THE LOVES OF THE TROUBADOURS CONTINUED.
In striking contrast to the tender and gentle Rudel, we have the
ferocious Bertrand de Born: he, too, was one of the most celebrated
Troubadours of his time. As a petty feudal sovereign, he was, partly by
the events of the age, more by his own fierce and headlong passions,
plunged in continual wars. Nature however had made him a poet of the
first order. In these days he would have been another Lord Byron; but he
lived in a terrible and convulsed state of society, and it was only in
the intervals snatched from his usual pursuits,--that is, from burning
the castles, and ravaging the lands of his neighbours, and stirring up
rebellion, discord, and bloodshed all around him,--that he composed a
vast number of _lays_, _sirventes_, and _chansons_; some breathing the
most martial, and even merciless spirit; others devoted to the praise
and honour of his love, or rather loves, as full of submissive
tenderness and chivalrous gallantry.
He first celebrated Elinor Plantagenet, the sister of his friend and
brother in arms and song, Richard Coeur de Lion; and we are expressly
told that Richard was proud of the poetical homage rendered to the
charms of his sister by this knightly Troubadour, and that the Princess
was far from being insensible to his admiration. Only one of the many
songs addressed to Elinor has been preserved; from which we gather, that
it was composed by Bertrand in the field, at a time when his army was
threatened with famine, and the poet himself was suffering from the
pangs of hunger. Elinor married the Duke of Saxony, and Bertrand chose
for his next love the beautiful Maenz de Montagnac, daughter of the
Viscount of Turenne, and wife of Talleyrand de Perigord. The lady
accepted his service, and acknowledged him as her Knight; but evil
tongues having attempted to sow dissension between the lovers, Bertrand
addressed to her a song, in which he defends himself from the imputation
of inconstancy, in a style altogether characteristic and original. The
warrior poet, borrowing from the objects of his daily cares, ambition
and pleasures, phrases to illustrate and enhance the expression of his
love, wishes "that he may lose his favourite hawk in her first flight;
that a falcon may stoop and bear her off, as she sits upon his wrist,
and tear her in his sight, if the sound of his lady's voice be not
dearer to him than all the gifts of love from another."--"That he may
stumble with his shield about his neck; that his helmet may gall his
brow; that his bridle may be too long, his stirrups too short; that he
may be forced to ride a hard trotting horse, and find his groom drunk
when he arrives at his gate, if there be a word of truth in the
accusations of his enemies:--that he may not have a _denier_ to stake at
the gaming-table, and that the dice may never more be favourable to
him, if ever he had swerved from his faith:--that he may look on like a
dastard, and see his lady wooed and won by another;--that the winds may
fail him at sea;--that in the battle he may be the first to fly, if he
who has slandered him does not lie in his throat," &c. and so on through
seven or eight stanzas.
Bertrand de Born exercised in his time a fatal influence on the counsels
and politics of England. A close and ardent friendship existed between
him and young Henry Plantagenet, the eldest son of our Henry the Second;
and the family dissensions which distracted the English Court, and the
unnatural rebellion of Henry and Richard against their father, were his
work. It happened some time after the death of Prince Henry, that the
King of England besieged Bertrand de Born in one of his castles: the
resistance was long and obstinate, but at length the warlike Troubadour
was taken prisoner and brought before the King, so justly incensed
against him, and from whom he had certainly no mercy to expect. The
heart of Henry was still bleeding with the wounds inflicted by his
ungrateful children, and he saw before him, and in his power, the
primary cause of their misdeeds and his own bitter sufferings. Bertrand
was on the point of being led out to death, when by a single word he
reminded the King of his lost son, and the tender friendship which had
existed between them.[12] The chord was struck which never ceased to
vibrate in the parental heart of Henry; bursting into tears, he turned
aside, and commanded Bertrand and his followers to be immediately set at
liberty: he even restored to Bertrand his castle and his lands, "_in the
name of his dead son_." It is such traits as these, occurring at every
page, which lend to the chronicles of this stormy period an interest
overpowering the horror they would otherwise excite: for then all the
best, as well as the worst of human passions were called into play. In
this tempestuous commingling of all the jarring elements of society, we
have those strange approximations of the most opposite
sentiments,--implacable revenge and sublime forgiveness;--gross
licentiousness and delicate tenderness;--barbarism and
refinement;--treachery and fidelity--which remind one of that
heterogeneous mass tossed up by a stormy ocean; heaps of pearls,
unvalued gems, wedges of gold, mingled with dead men's bones, and all
the slimy, loathsome, and monstrous productions of the deep, which
during a calm remain together concealed and unknown in its unfathomed
abysses.
