LE GAI SABER
The formation of the Provençal tongue—Vernacular ballads and songs:
brought into church—Recitative and formal music—Rhythmic music of
the people: traces of it in ancient times: S. Ambrose writes hymns to
it—People sing folk-songs in church—Hymns composed to folk-airs—The
language made literary by the Troubadours—Position of women—The
ideal love—Ideal love and marriage could not co-exist—William de
Balaun—Geofrey Rudel—Poem of Pierre de Barjac—Boccaccio scouts the
Chivalric and Troubadour ideals.
WHAT the language of the Ligurians was we do not know. Among them came
the Phœnicians, then the Greeks, next the Romans. The Roman soldiery
and slaves and commercials did not talk the stilted Latin of Cicero,
but a simple vernacular. Next came the Visigoths and the Saracens.
What a jumble of peoples and tongues! And out of these tongues fused
together the Langue d’oc was evolved.
It is remarkable how readily some subjugated peoples acquire the
language of their conquerors. The Gauls came to speak Latin. The
Welsh—the bulk of the population was not British at all; dark-haired
and dark-eyed, they were conquered by the Cymri and adopted their
tongue. So in Provence, although there is a strong strain of Ligurian
blood, the Ligurian tongue is gone past recall. The prevailing
language is Romance; that is to say, the vernacular Latin. _Verna_
means a slave; it was the gabble of the lower classes, mainly a bastard
Latin, but holding in suspense drift words from Greek and Gaulish and
Saracen. In substance it was the vulgar talk of the Latins. Of this
we have curious evidence in 813. In his old age Charlemagne concerned
himself much with Church matters, and he convoked five Councils in five
quarters of his empire to regulate Church matters. These Councils met
in Mainz, Rheims, Châlons, Tours, and Arles. It was expressly laid down
in all of these, save only in that of Arles, that the clergy should
catechise and preach in the vulgar tongue; where there were Franks,
in German; where there were Gauls, in the Romance. But no such rule
was laid down in the Council of Arles, for the very reason that Latin
was still the common language of the people, the simple Latin of the
gospels, such as was perfectly understood by the people when addressed
in it.
The liturgy was not fixed and uniform. In many secondary points each
Church had its own use. Where most liberty and variety existed was in
the hymns. The singing of hymns was not formally introduced into the
offices of the Church till the tenth century; but every church had its
collection of hymns, sung by the people at vigils, in processions,
intercalated in the offices. In Normandy it was a matter of complaint
that whilst the choir took breath the women broke in with unsuitable
songs, _nugacis cantalenis_. At funerals such coarse ballads were sung
that Charlemagne had to issue orders that where the mourners did not
know any psalm they were to shout _Kyrie eleison_, and nothing else.
Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, A.D. 814-840, says that when he entered on
his functions he found in use in the church an antiphonary compiled by
the choir bishop, Amalric, consisting of songs so secular, and many of
them so indecent, that, to use the expression of the pious bishop, they
could not be read without mantling the brow with shame.
One of these early antiphonaries exists, a MS. of the eleventh
century belonging to the church of S. Martial. Among many wholly
unobjectionable hymns occurs a ballad of the tale of Judith; another is
frankly an invocation to the nightingale, a springtide song; a third is
a dialogue between a lover and his lass.
It is in the ecclesiastical hymns, religious lessons, and legends
couched in the form of ballads, coming into use in the eighth and ninth
centuries, that we have the germs, the rudiments, of a new literature;
not only so, but also the introduction of formal music gradually
displacing music that is recitative.
Of melodies there are two kinds, the first used as a handmaid to
poetry; in it there is nothing formal. A musical phrase may be repeated
or may not, as required to give force to the words employed. This was
the music of the Greek and Roman theatre. The lyrics of Horace and
Tibullus could be sung to no other. This, and this alone, was the music
adopted by the Church, and which we have still in the Nicene Creed,
Gloria, Sanctus, and Pater Noster. But this never could have been the
music of the people—it could not be used by soldiers to march to, nor
by the peasants as dance tunes.
