THE TROUBADOURS IN ITALY
To study the development of troubadour literature only in the country of
its origin would be to gain a very incomplete idea of its influence. The
movement, as we have already said, crossed the Pyrenees, the Alps and
the Rhine, and Italy at least owed the very existence of its lyric
poetry to the impulse first given by the troubadours. Close relations
between Southern France and Northern Italy had existed from an early
period: commercial intercourse between the towns on the Mediterranean
was in some cases strengthened by treaties; the local nobles were
connected by feudal ties resulting from the suzerainty of the Holy Roman
Empire. Hence it was natural for troubadours and _joglars_ to visit the
Italian towns. Their own language was not so remote from the Italian
dialects as to raise any great obstacle to the circulation of their
poetry and the petty princes of Northern Italy lent as ready an ear to
troubadour songs as the local lords in the South of France. Peire Vidal
was at the court of the Marquis of Montferrat so early as 1195; the
Marquis of Este, the Count of San Bonifacio at Verona, the Count of [96]
Savoy at Turin, the Emperor Frederick II. and other lords of less
importance offered a welcome to Provençal poets. More than twenty
troubadours are thus known to have visited Italy and in some cases to
have made a stay of considerable length. The result was that their
poetry soon attracted Italian disciples and imitators. Provençal became
the literary language of the noble classes and an Italian school of
troubadours arose, of whom Sordello is the most remarkable figure.
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, who spent a considerable part of his career
(1180-1207) with the Marquis of Montferrat, belongs as a troubadour
quite as much to Italy as to Southern France. He was the son of a poor
noble of Orange and became a troubadour at the court of William IV. of
Orange; he exchanged _tensos_ with his patron with whom he seems to have
been on very friendly terms and to whom he refers by the pseudonym
Engles (English), the reason for which is as yet unknown. Some time
later than 1189, he left the court of Orange, apparently in consequence
of a dispute with his patron and made his way to Italy, where he led a
wandering life until he was admitted to the court of the Marquis of
Montferrat. To this period of his career belongs the well-known poem in
which he pays his addresses to a Genoese lady.
"Lady, I have prayed you long to love me of your kindliness... my heart [97]
is more drawn to you than to any lady of Genoa. I shall be well rewarded
if you will love me and shall be better recompensed for my trouble than
if Genoa belonged to me with all the wealth that is there heaped up."
The lady then replies in her own Genoese dialect: she knows nothing of
the conventions of courtly love, and informs the troubadour that her
husband is a better man than he and that she will have nothing to do
with him. The poem is nothing but a _jeu d'esprit_ based upon the
contrast between troubadour sentiments and the honest but unpoetical
views of the middle class; it is interesting to philologists as
containing one of the earliest known specimens of Italian dialect. An
example of the Tuscan dialect is also found in the _descort_ by
Raimbaut. This is a poem in irregular metre, intended to show the
perturbation of the poet's mind. Raimbaut increased this effect by
writing in five different languages. He found a ready welcome from
Bonifacio II. at the court of Montferrat which Peire Vidal also visited.
The marquis dubbed him knight and made him his brother in arms. Raimbaut
fell in love with Beatrice, the sister of the marquis, an intimacy which
proceeded upon the regular lines of courtly love. He soon found an
opportunity of showing his devotion to the marquis. In 1194 Henry VI. [98]
made an expedition to Sicily to secure the claims of his wife,
Constance, to that kingdom: the Marquis Boniface as a vassal of the
imperial house followed the Emperor and Raimbaut accompanied his
contingent. He refers to his share in the campaign in a later letter to
the marquis.[30]
Et ai per vos estat en greu preyzo
Per vostra guerra e n'ai a vostro pro
Fag maynt assaut et ars maynta maiso
Et a Messina vos cobri del blizo;
En la batalha vos vinc en tal sazo
Que·us ferion pel pietz e pel mento
Dartz e cairels, sagetas e trenso.
