WOMEN IN EARLY PROVENCAL AND FRENCH LITERATURE
GUILHELM--or William--X., Duke of Aquitaine, remorseful because of the
ravages committed in Normandy by himself and his allies in 1136, started
on an expiatory pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint-James of Compostella.
Before going he willed to Louis the Fat, King of France, the
guardianship of his daughter, "la tres noble demoiselle Eleonore," sole
heiress of his extensive dominions, including Poitou, Marche, the
Limousin, Auvergne, Gascony, and Guienne. This Eleanor was to be the
brilliant and passionate Queen of England, mother of Richard of the Lion
Heart and of John Lackland. But we will not anticipate her story, for
sixteen years of her life precede the time when she became the queen of
Henry II.
The youthful heiress had been left as the feudal ward of King Louis, who
lost no time in securing her domain for the crown of France. Duke
Guilhelm died in the church of Compostella April 9, 1137-1138. Eleanor,
now Duchess of Aquitaine, was but sixteen years of age, but she was not
long to remain unmarried. Prince Louis of France, accompanied by a
gorgeous company of five hundred knights, under command of the Count
Palatine, Thibaud de Champagne, came as her suitor,--a suitor whom she
could not refuse. She was married, and crowned as future Queen of
France. On their way back from Bordeaux to Paris the young couple met
the news of the death of Louis the Fat. Eleanor was thus Queen of France
indeed, but there was more of the south, of Toulouse and Bordeaux and
the troubadours in her nature than was quite good for one who was the
wife of the correct, devout, narrow-minded, though not stupid or unkind
Louis VII.
She came of a race notorious for reckless love of pleasure, for
sparkling wit, for vehemence of temper and strong passions, for utter
disregard of the merely decorous, the sober commonplace rules of either
morals or society. We have seen some of the pranks of her grandfather,
William of Poitou. Her father was not less high-tempered, though less
brilliant than his troubadour predecessor. His fits of extravagance were
followed by fits of penitence in whose sincerity one may place some
faith, whereas the troubadour was certainly never sad for long, and
apparently not much imbued with religious ardor, even if he did go to
the Holy Land as a pious crusader. Eleanor inherited her grandfather's
temper and his love of literature, music, fighting, and all that made
life worth living, according to the standards of her native land. Let us
look at this land of the troubadours, from which Eleanor came, and try
to picture the environment to which she was accustomed and which she
abandoned to live with the sober, monkish, unlovely French king, whose
court and whose city of Paris did not compare with the gay capital of
Bordeaux, where her father and her grandfather had gathered the most
brilliant poets and musicians of Provence.
While the northern and western portions of France, including even that
muddy _Lutetia Parisorum_ which has become the modern Paris, were for
but a short time, comparatively, under Roman rule, there was a portion
of France, between the Rhone and the Swiss Alps, which was so
distinctively and peculiarly a part of the great empire that it was
called _Provincia_, "the Province," or, as we know it, Provence. It was
in this beautiful land, the French Riviera, that the Roman legions
established their first posts, long before there was a Roman Empire.
Here they found a civilization ready to their hands, for in the centre
of their new Provincia was the famous port of
Massillia--Marseilles--established long before by Greeks and
Phoenicians. To the present day one finds at Aries, at Mimes, at
Avignon, titanic ruins bearing witness to the Roman civilization. It was
a fertile country, glowing with rich fruits and flowers, and favored
with a climate which has made it famous since the days of Rome. While
the north of France was hopelessly barbarized by Teutonic inroads and
long years of barbaric warfare, the civilization of Provence was rather
checked than destroyed. Marseilles was still a port, and the commerce of
the east, of the Mediterranean, of Rome, came through Marseilles, not
only for Gaul but for Britain. The influence of this constant
intercourse, no less than the large infusion of Latin or Hellenic blood,
kept the people of Provence from relapsing into the primitive state of
the people further to the north. They were, moreover, a gay and
pleasure-loving people by nature, and probably always less savage and
rough than the Franks. We may remember that even at the beginning of our
story the court of the pious King Robert, according to the monkish
chronicles, was hopelessly corrupted by the attendants of his Provencal
bride, Constance, with their scandalously fashioned costumes and their
ungodly minstrelsy. The rich clothing, the minstrelsy, the more gracious
manners, were always characteristic of the southerners, from the very
first moment we hear of them until the end.
During the eleventh century, while the kingdom of France was just
beginning to gain something like an ascendancy over the other provinces
which were eventually to constitute a real power under one rule, the
riches and the power of the Mediterranean district came to full flower.
We speak of this whole territory as Provence, although in reality
Provence proper was but a small portion of the whole. It would be,
perhaps, better to confine one's self to the old distinction between
north and south France, based on the difference in dialect. Dante,
distinguishing between three groups of the tongues derived from Latin,
says: _Alii Oc, alii Oil, alii Si, affirmando loquuntur:_--"For the
affirmative, some use Oc (Provencal) some use Oil (French), some use Si
(Italian)." The langue d'oc was the tongue used in that part of France
south of a line drawn from the south of the Garonne to the Alps,
including not only Provence but Guienne, Gascony, Languedoc, Auvergne,
etc. The people and the language, however, throughout this whole
territory, were generally named from that Provincia which, as we have
said, was the most fertile and the most favored. Thus, in ordinary
speech, a citizen of Beziers, Toulouse, or even Bordeaux was as much a
Provencal as one from Aries or Aix.
Among the other influences to which Provence owed part of its culture
one must not forget that of Spain. At the time of which we write a large
part of the richest lands in Spain was in the possession of a race more
cultured, more intellectual, more refined, despite their warlike nature,
than any race with which western Europe had yet come in contact. The
story of the Saracen empire in Spain, its rise, its glorious struggle,
its almost fabulous luxury, and its pathetic fall, is one of the most
fascinating in history. Arab songs, Arab singers, Arab instruments
became known among the Spaniards, and even in the face of continual
warfare some little of infidel arts and sciences and refinements
penetrated and softened the rougher-mannered civilization of the
Christians.
On Spain itself this Oriental influence was, of course, strongest; but
the relations between Spain and the south of France were at all times
close, and the relations between Provence and Spain were made still more
intimate when, in the early part of the twelfth century, the crown of
Provence passed to Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, who had married
Douce de Provence.
Under these influences the nobility of Provence developed a culture
perhaps purely artificial and exotic, but certainly far in advance of
that prevailing in any other part of France. With their civilization
came, of course, a knowledge of the gentler arts and a feeling for the
beautiful. At a time when French literature consisted of a few fragments
of documents, chronicles, or dull legends of the saints, Provence had
developed a literature of most astonishing richness and delicacy. The
surprising thing about this literature of Provence is that it has no
beginnings, no childhood, but is almost as perfect in artistic finish,
in the careful handling of most intricate rhymes and stanzas, when the
first troubadour sings as it became during the two hundred years of its
life. There were songs or poems in stanzas of varying structure and
lines of varying length, some really lyric, and some epic. The most
distinctive forms of the lyric poetry were probably the dirge or
_planh_; the contention or _tenson_, a poem in which two or more persons
maintain an argument on questions of love, or chivalry, etc., each using
stanzas terminating in similar rhymes, somewhat like the style of poem
long after known in Scottish literature as a "flyting;" and the satiric
poem or pasquinade, the _sirvente_, often a fierce war song in which the
poet lashed his foes and urged his men on to battle.
The social conditions of France during this period were such as to make
caste distinctions very marked. That a _roturier_, a plain peasant, or
even a tradesman, should become the social equal of a noble was a thing
unheard of. But in Provence--curiously enough when one remembers the
excessive refinement of luxury encouraged in this land of flowers--the
society was much more democratic. Perhaps it would be more accurate to
say that among a people who had already discovered that literature and
music were arts the artist was welcomed, talent was recognized and
rewarded, no matter in what class it was found. Yet the troubadours as a
class belong to the nobility. That this was almost necessarily so one
can easily understand, for the troubadour was expected to live a life of
gay extravagance in his own chateau and to travel about the country
during favoring weather, accompanied by a little band of retainers who
must be trained musicians, and who at the castles they visited sang or
performed pieces of their master's composing.