Did rhythmic music exist among the ancients side by side with
recitative? Almost certainly it did, utterly despised by the cultured.
When Julius Cæsar was celebrating his triumph at Rome after his Gaulish
victories, we are informed that the soldiery marched singing out:—
“Gallias Cæsar subegit
Mithridates Cæsarem.
Ecce Cæsar nunc triumphat,
Qui subegit Gallias,
Nicomedes non triumphat,
Qui subegit Cæsarem.”
This must have been sung to a formal melody, to which the soldiers
tramped in time.
So also Cæsar, in B.C. 49, like a liberal-minded man, desired to admit
the principal men of Cisalpine Gaul into the Senate. This roused Roman
prejudice and mockery. Prejudice, because the Gauls were esteemed
barbarians; mockery, because of their peculiar costume—their baggy
trousers. So the Roman rabble composed and sang verses, “_illa vulgo
canebantur_.” These may be rendered in the same metre:—
“Cæsar led the Gauls in triumph,
Then to Senate-house admits.
First must they pull off their trousers,
Ere the laticlavus fits.”
Now, it may be noted that in both instances the rhythm is not at
all that of the scientifically constructed metric lines of Horace,
Tibullus, and Catullus, but is neither more nor less than our familiar
8.7. time. The first piece of six lines in 8.7. is precisely that of
“Lo! He comes in clouds descending.” The second of four lines is that
of the familiar Latin hymn, _Tantum ergo_, and is indeed that also of
our hymn, “Hark! the sound of holy voices.”[4]
Nor is this all. Under Cæsar’s statue were scribbled the lines of a
lampoon; that also was in 8.7. Suetonius gives us another snatch of a
popular song relative to Cæsar, in the same measure. Surely this goes
to establish the fact that the Roman populace had their own folk-music,
which was rhythmic, with tonal accent, distinct from the fashionable
music of the theatre.
Now, it is quite true that in Latin plays there was singing, and, what
is more, songs introduced. For instance, in the _Captivi_ of Plautus,
in the third act, Hegio comes on the stage singing—
“Quid est suavius quam
Bene rem gerere bono publico, sicut feci
Ego heri, quum eius hosce homines, ubi quisque
Vident me hodie,” etc.
But I defy any musician to set his song to anything else but
recitative; the metre is intricate and varied.
Now of rhythmic melody we have nothing more till the year A.D. 386,
when, at Milan, the Empress Justina ordered that a church should be
taken from the Catholics and be delivered over to the Arians.
Thereupon S. Ambrose, the bishop, took up his abode within the sacred
building, that was also crowded by the faithful, who held it as a
garrison for some days. To occupy the people Ambrose hastily scribbled
down some hymns—not at all in the old classic metres, but in rhythmic
measure—and set them to sing these, no doubt whatever, to familiar
folk-airs. Thirteen of the hymns of S. Ambrose remain. His favourite
metre is—
“Te lucis ante terminum,”
our English Long Measure. And what is more, the traditional tunes to
which he set these hymns have been handed down, so that in these we
probably possess the only ascertainable relics of Roman folk-airs of
the fourth century, and who can tell of how much earlier?
Now, in ancient days the people were wont to crowd to church on the
vigils of festivals and spend the night in or outside the churches in
singing and dancing. To drive out the profane and indelicate songs,
the clergy composed hymns and set them to the folk-airs then in vogue.
These hymns came into use more and more, and at length simply forced
their way into the services of the Church—but were not recognised as
forming a legitimate part of it till the tenth century.
The ecclesiastical hymns for the people, after having been composed
in barbarous Latin, led by a second step to the vernacular Romance.
The transition was easy, and was, indeed, inevitable. And in music,
recitative fell into disfavour, and formal music, to which poetry is
the handmaid, came into popular usage exclusively; recitative lingering
on only in the liturgy of the Church. The Provençal language was now on
its way to becoming fixed and homogeneous; the many local variations
found in the several districts tending to effacement.