To return from this long similitude to Bertrand de Born: he concluded
his stormy career in a manner very characteristic of the times; for he
turned monk, and died in the odour of sanctity. But neither his late
devotion, nor his warlike heroism, nor his poetic fame, could rescue him
from the severe justice of Dante, who has visited his crimes and his
violence with so terrible a judgment, that we forget, while we thrill
with horror, that the crimes were real, the penance only imaginary.
Dante, in one of the circles of the Inferno, meets Bertrand de Born
carrying his severed head, _lantern wise_, in his hand;--the phantom
lifts it up by the hair, and the ghastly lips unclose to confess the
cause and the justice of this horrible and unheard-of penance.
----Or vedi la pena molesta
Tu che spirando vai veggendo i morti;
Vedi s'alcuna e grande come questa.
E perche tu di me novella porti,
Sappi ch' i' son Bertram dal Bornio, quelli
Che diedi al Re giovane i ma' conforti.
I' feci 'l padre e 'l figlio in se ribelli:
....*....*....*....*
Perch'io partii cosi giunte persone,
Partito porto il mio cerebro, lasso!
Dal suo principio ch 'e 'n questo troncone.
Cosi s'osserva in me lo contrappasso.[13]
Now behold
This grievous torment, thou, who breathing goest
To spy the dead: behold, if any else
Be terrible as this,--and that on earth
Thou mayst bear tidings of me, know that I
Am Bertrand, he of Born, who gave King John
The counsel mischievous. Father and son
I set at mutual war:----
Spurring them on maliciously to strife.
For parting those so closely knit, my brain
Parted, alas! I carry from its source
That in this trunk inhabits. Thus the law
Of retribution fiercely works in me.[14]
Pierre Vidal, whose description of love I have quoted before, was one of
the most extraordinary characters of his time, a kind of poetical Don
Quixotte:--his brain was turned with love, poetry, and vanity: he
believed himself the beloved of all the fair, the mirror of knighthood,
and the prince of Troubadours. Yet in the midst of all his
extravagances, he possessed exquisite skill in his art, and was not
surpassed by any of the poets of those days, for the harmony, delicacy,
and tenderness of his amatory effusions. He chose for his first love
the beautiful wife of the Vicomte de Marseilles: the lady, unlike some
of the Princesses of her time, distinguished between the poet and the
man, and as he presumed too far on the encouragement bestowed on him in
the former capacity, he was banished: he then followed Richard the First
to the crusade. The verses he addressed to the lady from the Island of
Cyprus are still preserved. The folly of Vidal, or rather the
derangement of his imagination, subjected him to some of those
mystifications which remind us of Don Quixote and Sancho, in the court
of the laughter-loving Duchess. For instance, Richard and his followers
amused themselves at Cyprus, by marrying Vidal to a beautiful Greek girl
of no immaculate reputation, whom they introduced to him as the niece of
the Greek Emperor. Vidal, in right of his wife, immediately took the
title of Emperor, assumed the purple, ordered a throne to be carried
before him, and played the most fantastic antics of authority. Nor was
this the greatest of his extravagances: on his return to Provence, he
chose for the second object of his amorous and poetical devotion, a
lady whose name happened to be Louve de Penautier: in her honour he
assumed the name of _Loup_, and farther to merit the good graces of his
"_Dame_," and to do honour to the name he had adopted, he dressed
himself in the hide of a wolf, and caused himself to be hunted in good
earnest by a pack of dogs: he was brought back exhausted and half dead
to the feet of his mistress, who appears to have been more moved to
merriment than to love by this new and ridiculous exploit.
In general, however, the Troubadours had seldom reason to complain of
the cruelty of the ladies to whom they devoted their service and their
songs. The most virtuous and illustrious women thought themselves
justified in repaying, with smiles and favours, the poetical adoration
of their lovers; and this lasted until the profession of Troubadour was
dishonoured by the indiscretions, follies, and vices of those who
assumed it. Thus Peyrols, a famous Provencal poet, who was distinguished
in the court of the Dauphin d'Auvergne, fell passionately in love with
the sister of that Prince, (the Baronne de Mercoeur) and the Dauphin,
(himself a Troubadour) proud of the genius of his minstrel and of the
poetical devotion paid to his sister, desired her to bestow on her lover
all the encouragement and favour which was consistent with her dignity.
The lady, however, either misunderstood her instructions, or found it
too difficult to obey them: the seducing talents and tender verses of
this _gentil Troubadour_ prevailed over her dignity:--Peyrols was
beloved; but he was not sufficiently discreet. The sudden change in the
tone and style of his songs betrayed him, and he was banished. A great
number of his verses, celebrating the Dame de Mercoeur, are preserved
by St. Palaye, and translated by Millot.