We can imagine what a flutter there must have been in the breasts of the
ladies, always the prime object of the troubadour's songs, when the gay
cavalcade approached, heralded by the song of the _jongleurs_: "We come,
bringing a precious balsam which cures all sorts of ills, and heals the
troubles both of body and mind. It is contained in a vase of gold,
adorned with jewels, the most rare. Even to see it is wonderful
pleasure, as you will find if you care to try. The balsam is the music
of our master, the vase of gold is our courtly company. Would you have
the vase open, and disclose its ineffable treasure?"
The troubadour himself must go in knightly panoply, and he and his
musicians or jongleurs were usually provided with rich clothing. Gifts,
of course, might be accepted from a sovereign, but no pecuniary
recompense; the knightly minstrel disdained to sing for hire; it was
pure love of his art that inspired him, and the idea of making it a
lucrative profession never occurred to him. The troubadour, therefore,
had to live upon his patrimony--until he squandered it in riotous
living--and only a gentleman could afford to do that. Of the scores of
troubadours whose names are known to us, the great majority are nobles,
though not always belonging to the higher nobility; but the artist, the
musician who "found" enchanting melodies, was almost _ex officio_ a
knight, a chevalier, the terms troubadour and chevalier being
interchangeable, and knighthood was considered so essential that one of
the well-known troubadours was accused of having conferred the dignity
upon himself, since no one else would knight him. Among the number of
the troubadours one can count a score or more of reigning princes,
"counts and dukes by the dozen,... many princes of royal blood, and
finally four kings." Yet beside the royal troubadour, and associated
with him in a perfect freemasonry of art, one finds the troubadour of
humble birth. Bertrand de Born, the petty baron, was on terms of perfect
equality with the sons of Henry II.: Geoffrey, he called by the nickname
of _Rassa_, Henry was _Marinier_, and Richard was _Richard Oc e No_
(Richard Yea and Nay). Pierre Vidal, the most eccentric of all the
_genus irritabile_, was the son of a furrier of Toulouse, and yet, being
a poet, was the friend of princes, notably of Alphonso, the troubadour
king of Arragon. Bernard de Ventadour, who ventured, unrebuked, to send
love songs to haughty Queen Eleanor, was the son of the baker of the
chateau de Ventadour. There was, therefore, much greater freedom of
intercourse in Provence than in the north of France, where feudalism had
taken deeper root, where the warrior was merely a hard hitter, not a
musician who went about equally prepared to fight or to sing.
The grace and polish of Provencal society was, of course, only relative.
At best, it was merely a surface polish in many cases; and to us the
manners of the troubadours might seem as coarse as their morals were
corrupt. The very extravagance of the troubadour's life, with its
constant demands for large expenditure in travel or in fantastic
entertainments and revels at his chateau, the persistent thirst for
excitement and pleasure in themselves would have been sufficient to
foster licentious habits. Prodigality reduced many a troubadour to the
rank of a mere jongleur or hired musician. A mediaeval moralist remarks,
for the benefit of _la cigale_,--who probably paid no attention
whatever, but went on singing,--_Homo joculatoribus intentus cito
habebit uxorem cut nomen erit paupertas, ex qua generabitur filius cui
nomen erit derisio_ (He who devotes himself to minstrelsy will soon have
a wife named Poverty, of whom will be born a son named Ignominy.) But
whether or not the troubadour made a sinful waste of his fortune, his
one business in life was understood to be making love.
Every troubadour chose some lady to whom he devoted his talents, seeking
to make her
"Glorious by his pen, and famous by his sword."
Like a true knight-errant of music and poetry, he travelled over the
land, singing the praises of his lady-love and upholding the superiority
of her charms in the lists, in battles with the infidel, or in any
chance adventure on the road. After enduring in her honor whatever
fortune might send him, and singing to her in songs of triumph or in
plaintive love songs, he would return to claim his reward. So far, all
is romantic and innocent enough. One can indulge in lovely sentimental
fancies concerning this world of gentle singers and fair ladies and
poesy and sunshine. But in sober fact the loves of the troubadours were
neither so romantic nor even so innocent as one would gladly think. In a
certain class of modern novels, the hero rarely experiences a _grande
passion_, as it is charitably called, except for some other man's wife;
so the lady to whom the troubadour devotes himself, to whom he pours out
his passion with all the cunning and warmth that art can devise, and of
whose favors he sometimes most ungallantly boasts, is almost invariably
a married woman. Fortunately, despite the fact that poets are given to
proclaiming that truth and poetry are almost synonyms, most of us do not
take them _au pied de la lettre_. "Most loving is feigning," says a good
authority, and certainly most of the protestations in erotic poetry are
hardly to be taken at their face value. So we may safely assume that the
intercourse between the troubadours and the ladies to whom their songs
are dedicated was generally quite innocent; and the burning desire, the
tragic despair, or the exultant passion, of the poems was also largely
figurative, mere squibs and crackers of love. Certainly, if it were
otherwise, the husbands of Provence were most unselfish patrons of art.
Yet, making all the allowances that common sense or charity may warrant,
we have to admit that there is only too much evidence of deplorable
moral laxity in the days of the troubadours. The very first troubadour
of note, Count William of Poitou, Eleanor's grandfather, was notorious
for his contemptuous attitude toward the Church and for his
licentiousness. In fact, the poems of William are coarse and almost
brutal in their tone, utterly lacking in the superfine gallantry, the
preciosity, which is characteristic of the love poetry of his troubadour
successors. There is in the poems a sort of bold laughter and wit, and
the technical part of the work shows a most surprising artistic finish,
but nothing that speaks of chivalrous ideals. It is with some wonder,
therefore, that we read in the old Provencal biography of this first of
the troubadours that "the Count of Poitou was one of the most courteous
men in the world, and a great deceiver of ladies; and he was a brave
knight and had much to do with love affairs; and he knew well how to
sing and make verses; and for a long time he roamed all through the land
to deceive the ladies." According to all accounts, William was very
successful in this gallant undertaking. It was the troubadour's
business, openly avowed, to "deceive the ladies," and among a people so
susceptible as those of Provence many must have been the domestic
tragedies brought on by these erotic knights-errant.
When love making, or the writing of love songs, becomes a profession one
need not be surprised to find that there is a great deal of pure
conventionality. The love of beauty is not supreme in all hearts, even
in those of poets, and so the love poetry of the troubadours is as
artificial, as overstrained and oversweetened as a panegyric of an
Elizabethan poet upon that very questionable beauty of the "vestal
throned in the west." What was the actual standard of beauty among the
ladies of Provence is hard to determine, for they are all much the same
in the songs of the troubadours. The lady has skin whiter than milk,
purer than the driven snow, of tint more delicate than the pearl. Upon
her cheeks the roses vie with the lilies, the delicate color mounting at
the sound of her praises and melting away in danger or distress. A
wealth of flaxen hair, of silky texture, crowns her head, and a pair of
soft blue eyes gaze languishingly upon the lover; and when they close,
the sun is gone from the face of nature, so dark does the world seem to
him. But when she walks abroad in smiling beauty, the very birds stop
their own love making to chant of her loveliness, and the flowers turn
to look at her. With all this delicacy of physical beauty goes a
constitution as delicate, for she faints at the news of disaster or
danger to her troubadour. When the monkish chroniclers are so very cold
in their descriptions of personal charms, we are left to the poets. It
may be, then, that, in troubadour eyes at least, Eleanor herself was of
the type we have described.