Then came the golden age of the Troubadours, who did more than any
before to fix the tongue. In the twelfth century the little courts of
the Provençal nobles were renowned for gallantry. In fact, the knights
and barons and counts of the South plumed themselves on setting the
fashion to Christendom. In the South there was none of that rivalry
existing elsewhere between the knights in their castles and the
citizens in the towns. In every other part of Western Europe the line
of demarcation was sharp between the chivalry and the bourgeoisie.
Knighthood could only be conferred on one who was noble and who owned
land. It was otherwise in the South; the nobility and the commercial
class were on the best of terms, and one great factor in this fusion
was the Troubadour, who might spring from behind a counter as well as
from a knightly castle.
The chivalry of the South, and the Troubadour, evolved the strange
and, to our ideas, repulsive theory of love, which was, for a time,
universally accepted. What originated it was this:
In the south of France women could possess fiefs and all the authority
and power attaching to them. From this political capacity of women it
followed that marriages were contracted most ordinarily by nobles with
an eye to the increase of their domains. Ambition was the dominant
passion, and to that morality, sentiment, inclination, had to give
way and pass outside their matrimonial plans. Consequently, in the
feudal caste, marriages founded on such considerations were regarded as
commercial contracts only, and led to a most curious moral and social
phenomenon.
The idea was formed of love as a sentiment, from which every sensual
idea was excluded, in which, on the woman’s side, all was condescension
and compassion, on the man’s all submission and homage. Every lady
must have her devoted knight or minstrel—her lover, in fact, who
could not and must not be her husband; and every man who aspired to be
courteous must have his mistress.
“There are,” says a Troubadour, “four degrees in Love: the first is
hesitancy, the second is suppliancy, the third is acceptance, and the
fourth is friendship. He who would love a lady and goes to court her,
but does not venture on addressing her, is in the stage of Hesitancy.
But if the lady gives him any encouragement, and he ventures to tell
her of his pains, then he has advanced to the stage of Suppliant. And
if, after speaking to his lady and praying her, she retains him as
her knight, by the gift of ribbons, gloves, or girdle, then he enters
on the grade of Acceptance. And if, finally, it pleases the lady to
accord to her loyal accepted lover so much as a kiss, then she has
elevated him to Friendship.”
In the life of a knight the contracting of such an union was a most
solemn moment. The ceremony by which it was sealed was formulated on
that in which a vassal takes oath of fealty to a sovereign. Kneeling
before the lady, with his hands joined between hers, the knight devoted
himself and all his powers to her, swore to serve her faithfully to
death, and to defend her to the utmost of his power from harm and
insult. The lady, on her side, accepted these services, promised in
return the tenderest affections of her heart, put a gold ring on his
finger as pledge of union, and then raising him gave him a kiss,
always the first, and often the only one he was to receive from her.
An incident in the Provençal romance of Gerard de Roussillon shows us
just what were the ideas prevalent as to marriage and love at this
time. Gerard was desperately in love with a lady, but she was moved by
ambition to accept in his place Charles Martel, whom the author makes
into an Emperor. Accordingly Gerard marries the sister of the Empress
on the same day. No sooner is the double ceremonial complete than,—
“Gerard led the queen aside under a tree, and with her came two counts
and her sister (Gerard’s just-acquired wife). Gerard spoke and said,
‘What will you say to me now, O wife of an Emperor, as to the exchange
I have made of you for a very inferior article?’ ‘Do not say that,’
answered the Queen; ‘say a worthy object, of high value, Sir. But
it is true that through you I am become Queen, and that out of love
for me you have taken my sister to wife. Be you my witnesses, Counts
Gervais and Bertelais, and you also, my sister, and confidante of all
my thoughts, and you, above all, Jesus, my Redeemer; know all that
I have given my love to duke Gerard along with this ring and this
flower. I love him more than father and husband!’ Then they separated;
but their love always endured, without there ever being any harm come
of it, but only a tender longing and secret thoughts.”
The coolness of Gerard, before his just-received wife, disparaging her,
and swearing everlasting love to the new-made Queen, the moment after
they have left church, is sufficiently astounding.
