THE TROUBADOURS
BY
REV. H.J. CHAYTOR, M.A.
AUTHOR OF
"THE TROUBADOURS OF DANTE"
ETC.
Cambridge:
at the University Press
1912
_With the exception of the coat of arms at
the foot, the design on the title page is a
reproduction of one used by the earliest known
Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521_
PREFACE
This book, it is hoped, may serve as an introduction to the literature
of the Troubadours for readers who have no detailed or scientific
knowledge of the subject. I have, therefore, chosen for treatment the
Troubadours who are most famous or who display characteristics useful
for the purpose of this book. Students who desire to pursue the subject
will find further help in the works mentioned in the bibliography. The
latter does not profess to be exhaustive, but I hope nothing of real
importance has been omitted.
H.J. CHAYTOR.
THE COLLEGE,
PLYMOUTH, March 1912.
CONTENTS
PREFACE
CHAP.
I. INTRODUCTORY
II. THE THEORY OF COURTLY LOVE
III. TECHNIQUE
IV. THE EARLY TROUBADOURS
V. THE CLASSICAL PERIOD
VI. THE ALBIGEOIS CRUSADE
VII. THE TROUBADOURS IN ITALY
VIII. THE TROUBADOURS IN SPAIN
IX. PROVENCAL INFLUENCE IN GERMANY, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES
INDEX
[Transcriptor's note: Page numbers from the original document have
been posted in the right margin to maintain the relevance of the
index references.}
THE TROUBADOURS [1]
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
Few literatures have exerted so profound an influence upon the literary
history of other peoples as the poetry of the troubadours. Attaining the
highest point of technical perfection in the last half of the twelfth
and the early years of the thirteenth century, Provençal poetry was
already popular in Italy and Spain when the Albigeois crusade devastated
the south of France and scattered the troubadours abroad or forced them
to seek other means of livelihood. The earliest lyric poetry of Italy is
Provençal in all but language; almost as much may be said of Portugal
and Galicia; Catalonian troubadours continued to write in Provençal
until the fourteenth century. The lyric poetry of the "trouvères" in
Northern France was deeply influenced both in form and spirit by
troubadour poetry, and traces of this influence are perceptible even in [2]
early middle-English lyrics. Finally, the German minnesingers knew and
appreciated troubadour lyrics, and imitations or even translations of
Provençal poems may be found in Heinrich von Morungen, Friedrich von
Hausen, and many others. Hence the poetry of the troubadours is a
subject of first-rate importance to the student of comparative
literature.
The northern limit of the Provençal language formed a line starting from
the Pointe de Grave at the mouth of the Gironde, passing through
Lesparre, Bordeaux, Libourne, Périgueux, rising northward to Nontron, la
Rochefoucauld, Confolens, Bellac, then turning eastward to Guéret and
Montluçon; it then went south-east to Clermont-Ferrand, Boën, Saint
Georges, Saint Sauveur near Annonay. The Dauphiné above Grenoble, most
of the Franche-Comté, French Switzerland and Savoy, are regarded as a
separate linguistic group known as Franco-Provençal, for the reason that
the dialects of that district display characteristics common to both
French and Provençal.[1] On the south-west, Catalonia, Valencia and the
Balearic Isles must also be included in the Provençal region. As
concerns the Northern limit, it must not be regarded as a definite line
of demarcation between the langue d'oil or the Northern French dialects
and the langue d'oc or Provençal. The boundary is, of course, determined
by noting the points at which certain linguistic features peculiar to
Provençal cease and are replaced by the characteristics of Northern [3]
French. Such a characteristic, for instance, is the Latin tonic _a_
before a single consonant, and not preceded by a palatal consonant,
which remains in Provençal but becomes _e_ in French; Latin cant_a_re
becomes chant_a_r in Provençal but chant_e_r in French. But north and
south of the boundary thus determined there was, in the absence of any
great mountain range or definite geographical line of demarcation, an
indeterminate zone, in which one dialect probably shaded off by easy
gradations into the other.