It was from a society formed of such elements, and from the very home of
music and poetry, that the young Queen of France came to Paris, at that
time no doubt a very dismal place, inhabited by people who, however
superior as Christians, must have seemed to her uncultured barbarians.
The details of her life during the first ten or fifteen years after her
marriage are obscure, and certainly of little historic interest. We can
feel sure only that her union with Louis VII. must have been distinctly
and increasingly irksome to both parties. With the best will in the
world, historians can say no more of him than that he was a safe and
conservative ruler, never achieving any marked success, and yet never
incurring serious disaster. As a man he was cold, personally
unattractive and unsympathetic, possessed of unquestioned physical
courage, and yet at times fatally timid and irresolute; easily
influenced,' especially by the one power which one might fancy most
distasteful to Eleanor, the Church, for he was devout to the point of
superstition. If Eleanor had been a mere sybarite, a nerveless devotee
of pleasure, she might have lived in obscurity and borne with the
puritanism of her husband. But her blood was too hot for that; she was
full of ambition and of energy and relentless determination to realize
that ambition. As Queen of France there was no great role for her to
play. She was young, and for the moment Louis and his counsellors
governed France, while she was satisfied with less ambitious
occupations. One of these occupations was, no doubt, keeping up her
connection with the troubadours of her native land, with whom her family
and her ducal court of Bordeaux were traditionally associated. The exact
dates of her friendship with various troubadours we do not, of course,
know; but we do know that she made rather frequent trips to her beloved
Bordeaux during these years, and that she was commonly recognized as a
patroness of the troubadours.
We next hear of Eleanor in a role not altogether in keeping with her
troubadour affiliations: one does not think of the daughter of William
of Poitou as a defender of the Cross, yet it is as a crusader that
Eleanor first makes a stir in history. Much has been made by historians
of the influence of the Crusades; here we are concerned to remark only
that the spirit of adventure spread even to the women, and that many a
dame went to the Holy Land, some even in panoply of war. It was a
wonderful step forward in the freedom of women, if we recall the
conditions existing a generation before. Our great Provencal queen was a
typical representative, not only of the chivalry and love of adventure
of Provence, but of the spirit of greater independence prevailing among
women. When her grave and devout husband began his preparations for the
Second Crusade, in 1147, Eleanor determined to accompany him.
A woman of her energy could not, of course, be content with the
_faineant_ role of spouse and consoler. Accordingly, she organized a
regular band of Amazons among the great ladies of France, including the
Countesses of Toulouse and Flanders and other noble dames. The costume
of this troop was the most notable thing about them. The gay and
extravagant queen had devoted much time and thought to the devising of a
dress sufficiently showy for herself and her ladies, and, according to
the accounts of the chronicler William of Tyre, to whom we are indebted
for most of the details of her crusading exploits, Eleanor and her
companions presented a gorgeous spectacle. Accompanied by bands of
troubadours and musicians, with much flaunting of gay banners and
glittering of spangles, Queen Eleanor, clad man-fashion, in glittering
spangle armor, and her ladies rode in the van of the army. Their
discarded distaffs these martial ladies sent to recreant knights who had
preferred staying at home to crusading.
The saintly Bernard of Clairvaux, the most powerful religious influence
of his time, one whose inspired preaching could move vast audiences to a
perfect frenzy of religious exaltation, had been induced, almost
compelled, to preach the crusade for that loyal son of the Church, Louis
VII. Saint Bernard himself confessed to serious misgivings about the
righteousness of this crusade, and would not be a second Peter the
Hermit to lead the vast host of the Cross. One can imagine that the
doings of Louis's queen must have filled the soul of Saint Bernard with
misgivings still more serious. Eleanor, indeed, was incapable of
religious feeling of sufficient depth to sympathize with the purer
motives of fanaticism that inspired the best of the crusaders. For her
it was a pleasure jaunt, a glorious opportunity to enjoy all the pomp
and circumstance of being a queen, and at least the show of power.
Louis, perhaps, would have been glad to leave his rather too theatrical
and frivolous consort behind, for the crusade was to him a serious
business; but it is likely that the large contingent of Gascons and
Poitevins, devoted to their troubadour duchess, were hardly so eager
about following the King of France.
The crusade, whose history we need not dwell upon, was like a triumphal
procession as far as Constantinople. To be sure, there were misery and
sickness and death among the hordes of poor camp followers and pilgrims
who had sought the protection of the great army as they journeyed to
that Holy Land whose mere sight, they fancied, would be as a balm to
their seared consciences; but Queen Eleanor and her princesses
experienced nothing but the vain excitement of it all, the wonders of
the Greek civilization, the glitter and splendor. Warned by the
disastrous experience of the Germans who had preceded him, Louis elected
to follow the coast route along the shores of Asia Minor, and he and his
army were safely transported across the straits by the Greeks.
In the march that followed, the vain and headstrong Eleanor more than
once jeopardized herself and the whole army. She insisted on leading the
van, and her too complaisant husband consented. The result was that
Eleanor, with utter disregard of strategy and of ordinary military
precautions, conducted her forces as if the expedition were merely a
party of pleasure, selected her camps and her route according to the
beauty of the landscape, and all the time flirted in the most
irresponsible fashion with anyone who attracted her. It was said that
she had a most shameful intrigue with a handsome young emir, accepted
gifts from Sultan Noureddin, and spoke of her husband with increasing
flippancy, disrespect, contempt. The army was saved in the mountain
passes by a knight from Eleanor's native land, one Gilbert, of whom
really nothing is known, but who has been made the central figure in a
romance in which Eleanor also plays her part.
From Satalia, on the Gulf of Cyprus, the king and Eleanor, with the more
well to do among their followers, took ship for Antioch, abandoning the
mass of poor followers to the mercies of the perfidious Greeks and the
fierce Turks. In Antioch, Eleanor was received too kindly by her uncle,
Raymond, Prince of Antioch, said to have been the handsomest man of his
time, and as licentious as Eleanor's own grandfather had been. Despite
their relationship, Eleanor's conduct with Raymond made Louis wildly
jealous. She was already talking of a separation from Louis. The
daughter of William of Poitou certainly could not, as she proclaimed,
put up with a monk for her husband; but it is rather amazing to find her
pretending that she wishes her marriage dissolved for reasons of
conscience, since she and her husband are related within the degrees
prohibited by that Church of which she has always been so devout a
daughter. Louis carried her off, willy-nilly, from Antioch, and we hear
nothing more but complaints from him and soothing counsel from his
friends until after he and Eleanor returned from this disastrous
crusade. Eleanor's caprice and haughty temper had almost driven Louis to
despair, and perhaps it was this constant domestic irritant which
exacerbated his temper and caused those quarrels with the Emperor Conrad
which resulted in the miserable failure of the Christian arms at the
very gates of Damascus.
Eleanor returned to France, and continued to give her husband cause of
complaint not only by her conduct but by her tongue. Yet the
ill-assorted pair lived in marital relations until the winter of
1151-1152. During a journey to Aquitaine, however, a violent rupture
occurred. Louis appealed to the Council of Beaugency for a divorce,
declaring openly that he did not trust his wife, and could never feel
sure of the legitimacy of her issue. But Eleanor, as usual, had been
beforehand with him. She, too, appealed for divorce, and her appeal was
in the hands of the Council before that of her husband. Less frank and
more politic than Louis, Eleanor sought for an annulment of the marriage
on the ground that she and Louis were cousins--they were related in the
sixth degree. The Council, which might have been seriously embarrassed
by discussing and recognizing such a plea as that of Louis against one
of the most powerful princesses of Christendom, discreetly granted
Eleanor's plea, and annulled the marriage, March 18, 1152. Louis lost a
wife who despised him, and whom he dreaded for her violence and her
sharp tongue. France lost all those rich provinces which had come as
Eleanor's dower.