So completely was it an accepted theory that love could not exist
along with marriage, that it was held that even if those who had been
lovers married, union _ipso facto_ dissolved love. A certain knight
loved a lady, who, however, had set her affections on another. All
she could promise the former was that should she lose her own true
love, she would look to him. Soon after this she married the lord of
her heart, and at once the discarded lover applied to be taken on as
her servitor. The lady refused, saying that she had her lover—her
husband; and the controversy was brought before the Court of Love.
Eleanor of Poitiers presided, and pronounced against the lady. She
condemned her to take on the knight as her lover, because she actually
had lost her own lover, by marrying him.
We probably form an erroneous idea as to the immorality of these
contracts, because we attach to the idea of love a conception foreign
to that accorded it by the chivalry of Provence in the twelfth century.
With them it was a mystic exaltation, an idealising of a lady into a
being of superior virtue, beauty, spirituality. And because it was
a purely ideal relation it could not subsist along with a material
relation such as marriage. It was because this connexion was ideal
only that the counts and viscounts and barons looked with so much
indifference, or even indulgence, on their wives contracting it. There
were exceptions, where the lady carried her condescension too far. But
the very extravagance of terms employed towards the ladies is the best
possible evidence that the Troubadours knew them very little, and by no
means intimately. Bertram, to Helena, was “a bright particular star,”
but only so because he was much away from Roussillon, and—
“So high above me
In his bright radiance and collateral light
Must I be computed, not in his sphere.”
When she became his wife she discovered that he was a mere cub. Cœlia
was no goddess to Strephon. So the privileged “servant,” worshipped,
and only could frame his mind to worship, because held at a great
distance, too far to note the imperfections in temper, in person, in
mind, of the much-belauded lady.
A friend told me that he was staggered out of his posture of worship
to his newly acquired wife by seeing her clean her teeth. It had not
occurred to him that her lovely pearls could need a toothbrush.
William de Balaun, a good knight and Troubadour, loved and served
Guillelmine de Taviac, wife of a seigneur of that name. He debated
in his mind which was the highest felicity, winning the favour of a
lady, or, after losing it, winning it back again. He resolved to put
this question to the proof, so he affected the sulks, and behaved to
the lady with rudeness—would not speak, turned his back on her. At
first she endeavoured to soothe him, but when that failed withdrew, and
would have no more to say to him. De Balaun now changed his mood, and
endeavoured to make her understand that he was experimentalising in the
Gai Saber, that was all. She remained obdurate till a mutual friend
intervened. Then she consented to receive William de Balaun again into
her favour, if he would tear out one of his nails and serve it up to
her on a salver along with a poem in praise of her beauty. And on these
terms he recovered his former place.
Geofrey Rudel had neither seen the Countess of Tripoli nor cast his
eyes on her portrait, but chose to fall in love with her at the simple
recital of her beauty and virtue. For long he poured forth verses in
her honour; but at last, drawn to Syria by desire of seeing her, he
embarked, fell mortally ill on the voyage, and arrived at Tripoli to
expire; satisfied that he had bought at this price the pleasure of
casting his eyes on the princess, and hearing her express sorrow that
he was to be snatched away.
In a great many cases, probably in the majority of cases, there was no
amorous passion excited. It was simply a case of bread and butter. The
swarm of knights and Troubadours that hovered about an exalted lady,
was drawn to her, not at all by her charms, but by her table, kitchen,
and cellar—in a word, by cupboard love.
In their own little bastides they led a dull life, and were very
impecunious. If they could get some lady of rank to accept their
services, they obtained free quarters in her castle, ate and drank of
her best, and received gratuities for every outrageously flattering
sonnet. If she were elderly and plain—that mattered not, it rather
favoured the acceptance, for she would then not be nice in selecting
her _cher ami_. All that was asked in return was, that he should
fetch her gloves, hold her stirrup, fight against any one who spoke a
disparaging word, and turn heels over head to amuse her on a rainy day.