Within the region thus described as Provençal, several separate dialects
existed, as at the present day. Apart from the Franco-Provençal on the
north-east, which we have excluded, there was Gascon in the south-west
and the modern _départements_ of the Basses and Hautes Pyrénées;
Catalonian, the dialect of Roussillon, which was brought into Spain in
the seventh century and still survives in Catalonia, Valencia and the
Balearic Islands. The rest of the country may be subdivided by a line to
the north of which _c_ before _a_ becomes _ch_ as in French, cant_a_re
producing chant_a_r, while southwards we find _c(k)_ remaining. The
Southern dialects are those of Languedoc and Provence; north of the line
were the Limousin and Auvergne dialects. At the present day these
dialects have diverged very widely. In the early middle ages the
difference between them was by no means so great. Moreover, a literary [4]
language grew up by degrees, owing to the wide circulation of poems and
the necessity of using a dialect which could be universally
intelligible. It was the Limousin dialect which became, so to speak, the
backbone of this literary language, now generally known as Provençal,
just as the Tuscan became predominant for literary purposes among the
Italian dialects. It was in Limousin that the earliest troubadour lyrics
known to us were composed, and this district with the adjacent Poitou
and Saintonge may therefore be reasonably regarded as the birthplace of
Provençal lyric poetry.
Hence the term "Provençal" is not entirely appropriate to describe the
literary language of the troubadours, as it may also be restricted to
denote the dialects spoken in the "Provincia". This difficulty was felt
at an early date. The first troubadours spoke of their language as
_roman_ or _lingua romana,_ a term equally applicable to any other
romance language. _Lemosin_ was also used, which was too restricted a
term, and was also appropriated by the Catalonians to denote their own
dialect. A third term in use was the _lingua d'oc,_ which has the
authority of Dante [2] and was used by some of the later troubadours;
however, the term "Provençal" has been generally accepted, and must
henceforward be understood to denote the literary language common to the [5]
south of France and not the dialect of Provence properly so-called.
For obvious reasons Southern France during the early middle ages had far
outstripped the Northern provinces in art, learning, and the refinements
of civilisation. Roman culture had made its way into Southern Gaul at an
early date and had been readily accepted by the inhabitants, while
Marseilles and Narbonne had also known something of Greek civilisation.
Bordeaux, Toulouse, Arles, Lyons and other towns were flourishing and
brilliant centres of civilisation at a time when Northern France was
struggling with foreign invaders. It was in Southern Gaul, again, that
Christianity first obtained a footing; here the barbarian invasions of
the fifth and sixth centuries proved less destructive to civilisation
than in Northern France, and the Visigoths seem to have been more
amenable to the influences of culture than the Northern Franks. Thus the
towns of Southern Gaul apparently remained centres in which artistic and
literary traditions were preserved more or less successfully until the
revival of classical studies during the age of Charlemagne. The climate,
again, of Southern France is milder and warmer than that of the North,
and these influences produced a difference which may almost be termed
racial. It is a difference visible even to-day and is well expressed by [6]
the chronicler Raoul de Caen, who speaks of the Provençal Crusaders,
saying that the French were prouder in bearing and more war-like in
action than the Provençals, who especially contrasted with them by their
skill in procuring food in times of famine: "inde est, quod adhuc
puerorum decantat naenia, Franci ad bella, Provinciales ad victualia".[3]
Only a century and a half later than Charlemagne appeared the first
poetical productions in Provençal which are known to us, a fragment of a
commentary upon the De Consolatione of Boethius[4] and a poem upon St
Foy of Agen. The first troubadour, William, Count of Poitiers, belongs
to the close of the eleventh century.