The divorced queen, now reigning Duchess of Guienne, was at once pursued
by a number of suitors. With all the romance and sentiment said to be
characteristic of southern France in her day it is hard to reconcile
facts like those that follow. Thibaud de Blois was bent on capturing the
rich duchess, and when she refused him, he plotted to capture her, to
imprison her in his castle of Blois, and to force her to marry him.
Fortunately, Eleanor was warned of the plot and escaped to her own
frontier; but here young Geoffrey of Anjou, aged eighteen, laid an
ambuscade for her on the Loire, intending to marry her himself. Again
she escaped, this time to her own county of Poitou. Into Poitiers she
was followed almost at once by Geoffrey's elder brother, Henry
Plantagenet. Handsome, masterful, brilliant, Henry was of the very type
to captivate Eleanor. It is altogether probable that she had had a
previous understanding with him, and had conducted the proceedings for
divorce on his advice. At any rate, they were married at Bordeaux on the
1st of May, 1152, in spite of the opposition of Louis as Henry's feudal
lord. Two years later Henry succeeded King Stephen, and Eleanor was
Queen of England.
A troubadour queen was certainly no fit mate for Louis VII.; and now
that Eleanor has secured her divorce from Louis, and has married a man
of temperament somewhat similar to her own, let us step aside from the
story of her career in history to tell something more of her relation to
the troubadours, and of the troubadours themselves.
Not inheriting any of her grandfather's talent as a singer, Eleanor yet
made her court a haven for troubadours. Unfortunately, we know but
little of her personal relations with her troubadour courtiers, though
tradition has conjectured that they were by no means always platonic. It
was after her marriage to Henry Plantagenet, Duke of Normandy, that she
became the special protectress of a forlorn troubadour lover, Bernard de
Ventadour. He was, as we have noticed, of very low birth, the son of a
baker in the Chateau de Ventadour; but he had risen in his lord's favor
by reason of his poetic powers. The fair young Viscountess de Ventadour,
a perfect angel of beauty in the eyes of the poet, delighted to listen
to his songs of love. At first these songs did not distinctly refer to
her; but the allusions became more unequivocal, and the songs became
warmer, till one day, as they sat under the shade of a pine tree,
Bernard singing to her, the viscountess suddenly kissed her minstrel.
The poet tells us in a song that so great was his bliss and ecstasy that
the winter landscape seemed suddenly to blossom with all the flowers of
spring. And now he sang more openly of love, and at length put the fair
lady's own name in his songs as the object of his passion. The viscount
could no longer overlook his wife's conduct; so the viscountess was shut
up in a tower and Bernard was driven out of the Limousin.
Eleanor gave the banished troubadour a kindly welcome. She listened to
his songs, heard his plaintive story, and consoled him. Eleanor was
unquestionably a beautiful woman, and at that time she was still in her
prime. It is no wonder that the soft heart of the troubadour soon forgot
its grief for the lost Lady de Ventadour in the new love for his
gracious protector. Both Eleanor and the troubadour were probably really
in love, for she was as susceptible as he, though neither was capable,
perhaps, of lasting affection. At any rate, Bernard wrote for her songs
full of love and longing, declaring that her image dwells with him
always, that in her absence he cannot sleep, and that the mere thought
of her is sweeter far than sleep. Henry II. was not himself
irreproachable as a husband, and perhaps he thought it wise not to look
too closely into what his wife was doing. Just at this time, however,
Henry became King of England, and there was no need to urge Eleanor to
hasten across the channel to become queen; her vanity was sufficient for
that. The new queen and her troubadour were parted, and, says his
biographer, from that time Bernard remained sad and woeful. He writes
her that, for her sake, he will cross the channel, for he is both a
Norman and an Englishman now; but we do not know that the intimacy
between them was renewed.
This story is the only one of any detail showing the direct relations
between Eleanor and the troubadours. There are, however, a score of
other anecdotes which serve to show the relation of other women of her
class--not all princesses, but at least of the higher nobility--to the
troubadours. As illustrative of the position of women in Provence at
this time we may select a story as famous in troubadour annals as that
of Francesca da Rimini.
The Lady Margarida de Roussillon, says the Provencal biography, was the
"most beautiful lady of her time, and the most prized for all that is
praiseworthy, and noble, and courteous." She lived in happiness with her
husband, the powerful Baron Raymond de Roussillon. But in her suite was
a page, Guillem de Cabestanh, poor, but of noble birth, with whose
handsome face and gracious ways the Lady Margarida fell in love. "Love
kindled her thoughts with fire," till at last the passion so
overmastered her that she said to Guillem one day: "Guillem, if a lady
were to love you, could you love her?" "Certainly, my lady," replied the
young man, "if I thought she loved truly." "Well spoken! Tell me, now,
can you distinguish true love from counterfeit?"
These questions roused the smouldering love in Guillem's heart, and he
gave vent to it in "stanzas graceful and gay, and tunes and canzos, and
his songs found favor with all, but most with her for whom he sang."
Margarida, indeed, knew that he loved her and that the songs were
inspired by her, though Guillem had not as yet ventured to name her in
them or to speak to her. Once again she spoke to her timid lover, and he
confessed his love. Then began the love story, the troubadour pouring
out his sweetest songs and trusting fondly that, because he did not name
her, no one would guess their love. But the gossips began to talk of
them, till at last the scandal came to the ear of Sir Raymond. "He was
ill pleased and hot with rage through having lost the friend he loved so
well, and more because of the shame of his spouse." Instead of taking
summary vengeance, however, he bided his time till the guilty pair could
be self-convicted.
One day when Guillem had gone off hawking alone Margarida saw Raymond
hide his sword under his cloak and follow after Guillem. She waited in
fearful anxiety till they returned, Raymond apparently in good humor
with Guillem and all the world. Raymond told her that he had discovered
who was the lady of Guillem's songs. Margarida's terror may be imagined.
"I knew," said Raymond, "that no one could sing so well unless he loved.
When I conjured him, by his faith, to tell me whom he loved, he evaded
me at first, but at length confessed that it was your sister, Lady Agnes
de Tarascon." He then told her that it was all true, moreover, for he
had ridden to the Chateau de Tarascon with Guillem, and that, after some
hesitancy, the Lady Agnes had admitted that Guillem was her lover.
Margarida was at first dumfounded, and completely incredulous; but her
husband's statements were so exact that she was finally convinced of
Guillem's faithlessness.
At their first private interview she taxed him with his ingratitude, and
would scarcely listen to his denials. Guillem told her that, seeing
himself forced into a corner by Raymond's persistent questions, he had
named the Lady Agnes in desperation, to prevent immediate discovery and
death. The Lady Agnes and her husband, whom she had told of the
intrigue, soon confirmed the lover's story. Lady Agnes had seen the
distress in Guillem's countenance when Raymond brought him to Tarascon
and asked her, in his presence, who was her lover. To save Guillem and
her sister, Lady Agnes had admitted that Guillem was her lover, and she
and her husband had done all in their power to convince Raymond of this
fact. One need hardly remark on the social conditions or the general
laxity of morals implied in the naive recital of such an incident.
To continue Margarida's story, the lovers were reconciled and Guillem
celebrated the reconciliation in a song. Unfortunately he had grown
rash, and alluded too openly in this song to the very circumstances of
their case. "No man," he sang, "suffers greater martyrdom than I; for
you, whom I desire more than aught in this world, I must disavow and
deny, and lie as if no love were in my heart. Whate'er I do through fear
of my life, you must take in good faith, even though you do not see why
I do it." This song, some portions of which were violently amorous, came
to the hands of Raymond. He guessed the truth at once, and planned an
awful vengeance.
Some days later, as the husband and wife were seated at dinner, the Lady
Margarida commented on the delicacy of a bit of deer's heart which she
had eaten. "Do you know," said Raymond, "what you have been eating?"