"For your sake I have been in hard captivity in your war, and to do you
service I have made many an assault and burned many a house. At Messina
I covered you with the shield; I came to you in the battle at the moment
when they hurled at your breast and chin darts and quarrels, arrows and
lance-shafts." The captivity was endured in the course of the marquis's
wars in Italy, and the troubadour refers to a seafight between the
forces of Genoa and Pisa in the Sicilian campaign. In 1202 he followed
his master upon the crusade which practically ended at Constantinople.
He had composed a vigorous _sirventes_ urging Christian men to join the
movement, but he does not himself show any great enthusiasm to take the [99]
cross. "I would rather, if it please you, die in that land than live and
remain here. For us God was raised upon the cross, received death,
suffered the passion, was scourged and loaded with chains and crowned
with thorns upon the cross.... Fair Cavalier (i.e. Beatrice) I know not
whether I shall stay for your sake or take the cross; I know not whether
I shall go or remain, for I die with grief if I see you and I am like to
die if I am far from you." So also in the letter quoted above.
E cant anetz per crozar a Saysso,
Ieu non avia cor--Dieus m'o perdo--
Que passes mar, mas per vostre resso
Levey la crotz e pris confessio.
"And when you went to Soissons to take the cross, I did not intend--may
God forgive me--to cross the sea, but to increase your fame I took the
cross and made confession." The count lost his life, as Villehardouin
relates, in a skirmish with the Bulgarians in 1207. Raimbaut de
Vaqueiras probably fell at the same time.
This is enough to show that troubadours who came to Italy could make the
country a second home, and find as much occupation in love, war and
politics as they had ever found in Southern France. Aimeric de Pegulhan,
Gaucelm Faidit, Uc de Saint-Circ,[31] the author of some troubadour [100]
biographies, were among the best known of those who visited Italy. The
last named is known to have visited Pisa and another troubadour of minor
importance, Guillem de la Tor, was in Florence. Thus the visits of the
troubadours were by no means confined to the north.
It was, therefore, natural that Italians should imitate the troubadours
whose art proved so successful at Italian courts and some thirty Italian
troubadours are known to us. Count Manfred II. and Albert, the Marquis
of Malaspina, engaged in _tensos_ with Peire Vidal and Raimbaut de
Vaqueiras respectively and are the first Italians known to have written
in Provençal. Genoa produced a number of Italian troubadours of whom the
best were Lanfranc Cigala and Bonifacio Calvo. The latter was a wanderer
and spent some time in Castile at the court of Alfonso X. Lanfranc
Cigala was a judge in his native town: from him survive a _sirventes_
against Bonifacio III. of Montferrat who had abandoned the cause of
Frederick II., crusade poems and a _sirventes_ against the obscure
style. The Venetian Bartolomeo Zorzi was a prisoner at Genoa from 1266
to 1273, having been captured by the Genoese. The troubadour of Genoa,
Bonifacio Calvo, had written a vigorous invective against Venice, to
which the captive troubadour composed an equally strong reply addressed [101]
to Bonifacio Calvo; the latter sought him out and the two troubadours
became friends. The most famous, however, of the Italian troubadours is
certainly Sordello.
There is much uncertainty concerning the facts of Sordello's life; he
was born at Goito, near Mantua, and was of noble family. His name is not
to be derived from _sordidus_, but from _Surdus_, a not uncommon
patronymic in North Italy during the thirteenth century. Of his early
years nothing is known: at some period of his youth he entered the court
of Count Ricciardo di san Bonifazio, the lord of Verona, where he fell
in love with his master's wife, Cunizza da Romano (Dante, _Par._ ix.