Though the Count of Poitiers is the first troubadour known to us, the
relatively high excellence of his technique, as regards stanza
construction and rime, and the capacity of his language for expressing
lofty and refined ideas in poetical form (in spite of his occasional
lapses into coarseness), entirely preclude the supposition that he was
the first troubadour in point of time. The artistic conventions apparent
in his poetry and his obviously careful respect for fixed rules oblige
us to regard his poetry as the outcome of a considerable stage of
previous development. At what point this development began and what
influences stimulated its progress are questions which still remain in [7]
dispute. Three theories have been proposed. It is, in the first place,
obviously tempting to explain the origin of Provençal poetry as being a
continuation of Latin poetry in its decadence. When the Romans settled
in Gaul they brought with them their amusements as well as their laws
and institutions. Their _scurrae_, _thymelici_ and _joculatores_, the
tumblers, clowns and mountebanks, who amused the common people by day
and the nobles after their banquets by night and travelled from town to
town in pursuit of their livelihood, were accustomed to accompany their
performances by some sort of rude song and music. In the uncivilised
North they remained buffoons; but in the South, where the greater
refinement of life demanded more artistic performance, the musical part
of their entertainment became predominant and the _joculator_ became the
_joglar_ (Northern French, _jongleur_), a wandering musician and
eventually a troubadour, a composer of his own poems. These latter were
no longer the gross and coarse songs of the earlier mountebank age,
which Alcuin characterised as _turpissima_ and _vanissima_, but the
grave and artificially wrought stanzas of the troubadour _chanso_.
Secondly, it has been felt that some explanation is required to account
for the extreme complexity and artificiality of troubadour poetry in its
most highly developed stage. Some nine hundred different forms of stanza [8]
construction are to be found in the body of troubadour poetry,[5] and
few, if any schools of lyric poetry in the world, can show a higher
degree of technical perfection in point of metrical diversity, complex
stanza construction and accuracy in the use of rime. This result has
been ascribed to Arabic influence during the eighth century; but no
sufficient proof has ever been produced that the complexities of Arabic
and Provençal poetry have sufficient in common to make this hypothesis
anything more than an ingenious conjecture.
One important fact stands in contradiction to these theories. All
indications go to prove that the origin of troubadour poetry can be
definitely localised in a particular part of Southern France. We have
seen that the Limousin dialect became the basis of the literary
language, and that the first troubadour known to us belonged to Poitou.
It is also apparent that in the Poitou district, upon the border line of
the French and Provençal languages, popular songs existed and were
current among the country people; these were songs in honour of spring,
pastorals or dialogues between a knight and a shepherdess (our "Where
are you going, my pretty maid?" is of the same type), _albas_ or dawn
songs which represent a friend as watching near the meeting-place of a
lover and his lady and giving him due warning of the approach of dawn or [9]
of any other danger; there are also _ballatas_ or dance songs of an
obviously popular type.[6] Whatever influence may have been exercised by
the Latin poetry of the decadence or by Arab poetry, it is in these
popular and native productions that we must look for the origins of the
troubadour lyrics. This popular poetry with its simple themes and homely
treatment of them is to be found in many countries, and diversity of
race is often no bar to strange coincidence in the matter of this
poetry. It is thus useless to attempt to fix any date for the beginnings
of troubadour poetry; its primitive form doubtless existed as soon as
the language was sufficiently advanced to become a medium of poetical
expression.
Some of these popular themes were retained by the troubadours, the
_alba_ and _pastorela_ for instance, and were often treated by them in a
direct and simple manner. The Gascon troubadour Cercamon is said to have
composed pastorals in "the old style." But in general, between
troubadour poetry and the popular poetry of folk-lore, a great gulf is
fixed, the gulf of artificiality. The very name "troubadour" points to
this characteristic. _Trobador_ is the oblique case of the nominative
_trobaire_, a substantive from the verb _trobar_, in modern French
_trouver_. The Northern French _trouvère_ is a nominative form, and
_trouveor_ should more properly correspond with _trobador_. The
accusative form, which should have persisted, was superseded by the [10]
nominative _trouvère_, which grammarians brought into fashion at the end
of the eighteenth century. The verb _trobar_ is said to be derived from
the low Latin _tropus_ [Greek: tropus], an air or melody: hence the
primitive meaning of _trobador_ is the "composer" or "inventor," in the
first instance, of new melodies. As such, he differs from the _vates_,
the inspired bard of the Romans and the [Greek: poeta], poeta, the
creative poet of the Greeks, the "maker" of Germanic literature. Skilful
variation upon a given theme, rather than inspired or creative power, is
generally characteristic of the troubadour.