"No, but I found it delicious." "This will show you," he said, raising
before her the bloody head of Guillem Cabestanh. "Behold the head of the
man whose heart you have just eaten!" The lady fainted at the horrible
sight, and when she recovered screamed aloud that the heart she had
eaten was so good and savory that never more would she eat meat. The
maddened husband rushed at her with drawn sword, and she, to escape
death at his hands, cast herself out of a window and was dashed to
pieces.
The story has a little sequel, not less instructive and enlightening in
its way. "The news of the deed spread rapidly, and was received
everywhere with grief and indignation; and all the friends of Guillem
and the lady, and all the courteous knights of the neighborhood, and all
those who were lovers, united to make war against Raymond." King
Alphonso of Arragon invaded Raymond's dominions, took him prisoner, kept
him in captivity the rest of his days, and divided his property among
the relatives of the murdered lovers. The unhappy pair he caused to be
buried in one tomb, and erected over them a sumptuous monument, whither
once a year came all the knights and all the fond lovers of Roussillon,
Cerdagne, and Narbonnais, to pray for the souls of Guillem Cabestanh and
the fair Lady Margarida. In the glamor of romance, morality and common
decency are apt to be lost sight of. The romancer enlists all our
sympathies for the guilty Paolo and Francesca of this story, while
Raymond, the miserable husband, meets with captivity and the loss of his
property. We may add that the main facts of this story are confirmed,
even to the episode of the heart, by several accounts in manuscripts,
though imagination is doubtless responsible for certain details.
In the loves of the troubadours one is constantly encountering stories
not less immoral though less tragic than this one, as we may see in the
story of the Lady de Miravals. The wife of Raymond de Miravals, a rich
baron and famous troubadour, being neglected by her husband, had formed
a secret attachment for a knight called Bremon. She was pining in secret
for her lover when, to her delight, Raymond threatened to divorce her,
because he himself had tired of her and was in love with another lady
who insisted that he should divorce his wife. Seeing in the threatened
divorce a chance of perfect liberty in her relations with Bremon, the
Lady de Miravals pretended extreme grief and indignation. Such treatment
from an ungrateful husband she would not stand, she said. She would send
for her parents and relatives to see justice done or to take her away.
To this Raymond, apparently, made no very determined resistance. The
lady, with great show of wrath, sent a messenger to summon her family,
secretly directing him to go to Bremon and tell him that she was ready
to marry him if he would come. Bremon came with alacrity, accompanied by
a troop of his knights, and halted at the gate of the castle. The
expectant Lady de Miravals, seeing her lover ready, announced to Raymond
that her friends had come for her, and that she would be pleased if he
would allow her to leave at once. Raymond consented; in fact, he was so
pleased at the prospect of being rid of his wife that, with unwonted
courtesy, he himself conducted her to the castle gate. Seeing that her
little plot was working so well, the runaway wife could not forbear
adding one more touch to this lovely little deception. "Sir," said she
to Raymond, "since we part such good friends, with no regrets, would you
not be good enough to give me, no longer your wife, to this gentleman?"
Nothing was easier to Raymond than unmarrying a wife of whom he was
tired. With ready courtesy he gave her to Bremon, who, receiving her
from her husband's hands, put the ring on her finger and rode off, in
high glee, with his lady-love.
We do not know whether the Lady de Miravals and her new husband found
the course of their love smooth or rough; but the too complaisant
Raymond met with very bad luck, which he most richly deserved. As soon
as his wife was gone, he posted off to tell his lady-love that her
commands had been obeyed and that he had now come to marry her. But this
lady, who seems to have cared nothing for the foolish troubadour except
to have the honor of having him make a fool of himself for her, said:
"It is well done, Raymond; you have sent away your wife to please me.
Now go and prepare for a magnificent wedding at your castle, and let me
know when you are ready to receive your bride in fitting style." The
troubadour rushed home, spent weeks and squandered his substance in
preparations for his bride, and went back to claim her. Alas! this very
sensible lady had married another man--we hope not a troubadour--on the
very day after she had sent Raymond on his fool's errand.
With all his protestations of undying devotion, it not infrequently
happened that the troubadour did not continue to devote himself to one
lady. Sometimes the lady found a more acceptable lover, or became tired
of the love rhapsodies of her troubadour. But it was dangerous to
dismiss one of these violent poets without good excuse, for he might
turn from love songs to _sirventes_, and satirize her whom before he had
extolled as a paragon. One of the most amusing of the anecdotes of the
troubadours is that telling how Marie de Ventadour got rid of the
attentions of Gaucelm Faidit.
The beautiful Countess Marie de Ventadour was, says the old Provencal
historian quoted in Mr. Rowbotham's _The Troubadours and Courts of
Love_, to which we are indebted for many of the facts here used, "the
most esteemed lady in the province of Limousin; the lady who prided
herself most on doing whatever was right and good, and who best
preserved and defended herself from all evil; who always shaped her
conduct by the rules of reason, and never at any time committed an act
of folly." Her charms were celebrated by many a troubadour, but her most
devoted admirer was Gaucelm Faidit. Gaucelm, the son of an artisan of
Uzerche, had been raised from his low estate by the favor of the
troubadour Richard Coeur de Lion, and his talent had assured his
position in what one might call the best society. Marie, like other
ladies of her time, was rather vain of her troubadour admirers, and did
not disdain the brilliant but lowborn Gaucelm Faidit. But she told him
that, if he was to win her love, he must show himself worthy of it by
prowess in battle, and suggested that he accompany her husband--whom we
neglected to mention before--on the third Crusade, just then being
organized. The poet, though not very fond of fighting, took the Cross,
went to the Holy Land, sent home to his lady-love most ferocious poems
telling of the perils he was encountering or escaping, and then made his
way back to the Chateau de Ventadour as soon as he could find a decent
excuse for doing so. Marie, however, was not so gracious to him as he
had hoped; she did not love him for the dangers he had passed, or for
his telling of them. She was, in fact, decidedly cold to him. Gaucelm,
in a rage, left the chateau, saying: "I shall never see you again! But
perhaps I can find another lady who will treat me with more
consideration." Marie was rather glad to be rid of her poet's
tempestuous love; but she was afraid of his sharp tongue; he could write
most bitter _sirventes_: what if he should avenge himself on her by
turning against her all his satiric powers?
In this dilemma she resorted to a stratagem which her friend, Madame de
Malamort helped her to put in practice, Madame de Malamort sent a
message to the troubadour asking: "Which do you prefer, a little bird in
the hand, or a crane flying high in the air?" Gaucelm's curiosity was
piqued; he came to ask her to unravel this riddle. "I am the little
bird," said she, "whom you hold in your hand, and Marie de Ventadour is
the crane who flies far above your head. Am I not as beautiful as she?
Love me who love you, and let this haughty countess find out, as she
will, what a treasure she has lost." The vanity of the troubadour,
incensed by what he thought unjust treatment, could not withstand this
artful attack. He consented to be off with the old love, and the new
love required that he take leave of the old love, not in any violent
sirvente, but in a poem relentless, stern, yet calm and dignified; after
which he might begin to sing as he pleased about the new love. Too proud
of his new conquest to suspect the trick being played on him, Gaucelm
bade farewell to Marie de Ventadour in a formal and very dignified
fashion. When he turned now to sing of joy and spring and the like to
Madame de Malamort he found his attentions very coldly received; and the
lady soon gave him to understand that, having got her friend out of a
difficulty, she cared not a fig for any troubadour. Gaucelm was nicely
trapped; he could not indulge in abuse of either lady without danger of
having the whole foolish tale told at his expense. He became a heretic
toward love, and satirized women in general; but he soon recovered from
this, and lived to be consoled by other ladies, and to be fooled by one
more. This one, Marguerite d'Aubusson, pretending the most devoted and
innocent romantic love for Gaucelm, used to meet her real lover under
cover of Gaucelm's roof.