A little poem by Pierre de Barjac is extant. He loved and served a
noble lady De Javac. One day she gave him to understand that he was
dismissed. He retired, not a little surprised and mortified, but
returned a few days later with a poem, of which these are some of the
strophes:—
“Lady, I come before you, frankly to say good-bye for ever. Thanks for
your favour in giving me your love and a merry life, as long as it
suited you. Now, as it no longer suits you, it is quite right that you
should pick up another friend who will please you better than myself.
I have naught against that. We part on good terms, as though nothing
had been between us.
“Perhaps, because I seem sad, you may fancy that I am speaking more
seriously than usual; but that you are mistaken in this, I will
convince you. I know well enough that you have some one else in your
eye. Well, so have I in mine—some one to love after being quit of
you. She will maintain me; she is young, you are waxing old. If she be
not quite as noble as yourself, she is, at all events, far prettier
and better tempered.
“If our mutual oath of engagement is at all irksome to your
conscience, let us go before a priest—you discharge me, and I will
discharge you. Then each of us can loyally enter on a new love affair.
If I have ever done anything to annoy you, forgive me; I, on my part,
forgive you with all my heart; and a forgiveness without heart is not
worth much.”
During the winter these professional lovers resided at the castles
of the counts and viscounts. In the spring they mounted their horses
and wandered away, some in quest of a little fighting, some to loiter
in distant courts, some to attend to their own farms and little
properties. Each as he left doubtless received a purse from the lady he
had served and sung, together with a fresh pair of stockings, and with
his linen put in order.
“Love,” says Mr. Green, in his _History of the English People_,
“was the one theme of troubadour and trouveur; but it was a love
of refinement, of romantic follies, of scholastic discussions, of
sensuous enjoyment—a plaything rather than a passion. Nature had to
reflect the pleasant indolence of man; the song of the minstrel moved
through a perpetual May-time; the grass was ever green; the music of
the lark and the nightingale rang out from field and thicket. There
was a gay avoidance of all that is serious, moral, or reflective in
man’s life. Life was too amusing to be serious, too piquant, too
sentimental, too full of interest and gaiety and chat.”
That this professional, sentimental love-making went beyond bounds
occasionally is more than probable, for human nature cannot be
controlled by such a spider-web system. It will break through. Every
one knows the story of William de Cabestaing, who loved and served
among others—for he was to one thing constant never—Sermonde, wife
of Raymond de Roussillon, whereupon the husband had him murdered, and
his heart roasted and dished up at table. When Sermonde was told what
she had eaten, she threw herself out of a window. But is the story
true? Much the same tale occurs thrice in Boccaccio; once of Sermonde,
something of the same in the Cup, and again in the Pot of Basil;
moreover, the same tale is told of others.
This artificial theory of love was carried to the Court of Naples, and
to that of Frederick II. at Palermo. It brought after it an inevitable
reaction, and this found its fullest expression in Boccaccio.
“All the mediæval enthusiasms,” says Mr. Addington Symonds, “are
reviewed and criticised from the standpoint of the Florentine bottega
and piazza. It is as though the bourgeois, not content with having
made nobility a crime, were bent upon extinguishing its spirit. The
tale of Agilult vulgarises the chivalrous conception of love ennobling
men of low estate, by showing how a groom, whose heart is set upon a
queen, avails himself of opportunity. Tancred burlesques the knightly
reverence for a stainless scutcheon, by the extravagance of his
revenge. The sanctity of the Thebaid, that ascetic dream of purity and
self-renunciation for God’s service, is made ridiculous by Ailbech.
Sen Ciappelletto brings contempt upon the canonisation of saints. The
confessional, the worship of relics, the priesthood, and the monastic
orders, are derided with the deadliest persiflage. Christ Himself is
scoffed at in a jest which points the most indecent of these tales.
Marriage offers a never-failing theme for scorn; and when, by way
of contrast, the novelist paints an ideal wife, he runs into such
hyperboles that the very patience of Griselda is a satire on its
dignity.”[5]
[Illustration: LA RADE, MARSEILLES]