay and handsome and young. And he made many beautiful poems and
songs; few _canzos_, but many _sirventeses_ fine and excellent. And in
these _sirventeses_ he gave many good reasons and examples for those who
rightly understand them; and he greatly reproached the false clergy, as
is shown by his _sirventeses_. And he went to the courts of kings and
gentle barons with his joglar, who sang his _sirventeses_.’ According
to the same account, Peire Cardinal lived up to nearly a hundred
years. Another remarkable circumstance told of him is his knowledge
of reading and writing—an accomplishment by no means common amongst
troubadours—which he owed to his early training for the Church.
Peire Cardinal is the unrivalled master of the _sirventes_, in its
most important forms—the personal, the political, the moral, and the
religious. The last two only concern us here more immediately. But a
few remarks are necessary to indicate the poet’s manner and his general
conception of the world. This conception is melancholy to a degree. Like
most great masters of satire and humour, Peire Cardinal is a confirmed
pessimist. The world appears to him as one vast conglomeration of
selfishness and vice—a madhouse, inhabited by fools, whose remaining
sense is just sufficient for them to recognise and hate a man of genius.
This moody philosophy he has embodied in the original and striking
treatment of a well-known story, which deserves our particular attention
as one of the very few instances of narrative illustration in the poems
of the troubadours.
‘There was a city,’ Peire Cardinal says, ‘I don’t know where, in which
rain fell one day of such a kind, that all the inhabitants who were
touched by it lost their reason. All went mad but one, who happened to
be asleep in his house at the time. This one, when he woke, rose, and,
as the rain had ceased, went out amongst the people, who were all raving
mad. One had his clothes on, the other was naked; one was spitting up
to the sky, another threw stones, another logs of wood, another tore
his gown.... One thought he was a king, and put on noble airs; another
jumped over benches. Some threatened, others cursed; some were crying,
some laughing, others talking they knew not what about, others making
grimaces. He who had kept his sense was much astonished, for he saw they
were mad; and he looked up and down to see if he could discover any one
reasonable, but in vain: there was none. And he was greatly surprised
at them, but much more were they at him when they saw he remained
reasonable. They were sure he must be mad, as he failed to do as they
did.’
The surprise of the fools soon is converted into rage. They knock him
down, and trample on him; they push him, and pull him, and beat him; at
last, he is glad to escape into his house, thrashed, covered with mud,
and more dead than alive.
‘This fable,’ the poet exclaims, ‘depicts the world and all who inhabit
it; and our age is the city chokeful of madmen. The highest wisdom is
to love and fear God, and to obey his commandments. But now that wisdom
is lost, the rain has fallen: covetousness has come, and pride and
viciousness, which have attacked all the people. And if God honours one
amongst them, the others think him mad, and revile him, for God’s wisdom
appears to them folly. But the friend of God, wherever he be, knows them
to be the fools, for they have lost the wisdom of God; and they think him
mad, because he has abandoned the wisdom of the world.’
These are words of a man of genius, who has experienced the buffetings
of adverse fortune, and the scorn of a world incapable or unwilling
to fathom his depth. Morbid words, if the reader likes, but forcibly
uttered, and instinct with a noble disdain of the fashions and follies of
the day. But Peire Cardinal’s grievances were not of a narrow, egotistic
kind. His poems reflect the sad time in which he lived, and the national
disaster which he witnessed with deepest indignation. The avarice and
selfishness of clergy and laity, the want of patriotic feeling, the
barbarism prevailing amongst the nobles, and other evils fostered
by those troublous times of internal and external warfare, are the
favourite subjects of the poet’s satire. It need hardly be added that his
sympathies were all with the South against the North. Raimon VI. is his
chosen hero, whom he encourages with his songs, and in whose temporary
success he rejoices. ‘At Toulouse,’ he sings, ‘there is Raimon the Count;
may God protect him! As water flows from the fountain, so chivalry comes
from him. Against the worst of men—nay, against the whole world—he
defends himself. Frenchmen and priests cannot resist him. To the good he
is humble and condescending; the wicked he destroys.’
In his accusations of the clergy, Peire is violent and sweeping; almost
as violent as Guillem Figueira himself. But his censure almost always
proceeds from a general motive; the difference between the two is that
between a scholar and politician and a pamphleteer. Peire’s language,
when he speaks of the domineering propensities of the priests, is
as bitter as can be imagined, but his anger is founded on historic
considerations of deepest import. It is the decay of the temporal power
he deplores. ‘Formerly, kings and emperors, dukes, counts and comtors[29]
and knights used to govern the world; but now priests have usurped
its dominion with rapine and treachery and hypocrisy, with force and
persuasion. They are incensed if everything is not conceded to them, and
it must be done sooner or later.’ In another _sirventes_, Peire Cardinal
alludes to the amiable habit of the priests—also mentioned by Guillem
Figueira—of calling everyone a Vaudois or heretic who dares to resist
their encroachments.
One of the most forcible of Peire’s songs is directed against the
avarice and covetousness of the priests, whom he compares to vultures
scenting a dead body. In the same _sirventes_ we meet with one of those
grand reflections which raise Peire Cardinal from the level of the mere
satirist to that of the great moral poet. ‘Do you know,’ he says, ‘what
becomes of the riches of those who have unjustly acquired them? A mighty
robber will come, who will leave them nothing. His name is Death; he will
prostrate them, and entangle them in a net four yards in length, and they
will be sent to a house of misery.’
It remains to point out one more feature of Peire’s works, which
distinguishes them from those of all his brother poets. The troubadours,
it has been said, had a wise and beneficial horror of theology. There
is, as far as the present writer is aware, not a trace in their works
of the slightest interest taken by any of them in the scholastic
controversies of Catholics and heretics. The only exception to this
rule is a _sirventes_ by Peire Cardinal, to which short reference has
previously been made. Peire, as has been mentioned before, had received a
learned education; he could read and write, and was evidently not without
considerable claims to scholarship, according to the standard of his
age. He was no doubt well versed in the absurd and hideously realistic
conceptions of hell and purgatory with which mediæval theologians and
preachers loved to fill the imagination of their audiences. His poem
reads like a gentle satire, from the poet’s point of view, on their
barren discussions. The boldness of his conception and language is at the
same time astonishing in a writer of the thirteenth century,
‘I will begin a new _sirventes_,’ he says, ‘which I shall repeat on the
day of judgment to Him who made and fashioned me out of nothing. If He
reproaches me of anything, and wishes to give me over to damnation, I
shall say: ‘Lord, have mercy on me, for I have struggled with the wicked
world all my life; now save me by your grace from torment.’
‘And His whole court shall wonder when they hear my plea. For I say that
He is unjust towards His own if He delivers them to eternal punishment.
For he who loses what he might gain cannot complain of his loss.
Therefore He ought to be gentle and indulgent so as to retain the souls
of sinners.
‘His gate ought not to be guarded, and St. Peter has little honour
through being the porter. Every soul that wishes ought to be allowed to
enter smiling. For that court is little to my liking where one laughs
while others cry; and however great the king may be we shall find fault
with him if he refuses us entrance.
‘I will not despair, and on you, O Lord, my good hope is founded.
Therefore you must save my soul and body, and comfort me in the hour of
death. And I will propose to you a good alternative. Either send me back
to where I came from on the day of my birth, or forgive me my faults. For
I should not have committed them if I had not been born.’
And with this poem, which teaches a deep truth in a half-playful manner,
we must take leave of Peire Cardinal. His character is of an elevated
type, and his gifts would do honour to any literature. He is undoubtedly
the foremost representative of moral poetry amongst the troubadours.