Though not at all essential to the story, it is a fact worth mentioning
that Gaucelm Faidit himself was married while the romance with Marie was
in progress. The wife of a troubadour, indeed, was not allowed to
interfere with any really serious business of his career, such as a love
affair with another man's wife. That this was so, in theory at least,
can be seen in the story of the lives of many of the troubadours; and
that the general attitude of Provencal society, as represented by this
particular phase of its literature, was unfavorable to matrimony, can be
seen most clearly when we look at those curious institutions called
Courts of Love. It is not yet quite certain whether the Courts of Love
are altogether or only partly mythical.
This century of ours is a Sancho Panza among the centuries; like that
stout and excellent squire, we have unlimited faith in things material,
visible, tangible, and especially eatable and no faith in things
romantic, such as windmills, and knights-errant, and chivalry. Looked at
from the Panzaic point of view, which we are fain to admit is also the
common-sense point of view, it seems inherently most improbable that any
set of people should waste their time upon anything so fantastic as the
Courts of Love. Yet Panza should be asked to remember that there are and
have been things in heaven and earth that surpass the limits of his
philosophy; that the race among whom such institutions are alleged to
have flourished was notoriously sentimental, or poetic, if you like a
more respectful term; that, for a parallel, he has only to go to a
famous French romance, published less than two centuries ago, which
contained a grave description and map of the Country of Love, a _Carte
du pays de Tendre_, with minute directions as to how the amorous
traveller might proceed safely on his journey to the city of true love;
and that Moliere's _Precieuses Ridicules_, however overdrawn for comic
effect, presents a picture of what really existed. Reason is,
undoubtedly, opposed to the possibility of the existence of the Courts
of Love; but, as we have said, we cannot always refuse to believe what
seems to us preposterous. The historical evidence for the existence of
the Courts of Love is unquestionably very scanty. Mr. Rowbotham, who
believes firmly in their existence, is forced to rely upon the testimony
of one contemporary witness, of very uncertain date (Andrew the
Chaplain, "who lived probably about the end of the twelfth century"),
and two very obscure allusions to courts and trials in the poems of the
troubadours. The chief sources for our knowledge of the Courts of Love
are writers long subsequent to the events, notably Jean de Nostredame,
who, in 1575, published a book entitled _Les Vies des plus celebres et
anciens poetes provensaux_. But the tradition is so well established,
and above all so intimately associated with Queen Eleanor, that we shall
give a little sketch of the courts and their doings.
The _tensons_ of the troubadours were poetic disputes on points of love
and on lovers' conduct. If, says Jean de Nostredame, the disputants
"could not come to an agreement they referred the matter for decision to
the illustrious lady presidents who held open and plenary court at the
Castle of Signe, and other places, and these gave judgments which were
called the judgments of Love." If a lady treated her troubadour lover
unfairly, or if a lover were guilty of any dereliction or crime in love,
or if, for the guidance of future generations of lovers, a decision on a
mere point of gallantry were sought, all such cases came before the
Courts of Love, which had a regular code of laws, thirty-one in number,
upon which decisions were based. The court, composed of a jury of the
most beautiful, accomplished, and celebrated ladies of the neighborhood,
and presided over by some lady of special distinction, heard the pleas
on both sides, and gave judgment, which depended upon a unanimous vote
of the jury. There were several of these courts, the most famous being
those of Queen Eleanor of England, of her daughter, Marie de Champagne,
of the Viscountess of Narbonne, and of the Countess of Flanders. The
code under which these fantastic tribunals are said to have given their
judgment is a very curious document. The statutes of love are hardly so
rigorous as might be expected; some of them are merely proverbial bits
of wisdom, with here and there a hint very far from romantic:
IV. Love never stands still; it always increases--or diminishes.
X. Love is always an exile where avarice holds his dwelling.
Some seem so distinctly suggestive of a smirk beneath all this affected
seriousness that one can hardly take them seriously.
XV. Every lover is accustomed to grow pale at the sight of his
lady-love.
XVI. At the sudden and unexpected sight of his lady-love the heart of
the true lover invariably palpitates.
XX. A real lover is always the prey of anxiety and malaise.
XXIII. A person who is the prey of love eats little and sleeps little.
This last is, of course, a rule not only venerable, but universal. One
recalls Chaucer's Squire, "as fresshe as is the moneth of May," who
"coude songes make, and wel endite;... so hote he loved that by
nightertale he slep no more than doth the nightingale." Others of the
troubadour statutes are frankly suggestive of that moral laxity, not to
say obliquity of vision, of which we have spoken before.
I. Marriage cannot be pleaded as an excuse for refusing to love.
XI. It is not becoming to love those ladies who love only with a view to
marriage.
XXVI. Love can deny nothing to love.
With this little group of laws in mind one can but reflect that, pushed
to their logical conclusion, they are suggestive of moral laxity. We are
not, however, left to guessing. According to Andrew the Chaplain, the
court of the Countess of Champagne was asked, on April 29, 1174, to
decide this question: "Can real love exist between married people?" The
countess and her court decided "that love cannot exercise its powers on
married people," the following reason being given in proof of the
assertion: "Lovers grant everything, mutually and gratuitously, without
being constrained by any motive of necessity. Married people, on the
contrary, are compelled as a duty to submit to one another's wishes, and
not to refuse anything to one another. For this reason it is evident
that love cannot exercise its powers on married people. Let this
decision, which we have arrived at with great deliberation, and after
taking counsel of a large number of ladies, be held henceforward as a
confirmed and irrefragable truth."
Quite in line with this judgment is one reported from the court of Queen
Eleanor. A gentleman, the complainant in the suit, was deeply in love
with a lady who loved another. Taking compassion on him, however, she
promised that, if ever she should lose her first lover, the complainant
should be received as his successor. The lady shortly after married her
lover. Thereupon the complainant, citing the decision of the Countess of
Champagne, demanded her love. The lady refused, denying that she had
lost the love of her lover by marrying him. Wherefore the complainant
humbly sued for judgment, we presume it might be called a writ _mandamus
amare_. The honorable court handed down a decision for the complainant,
declaring that the solemn decree of the court of the Countess of
Champagne was of force in the present case, and issuing the writ
_mandamus amare_ as prayed for: "We order that the lady grant to her
imploring lover, now the complainant before this court, the favors which
he so earnestly entreats, and which she so faithfully has promised."
One other decision of the gay Queen Eleanor is so righteous that we
cannot forbear repeating it. A gentleman brought suit because a lady of
whom he was enamored had accepted numerous handsome gifts from him and
yet persistently denied him her love. We are not altogether sure whether
the gentleman was not really bringing suit to recover his presents; but
Queen Eleanor gave judgment: "A lady who is determined to be inflexible
must either refuse to receive any gifts which are sent with the object
of winning her love, or she must make compensation for them, or she must
be content to be classed as a courtesan."
In all this world of love and song were the women merely objects of the
troubadour's song, or merely patronesses of the troubadour? Were there
no poetesses? The names of fourteen ladies who may be called troubadours
by reason of their own works are all of whom we have record, and even of
these fourteen not one was really a professional troubadour; in most
cases it is but one song, or even one part of a _tenson_, which gives
the lady a right to be named among the poets. We find Clara D'Anduse,
the beautiful love of the troubadour Uc de St. Cyr, remembered for but
one song; and but little more remains of the work of Countess Beatrice
de Die, who loved Rambaut d'Orange, and who tells of how this troubadour
loved her, and grew cold to her, and finally was faithless, forsaking
her for another; but she and her sister troubadours are shadowy figures:
the time had not come for woman to take a permanent place in literature.
In our attempt to present the literary and artistic side of Eleanor's
life, and to tell something of the brilliant society of Provence in
which she played no small part, we have neglected the facts of her
career in England. As Queen Eleanor of England, however, we shall not
have much to say of her. Even now she does not play a very prominent
part in history, and the development of her character is quite in line
with the moral training one would acquire in the Courts of Love. It does
seem as if there were such a thing as reaping the whirlwind.