Thus, whatever may have been the origin of troubadour poetry, it appears
at the outset of the twelfth century as a poetry essentially
aristocratic, intended for nobles and for courts, appealing but rarely
to the middle classes and to the common people not at all. The
environment which enabled this poetry to exist was provided by the
feudal society of Southern France. Kings, princes and nobles themselves
pursued the art and also became the patrons of troubadours who had risen
from the lower classes. Occasionally troubadours existed with sufficient
resources of their own to remain independent; Folquet of Marseilles
seems to have been a merchant of wealth, above the necessity of seeking
patronage. But troubadours such as Bernart de Ventadour, the son of the [11]
stoker in the castle of Ventadour, Perdigon the son of a fisherman, and
many others of like origin depended for their livelihood and advancement
upon the favour of patrons. Thus the troubadour ranks included all sorts
and conditions of men; monks and churchmen were to be found among them,
such as the monk of Montaudon and Peire Cardenal, though the Church
looked somewhat askance upon the profession. Women are also numbered
among the troubadours; Beatrice, the Countess of Die, is the most famous
of these.
A famous troubadour usually circulated his poems by the mouth of a
_joglar_ (Northern French, _jongleur_), who recited them at different
courts and was often sent long distances by his master for this purpose.
A joglar of originality might rise to the position of a troubadour, and
a troubadour who fell upon evil days might sink to the profession of
joglar. Hence there was naturally some confusion between the troubadour
and the joglar, and poets sometimes combined the two functions. In
course of time the joglar was regarded with some contempt, and like his
forbear, the Roman joculator, was classed with the jugglers, acrobats,
animal tamers and clowns who amused the nobles after their feasts. Nor,
under certain conditions, was the troubadour's position one of dignity; [12]
when he was dependent upon his patron's bounty, he would stoop to
threats or to adulation in order to obtain the horse or the garments or
the money of his desire; such largesse, in fact, came to be denoted by a
special term, _messio_. Jealousy between rival troubadours, accusations
of slander in their poems and quarrels with their patrons were of
constant occurrence. These naturally affected the joglars in their
service, who received a share of any gifts that the troubadour might
obtain.
The troubadours who were established more or less permanently as court
poets under a patron lord were few; a wandering life and a desire for
change of scene is characteristic of the class. They travelled far and
wide, not only to France, Spain and Italy, but to the Balkan peninsula,
Hungary, Cyprus, Malta and England; Elias Cairel is said to have visited
most of the then known world, and the biographer of Albertet Calha
relates, as an unusual fact, that this troubadour never left his native
district. Not only love, but all social and political questions of the
age attracted their attention. They satirised political and religious
opponents, preached crusades, sang funeral laments upon the death of
famous patrons, and the support of their poetical powers was often in
demand by princes and nobles involved in a struggle. Noteworthy also is
the fact that a considerable number retired to some monastery or [13]
religious house to end their days (_se rendet_, was the technical
phrase). So Bertran of Born, Bernart of Ventadour, Peire Rogier, Cadenet
and many others retired from the disappointments of the world to end
their days in peace; Folquet of Marseilles, who similarly entered the
Cistercian order, became abbot of his monastery of Torondet, Bishop of
Toulouse, a leader of the Albigeois crusade and a founder of the
Inquisition.