32), and eloped with her. The details of this affair are entirely
obscure; according to some commentators, it was the final outcome of a
family feud, while others assert that the elopement took place with the
connivance of Cunizza's brother, the notorious Ezzelino III. (_Inf_.
xii. 110): the date is approximately 1225. At any rate, Sordello and
Cunizza betook themselves to Ezzelino's court. Then, according to the
Provençal biography, follows his secret marriage with Otta, and his
flight from Treviso, to escape the vengeance of her angry relatives. He
thus left Italy about the year 1229, and retired to the South of France,
where he visited the courts of Provence, Toulouse, Roussillon, [102]
penetrating also into Castile. A chief authority for these wanderings is
the troubadour Peire Bremen Ricas Novas, whose _sirventes_ speaks of him
as being in Spain at the court of the king of Leon: this was Alfonso
IX., who died in the year 1230. He also visited Portugal, but for this
no date can be assigned. Allusions in his poems show that he was in
Provence before 1235: about ten years later we find him at the court of
the Countess Beatrice (_Par._ vi. 133), daughter of Raimon Berengar,
Count of Provence, and wife of Charles I. of Anjou. Beatrice may have
been the subject of several of his love poems: but the "senhal" Restaur
and Agradiva, which conceal the names possibly of more than one lady
cannot be identified. From 1252-1265 his name appears in several Angevin
treaties and records, coupled with the names of other well-known nobles,
and he would appear to have held a high place in Charles' esteem. It is
uncertain whether he took part in the first crusade of St Louis, in
1248-1251, at which Charles was present: but he followed Charles on his
Italian expedition against Manfred in 1265, and seems to have been
captured by the Ghibellines before reaching Naples. At any rate, he was
a prisoner at Novara in September 1266; Pope Clement IV. induced Charles
to ransom him, and in 1269, as a recompense for his services, he
received five castles in the Abruzzi, near the river Pescara: shortly [103]
afterwards he died. The circumstances of his death are unknown, but from
the fact that he is placed by Dante among those who were cut off before
they could repent it has been conjectured that he came to a violent end.
Sordello's restless life and his intrigues could be exemplified from the
history of many another troubadour and neither his career nor his
poetry, which with two exceptions, is of no special originality, seems
to justify the portrait drawn of him by Dante; while Browning's famous
poem has nothing in common with the troubadour except the name. These
exceptions, however, are notable. The first is a _sirventes_ composed by
Sordello on the death of his patron Blacatz in 1237. He invites to the
funeral feast the Roman emperor, Frederick II., the kings of France,
England and Aragon, the counts of Champagne, Toulouse and Provence. They
are urged to eat of the dead man's heart, that they may gain some
tincture of his courage and nobility. Each is invited in a separate
stanza in which the poet reprehends the failings of the several
potentates.
Del rey engles me platz, quar es paue coratjos,
Que manje pro del cor, pueys er valens e bos,
E cobrara la terra, per que viu de pretz blos,
Que·l tol lo reys de Fransa, quar lo sap nualhos;
E lo reys castelas tanh qu'en manje per dos, [104]
Quar dos regismes ten, e per l'un non es pros;
Mas, s'elh en vol manjar, tanh qu'en manj'a rescos,
Que, si·l mair'o sabra, batria·l ab bastos.
"As concerns the English King (Henry III.) it pleases me, for he is
little courageous, that he should eat well of the heart; then he will be
valiant and good and will recover the land (for loss of which he lives
bereft of worth), which the King of France took from him, for he knows
him to be of no account. And the King of Castile (Ferdinand III. of
Castile and Leon), it is fitting that he eat of it for two, for he holds
two realms and he is not sufficient for one; but if he will eat of it,
'twere well that he eat in secret: for if his mother were to know it,
she would beat him with staves."
This idea, which is a commonplace in the folklore of many countries,
attracted attention. Two contemporary troubadours attempted to improve
upon it. Bertran d'Alamanon said that the heart should not be divided
among the cowards, enumerated by Sordello, but given to the noble ladies
of the age: Peire Bremen proposed a division of the body. The point is
that Dante in the Purgatorio represents Sordello as showing to Virgil
the souls of those who, while singing _Salve Regina_, ask to be pardoned
for their neglect of duty and among them appear the rulers whom Sordello
had satirised in his _sirventes_. Hence it seems that it was this [105]
composition which attracted Dante's attention to Sordello. The other
important poem is the _Ensenhamen_, a didactic work of instruction upon
the manner and conduct proper to a courtier and a lover. Here, and also
in some of his lyric poems, Sordello represents the transition to a new
idea of love which was more fully developed by the school of Guido
Guinicelli and found its highest expression in Dante's lyrics and Vita
Nuova. Love is now rather a mystical idea than a direct affection for a
particular lady: the lover is swayed by a spiritual and intellectual
ideal, and the motive of physical attraction recedes to the background.