Eleanor was eleven years older than her new husband. She had despised
Louis because he was too austere, too cold, too plain in mind and in
morals. Her new husband soon gave her ample cause to develop a new
passion jealousy. She learned to hate him for vices the very opposite of
Louis's colorless virtue. She herself had been notoriously a coquette,
and not an innocent one. She felt the eleven years of difference between
herself and Henry. The gossips said she could hardly expect to retain
Henry's affection, she who was so much older, and who had been, it was
rumored, the mistress of Henry's own father. Despite the gallant
principles she had professed in her own Court of Love, despite the
latitude to which she had thought herself entitled, she became furiously
jealous of Henry. There was, indeed, much reason for jealousy. Young,
hot-blooded, passionate, as greedy of pleasure as of power, Henry lost
no time in giving her numerous rivals. No means were too vile or too
violent when Henry wished to gratify his passions. It is said that he
even dishonored the young Princess Alice of France, betrothed to his son
Richard, and for that reason would never allow Richard to marry her.
There we're fierce quarrels between Eleanor and Henry, and tradition has
ascribed to her the murder of Fair Rosamond Clifford, whom she is said
to have pursued into the labyrinth of Woodstock and stabbed with her own
hand.
Finding it impossible to avenge herself in any other way, Eleanor
stirred up her sons against their father. They were all turbulent
enough, and needed little encouragement. The eldest living son, Henry,
injudiciously crowned king by his father's desire, persuaded himself
that he must be king in deed, and was spurred on by his mother and by
her friend, the restless troubadour Bertrand de Born. Raymond of
Toulouse, who had been sought by them as an ally, revealed the plot of
the queen and her sons to Henry. Young Henry and his brothers fled to
France, where they were received by Louis with royal honors. Eleanor was
imprisoned in her own duchy, and in prison she remained during Henry's
lifetime. The troubadours, devoted to their duchess, sang dolorous songs
upon her captivity, and voiced their hatred of her jailer, Henry, in
burning _sirventes_. But Henry went on relentlessly in the intermittent
struggle with his sons, conquered Bertrand de Born, and kept his
rebellious subjects in check. Not till he died, cursing Richard and
John, who had again been in revolt against him, was the queen released.
Hardly had Richard been crowned before he departed for the Crusade,
leaving Eleanor as regent. Even against her own son the old queen
intrigued; yet it was partly her indignant intervention which later
helped to release Richard from the German prison where the emperor,
instigated by Philip Augustus, would have kept him. The son whom she
loved best, John, loved and trusted her no more than did Richard. In the
struggle between Philip Augustus, championing Arthur of Brittany, and
John, Eleanor seems to have kept faith with her son, and to have given
him shrewd if cruel counsel. We hear of her but once or twice more in
active affairs. In 1200 she was sent by John into Spain to bring back
his niece, Blanche de Castille, who was betrothed to Prince Louis of
France by one of the terms of a treaty just concluded between John and
Philip Augustus. On her return, when passing through Bordeaux, a mob set
upon and killed one of her party, the detested Mercader, captain of
Richard's Brabancon mercenaries. Eleanor, old, and sick with fatigue and
fright at this scene of horror, could proceed no further, and stayed in
the abbey of Fontevrault, sending Blanche on with the Archbishop of
Bordeaux. She rallied from this illness, however, and two years later
had a narrow escape from being captured by her grandson, Arthur. She was
besieged, and very hard pressed, in the Chateau de Mirebeau, when Arthur
and his followers were surprised and captured by John. This episode of a
grand-mother besieged by her own grandson is quite in line with the
traditions of the family. "It is the fate of our family that none should
love the other," said Geoffrey Plantagenet.
In the midst of the triumph of Philip Augustus over her miserable son
John, old Queen Eleanor died, in the convent of Beaulieu, in 1204. The
miseries of her declining years make us more charitable toward her; but
it is impossible to respect a character such as that of England's
troubadour queen. One sometimes finds her praised for a splendid virtue,
that of impulsive generosity; but there was no generosity in her nature;
she was merely lavish in spending for her own pleasure. In keeping with
what a great historian has said of her son Richard Coeur de Lion, one
may say that she was a bad wife,--to two husbands,--a bad mother, and a
bad queen. There was in her nature none of the tenderness which alone
can ensure domestic love, nor yet enough force to enable her to make
herself a great queen.
Even before the death of their patroness the glories of the troubadours
were fading. There was an angry murmur, growing ever stronger, against
the immorality of the troubadours, and particularly against a new and
formidable heresy which had gained ground rapidly in the south of
France. With the doctrines of the Albigenses we are not concerned; it is
difficult to discover the exact truth about them, since we must rely
chiefly upon the testimony of their enemies. It is sufficiently well
established, however, that the Albigenses believed in a form of
Manichseism which asserted the existence of two Eternal powers,
equipotent, the one a power of Good, the other a power of Evil. Since
Evil ruled the world on equal terms with Good, might not man feel
utterly relieved of moral responsibility? Certainly, such is the
tendency of this species of Dualism.
Whether the Albigensian heresy be responsible or not, it is
unquestionable that the troubadours were in nearly all cases
indifferent, and in very many cases sceptical or utterly rebellious, in
their attitude toward the Church and its teachings. Among the nobility
the sacrament of marriage, so carefully hedged about by the canons of
the Church, could hardly have been regarded with much respect, since a
venal clergy was ready to sanction a union which their own Church
pronounced incestuous or to dissolve one which their own Church
pronounced indissoluble. Political and racial antipathy, the old
ineradicable and inexplicable hatred of north for south, helped on the
religious quarrel. Count Raymond of Toulouse, who seems to have been
merely an easy-going man, inclined rather to religious liberty and
freedom of conscience than to positive heresy, was assailed as a monster
of vice. At length, in 1208, Pope Innocent III. authorized the
Cistercian monks to preach a crusade against the Albigenses: "Arise! ye
soldiers of Christ! exterminate this impiety by every means that God may
reveal to you. Stretch forth your arms and smite the heretics, making
upon them war more relentless than upon the Saracens." So ran the papal
letters. The new crusade was preached far and wide over France, Germany,
and Italy, and a host of crusaders, promised greater indulgences than
those who went to the Holy Land, assembled to destroy Provence. Among
their leaders were two recreant troubadours, Izarn, who leaves us his
version of the fall of Provence, and Folquet, now Bishop of Toulouse,
who is so cruel, so bitter, so treacherous in the cause of Christ that
one enjoys hearing him called by the troubadour nickname "Bishop of
Devils." More terrible than Folquet, because more sincere, was one
Domingo, canon of Osma, a man of almost puritanic habits of mind, famous
in history as the founder of the order of _Fratres Predicatores_, the
Dominican Preaching Friars, and of an institution not less well
known--the Inquisition. The military leader who really broke the back of
the resistance in Provence was Simon de Montfort. The siege and capture
of Beziers, where a number of those accused of heresy had taken refuge,
will serve to show in what spirit the whole war was conducted. When
Beziers was taken the soldiers asked Abbot Arnold, of Citeaux, who
represented the Church of Mercy: "How shall we distinguish the faithful
from the heretics among the people of the town?" The priest answered:
_Caedite eos, novit enim Dominus qui sunt ejus_: "Kill them all, for the
Lord will know His own." In this spirit the Albigensian war continued,
with occasional respites, for more than thirty years. Over the land of
the troubadours brooded the menacing figure of the Inquisition; and fair
women no less than men knew the sinister meaning of "_La Question_" the
inquisition by torture, by scores of devices of ingenious cruelty, of
which the "rack" and the iron "boot" are best remembered. The brilliant
life of the south was extinguished. We hear the piteous wail of the fast
disappearing singers: "Oh! Toulouse and Provence, land of Agen, Beziers,
and Carcassonne; as I have seen you, and as I see you now!"