Bernard de Ventadour was beloved by Elinor de Guienne, afterwards the
wife of our Henry the Second, and the mother of Richard the First:--I
have before observed the poetical penchants of all Elinor's children,
which they seem to have inherited from their mother.
Sordello of Mantua, whose name is familiar to all the readers of Dante,
as occurring in one of the finest passages of his great poem,[15] was an
Italian, but like all the best poets of his day, wrote in the Provencal
tongue: he is said to have carried off the sister of that modern
Phalaris, the tyrant Ezzelino of Padua. There is a very elegant ballad
(ballata) by Sordello, translated in Millot's collection; it is properly
a kind of rondeau, the first line being repeated at the end of every
stanza; "Helas! a quoi me servent mes yeux?"--"Alas! wherefore have I
eyes?"--It describes the pleasures of the Spring, which are to him as
nothing, in the absence of the only object on which his eyes can dwell
with delight. The arrangement of the rhymes in this pastoral song is
singularly elegant and musical.
Lastly, as illustrating the history of the amatory poetry of this age, I
extract from Nostradamus[16] the story of the young Countess de Die; she
loved and was beloved by the Chevalier d'Adhemar: (ancestor I presume to
that Chevalier d'Adhemar who figures in the letters of Madame de
Sevigne.) It was not in this case the lover who celebrated the charms of
his mistress, but the lady, who, being an illustrious female Troubadour,
"docte en poesie," celebrated the exploits and magnanimity of her lover.
The Chevalier, proud of such a distinction, caused the verses of his
mistress to be beautifully copied, and always carried them in his bosom;
and whenever he was in the company of knights and ladies, he enchanted
them by singing a couplet in his own praise out of his lady's book. The
publicity thus given to their love, was quite in the spirit of the
times, and does not appear to have injured the reputation of the
Countess for immaculate virtue,[17] which Adhemar would probably have
defended with lance and spear, against any slanderous tongue which had
dared to defame her.
The conclusion of this romantic story is melancholy. Adhemar heard a
false report, that the Countess, whose purity and constancy he had so
proudly maintained, had cast away her smiles on a rival: he fell sick
with grief and bitterness of heart: the Countess, being informed of his
state, set out, accompanied by her _mother_, and a long train of knights
and ladies, to visit and comfort him with assurances of her fidelity;
but when she appeared at his bed-side, and drew the curtain, it was
already too late: Adhemar expired in her arms. The Countess took the
veil in the convent of St. Honore, and died the same year _of grief_,
says the chronicle;--and to conclude the tragedy characteristically, the
mother of the young Countess buried her in the same grave with her
lover, and raised a superb monument to the memory of both. The Countess
de Die was one of the ten ladies who formed the _Court of Love_, held at
Pierrefeu, (about 1194) and in which Estifanie de Baux presided.
These Courts of Love, and the scenes they gave rise to, were certainly
open to ridicule; the "belles et subtiles questions d'amour" which were
there solemnly discussed, and decided by ladies of rank, were often
absurd, and the decisions something worse: still the fanciful influence
they gave to women on these subjects, and the gallantry they introduced
into the intercourse between the sexes, had a tendency to soften the
manners, to refine the language, and to tinge the sentiments and
passions with a kind of philosophical mysticism. But these gay and
gallant Courts of Love, the Provencal Troubadours, their lays, which for
two centuries had been the delight of all ranks of people, and had
spread music, love, and poetry through the land;--their language, which
had been the chosen dialect of gallantry in every court of Europe,--were
at once swept from the earth.
The glory of the Provencal literature began when Provence was raised to
an independent Fief, under Count Berenger I. about the year 1100; it
lasted two entire centuries, and ended when that fine and fertile
country became the scene of the horrible crusade against the Albigenses;
when the Inquisition sent forth its exterminating fiends to scatter
horror and devastation through the land, and the wars and rapacity of
Charles of Anjou, its new possessor, almost depopulated the country. The
language which had once celebrated deeds of love and heroism, now sang
only of desolation and despair. The Troubadours, in a strain worthy of
their gentle and noble calling, generally advocated the part of the
Albigenses, and the oppressed of whatever faith; and in many provinces,
in Lombardy especially, their language was interdicted, lest it might
introduce heretical or rebellious principles; gradually it fell into
disuse, and at length into total oblivion. The Troubadours, no longer
welcomed in castle or in hall, where once
They poured to lords and ladies gay,
The unpremeditated lay,
were degraded to wandering minstrels and itinerant jugglers. An attempt
was made, about a century later, (1324) by the institution of the
Floral Games at Thoulouse, to keep alive this high strain of poetical
gallantry. They were formerly celebrated with great splendour, and a
shadow of this institution is, I believe, still kept up, but it has
degenerated into a mere school of affectation. The original race of the
Troubadours was extinct long before Clemence d'Isaure and her golden
violet were thought of.