The cause of love, however, remains unchanged: love enters through the
eyes; sight is delight.
We must now turn southwards. A school of poetry had grown up in Sicily
at the court of Frederick II. No doubt he favoured those troubadours
whose animosity to the papacy had been aroused by the Albigeois crusade:
such invective as that which Guillem Figueira could pour forth would be
useful to him in his struggle against the popes. But the emperor was
himself a man of unusual culture, with a keen interest in literary and
scientific pursuits: he founded a university at Naples, collected
manuscripts and did much to make Arabic learning known to the West. He
was a poet and the importance of the Sicilian school consists in the [106]
fact that while the subject matter of their songs was lifted from
troubadour poetry, the language which they used belonged to the Italian
peninsula. The dialect of these _provenzaleggianti_ was not pure
Sicilian but was probably a literary language containing elements drawn
from other dialects, as happened long before in the case of the
troubadours themselves. The best known representatives of this school,
Pier delle Vigne, Jacopo da Lentini and Guido delle Colonne are familiar
to students of Dante. After their time no one questioned the fact that
lyric poetry written in Italian was a possible achievement. The
influence of the Sicilian school extended to Central Italy and Tuscany;
Dante tells us that all Italian poetry preceding his own age was known
as Sicilian. The early Tuscan poets were, mediately or immediately,
strongly influenced by Provençal. The first examples of the sonnet, by
Dante da Majano, were written in that language. But such poetry was
little more than a rhetorical exercise. It was the revival of learning
and the Universities, in particular that of Bologna, which inspired the
_dolce stil nuovo_, of which the first exponent was Guido Giunicelli.
Love was now treated from a philosophical point of view: hitherto, the
Provençal school had maintained the thesis that "sight is delight," that
love originated from seeing and pleasing, penetrated to the heart and [107]
occupied the thoughts, after passing through the eyes. So Aimeric de
Pegulhan.
Perque tuit li fin aman
Sapchan qu'amors es fina bevolenza
Que nais del cor e dels huelh, ses duptar.
"Wherefore let all pure lovers know that love is pure unselfishness
which is born undoubtedly from the heart and from the eyes," a sentiment
thus repeated by Guido delle Colonne of the Sicilian school.
Dal cor si move un spirito in vedere
D'in ochi'n ochi, di femina e d'omo
Per lo quel si concria uno piacere.
The philosophical school entirely transformed this conception. Love
seeks the noble heart by affinity, as the bird seeks the tree: the noble
heart cannot but love, and love inflames and purifies its nobility, as
the power of the Deity is transmitted to the heavenly beings. When this
idea had been once evolved, Provençal poetry could no longer be a moving
force; it was studied but was not imitated. Its influence had lasted
some 150 years, and as far as Italy is concerned it was Arabic learning,
Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas who slew the troubadours more certainly
than Simon de Montfort and his crusaders. The day of superficial [108]
prettiness and of the cult of form had passed; love conjoined with
learning, a desire to pierce to the roots of things, a greater depth of
thought and earnestness were the characteristics of the new school.
Dante's debt to the troubadours, with whose literature he was well
acquainted, is therefore the debt of Italian literature as a whole. Had
not the troubadours developed their theory of courtly love, with its
influence upon human nature, we cannot say what course early Italian
literature might have run. Moreover, the troubadours provided Italy and
other countries also with perfect models of poetical form. The sonnet,
the terza rima and any other form used by Dante are of Provençal origin.
And what is true of Dante and his Beatrice is no less true of Petrarch
and his Laura and of many another who may be sought in histories
specially devoted to this subject.