While Provencal literature was thus perishing miserably, that of France
was gradually unfolding; and we find here and there some _grande dame_
named as a patroness of literature. Most of them are but names, yet we
find that the Countess Marie de Champagne, Queen Eleanor's daughter,
encouraged the great _trouvere_ Chrestien de Troies. She made him
introduce into his romances the notions of love and chivalry fostered in
the Courts of Love, and gave him the theme of his romance of _Lancelot_,
or _Le conte de la Charrette_ (about 1170). For Blanche de Navarre was
made a prose translation of saints' lives. A poet named Menessier
completed, about 1220, for the Countess Jeanne de Flandre a poem on
Perceval and his search for the Holy Grail.
One French woman of this period, moreover, won for herself an abiding
place in literature. Of her personality we know nothing, and we are even
ignorant of the dates of her birth and death. Gathering her materials
from Welsh and Breton traditions and popular songs, she wrote a number
of _lays_, as she called them. These lays are short poems, in verse of
eight syllables, recounting some little romantic tale or adventure.
There are about twenty of them, of which fifteen, at least, are ascribed
to Marie. From another of her works we glean the few facts that follow,
substantially all that we know of her:
"At the end of this work, which I have translated and sung in the
Romance tongue (French), I will tell you something of myself. Marie is
my name, and I am of France. It may be that several clerks might take it
upon themselves to claim my work, and I wish none to say it is his: who
forgets himself works to no purpose. For the love of Count William, the
most valiant man in this kingdom, I undertook to write this book and to
translate it from English into Romance. He who wrote this book, or
translated it, called it Ysopet. He translated it from Greek into Latin.
King Henry (some manuscripts say Alfred), who loved it greatly, then
translated it into English, and I have turned it into French verse as
accurately as I could. Now I pray to God Almighty that I may be given
strength to do such work that I may give my soul into His hands, that it
may go straight to Heaven above. Say Amen, all of you, that God may
grant my prayer."
This conclusion of one of the fables in the book called _Ysopet_, which
we have translated freely, shows us that Marie was of French birth, but
that she had, probably, lived for a time in England. Who was Count
William? We are free to guess, but there seems no chance of confirming
the guess. Some have supposed him to be William Longsword, the reputed
son of Henry II. and Rosamond; while Henry, the king who loved the book
so well, might be Henry Beauclerc. But as the English book from which
Marie translated is lost, there is again no chance of confirmation. It
is now generally agreed, however, that Marie lived and wrote about the
end of the reign of Henry II.
_Ysopet_, or _Ysope_, as it is sometimes spelled, is nothing more than
the name of our dear old AEsop, whom childhood loves and whom folklore is
proving a myth. The term came to be the generic one in Old French for
collections of fables on the model of Marie's. Marie's fables cannot
compete with those of her great French successor, La Fontaine; and yet
one is always insensibly comparing them with his. The literary value of
her works is not great; the recital is too cold and impersonal; there is
too much of the apologue and none of that delightful individuality, the
reflection of his own mind, which La Fontaine manages to impress upon
his creatures; the writer shows no sympathy with the "little people" of
her fables.
The lays are decidedly more entertaining, and show considerable
narrative power, as well as an unconscious appreciation of the romantic
beauty of the incidents, many of which have to do with fairies and
enchantment. They are tales of love and adventure, full of marvels. One
meets King Arthur and Tristram, and a host of knights and ladies
transformed by the fairies. We may mention the pathetic _Lai de Frene_,
a story related to the famous one of _Patient Grissel_; the story of
_Guingamor_, a tale of a knight who lives three days in fairyland and
comes back to find that three hundred years had passed on earth; and the
story of the werewolf Bisclavret, which we may give as a specimen of
this very interesting portion of Old French literature interesting, at
least, to those who love literature in its infancy.
"When I set out to write lays," says Marie, "I would not forget
Bisclavret. In Breton he is called Bisclavret, while the Normans call
him _garwalf_ (werewolf)." We have heard often enough, she continues, of
men who became werewolves and lived in the forest. The werewolf is a
savage beast, and when he is in a rage he devours men and does much
damage. After this little preface, the tale goes on to tell of a knight
of Brittany, courteous, rich, beloved by all his neighbors. His wife,
however, was piqued by unreasoning curiosity about one thing, which was
quite enough, indeed, to arouse the curiosity of any wife. This was the
fact that for three days out of 'the week her husband disappeared, no
one knew whither. At length, she asked her husband where he went, and,
in spite of his reluctance to tell,
"tant le blandi e losenia
Que s'aventure li cunta,"
that is, she wheedled and coaxed him till he told her that on three days
of the week he must be a werewolf; that, going to the forest, he
stripped himself and hid his clothing carefully, and then was turned
into a wolf. He besought her not to reveal the hiding place of his
clothing; for if, when the three days were over, he should come back in
wolf form and find them gone, there would be no hope for him: he must be
a wolf for the rest of his days. Now, the wife, as usually happens in
such tales, was a wicked wife, anxious to rid herself of her werewolf
husband and marry a knight who had long been her lover:
"Un chevalier de la cuntree,
Qui lungement l'aveit amee...
E mult dune en sun servise."
To him she sends at once, and the guilty pair steal away the clothes of
the poor werewolf at the very first opportunity. And thus was Bisclavret
betrayed by his wife, who married him who had loved her long. The
werewolf is condemned to continue in wolf form; but one must remember
that there are disenchantments as well as enchantments in fairy stories,
and that justice, of a kind which is frequently _sui generis_, is
generally meted out to the guilty. The giant, it is true, gobbles up
people and behaves horribly for a season, but there is always a giant
killer in training for him. And so here, it is only for "one whole year"
that Bisclavret remains transformed; for the king goes hunting in the
forest, and his hounds pursue Bisclavret till the poor wretch runs
straight to the feet of the king, kisses his feet, and asks mercy in
such pitiful and almost human dumb show that the king orders him spared.
Bisclavret, taken under royal protection, accompanies the court
everywhere, till, on the occasion of a special assemblage of the barons,
the man who had married his wife comes into his presence. Straight at
his throat leapt the wolf-man, and would have torn him to pieces on the
spot had not the king interfered. The obvious hatred of the wolf for
this particular man aroused the king's suspicions, and these suspicions
were still further intensified when, not long after, the wolf manifested
the same violent hatred toward his former wife, now the wife of the
knight, biting her and scratching her face in spite of all that could be
done. Then, upon the advice of an old knight who remembered the
mysterious disappearance of Bisclavret and who knew something of Breton
legends, the king put the false wife to torture, and forced from her the
confession of the truth. Bisclavret, shut up in a room with the clothes
he had worn as a man, is transformed into a man once more and reinstated
in his possessions. The unfaithful wife, accompanied by her paramour, is
driven from the land, and, as a further retribution, several of her
children were born without noses, the wolf having bitten off her nose.
As Marie concludes, with triumphant rejoicing in the punishment of the
wicked even unto the third and fourth generation, "'tis true, indeed,
noseless were they born, and noseless did they live."
This paraphrase of Marie's work can, of course, give no idea of its
literary value; but the tale itself will serve as a sample of what the
first woman in French literature wrote. We have from her also a
translation of the famous legend of _Saint Patrick's Purgatory_, of how
a knight journeyed into the lower regions and came back to warn the
world of the punishments in store for the wicked. Marie represents but a
beginning--and yet it is a beginning--of the writing in their mother
tongue, which was to make famous many women as well as men of France. In
her day, indeed, it was a distinction to write in the mother tongue, for
among the classes which we should call literary Latin was considered the
only proper vehicle for their wisdom. Long after her day, indeed, Latin
still kept French from its birthright, and it will be two centuries
before we come to another woman who writes in French. Though the great
Heloise and her letters, written not long before Marie's time, take
their place in literature, it is in the literature of scholastic Latin,
not of old French.