I cannot quit the subject of the Troubadours without one or two
concluding observations. To these rude bards we owe some new notions of
poetical justice, which never seem to have occurred to Horace or
Longinus, and are certainly more magnanimous, as well as more true to
moral feeling, than those which prevailed among the polished Greeks and
Romans. For instance, the generous Hector and the constant Troilus are
invariably exalted above the subtle Ulysses and the savage Achilles.
Theseus, Jason, and AEneas, instead of being represented as classical
heroes and pious favourites of the gods, are denounced as recreant
knights and false traitors to love and beauty. In the estimation of
these chivalrous bards, a woman's tears outweighed the exploits of
demi-gods; all the glory of Theseus is forgotten in sympathy for
Ariadne; and AEneas, in the old ballads and romances, is not, after all
his perfidy, dismissed to happiness and victory, but is plagued by the
fiends, haunted by poor Dido's "grimly ghost," and, finally, doomed to
perish miserably.[18] Nor does Jason fare better at their hands; in all
the old poets he is consigned to just execration. In Dante, we have a
magnificent and a terrible picture of him, doomed to one of the lowest
circles of hell, amid a herd of vile seducers, who betrayed the trusting
faith, or bartered the charms of women. Demons scourge him up and down,
without mercy or respite, in vengeance for the wrongs of Hypsipyle and
Medea.
Guarda quel grande che viene
E per dolor, non par lagrima spanda;
Quanto aspetto reale ancor ritiene!
Quelli e Giasone--
--Con segni e con parole ornate
Isifile inganno----
Tal colpa a tal martiro lui condanna,
Ed anche di MEDEA si fa vendetta.
INFERNO, C. 18.
"Behold that lofty shade, who this way tends,
And seems too woe-begone to drop a tear;
How yet the regal aspect he retains!
'Tis Jason--
--He who with tokens and fair witching words
Hypsipyle beguil'd--
Such is the guilt condemns him to this pain;
Here too Medea's injuries are aveng'd!"--
CAREY.
And Chaucer, in relating the same story, begins with a burst of generous
indignation:
Thou root[19] of false lovers, Duke Jason,
Thou slayer, devourer, and confusion
Of gentil women, gentil creatures!
The story of his double perfidy is told and commented on in the same
chivalrous feeling: and the old poet concludes with characteristic
tenderness and simplicity--
This was the mede of loving, and guerdon
That Medea received of Duke Jason,
Right for her truth and for her kindnesse,
That loved him better than herself I guesse!
And lefte her father and her heritage:
And of Jason this is the vassalage
That in his dayes was never none yfound
So false a lover going on the ground.
It is in the same beautiful spirit of reverence to the best virtues of
our sex, that Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, who sacrificed her life to
prolong that of her husband, is honoured above all other heroines of
classical story. She has even been elevated into a kind of presiding
divinity,--a second Venus, with nobler attributes,--and in her new
existence is feigned to be the consort and companion of Love himself.
Another peculiarity of the poetry of the middle ages, was the worship
paid to the daisy, (la Marguerite) as symbolical of all that is lovely
in women. Why so lowly a flower should take precedence of the queenly
lily and the sumptuous rose, is not very clear; but it seems to have
originated with one of the old Provencal poets, whose mistress bore the
name of Marguerite; and afterwards it became a fashion and a kind of
poetical mythology.[20]
Thus in the "Flower and the Leafe" of Chaucer, the ladies and knights of
the flower approach singing a chorus in honour of the Daisy, of which
the burthen is, "si douce est la Marguerite."
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Le Roi lui demande, "S'il a perdu raison?" il lui repond, "Helas,
oui! c'est depuis la mort du Prince Henri, votre fils!"
[13] Inferno, c. xxviii.
[14] Carey's translation of Dante. Mr. Carey reads Re Giovanni, instead
of Re giovane:--King John, instead of Prince Henry.
[15] Purgatorio, c. vi.
[16] Vies des plus celebres poetes Provencaux.
[17] Agnes de Navarre, Comtesse de Foix, was beloved by Guillaume de
Machaut, a French poet; he became jealous, and she sent her own
confessor to him to complain of the injustice of his suspicions, and to
swear that she was still faithful to him. She required, also, of her
lover, to write and to publish in verse the history of their love; and
she preserved, at the same time, in the eyes of her husband and of the
world, the character of a virtuous Princess.--_See Foscolo_--_Essays on
Petrarch._
[18] Percy's Reliques.
[19] _Root_, i. e. example or beginner.
[20] See the notes to Chaucer, the works of Froissart, and Memoires sur
les Troubadours.