CHAPTER XVI.
Provençal Literature in Spain. — Provence. — Burgundians. — Origin of the Provençal Language and Literature. — Barcelona. — Dialect of Catalonia. — Aragon. — Troubadour Poets in Catalonia and Aragon. — War of the Albigenses. — Peter the Second. — James the Conqueror and His Chronicle. — Ramon Muntaner and his Chronicle. — Decay of Poetry in Provence, and Decay of Provençal Poetry in Spain. — Catalonian Dialect.
Provençal literature appeared in Spain as early as any portion of the Castilian, with which we have thus far been exclusively occupied. Its introduction was natural, and, being intimately connected with the history of political power in both Provence and Spain, can be at once explained, at least so far as to account for its prevalence in the quarter of the Peninsula where, during three centuries, it predominated, and for its large influence throughout the rest of the country, both at that time and afterwards.
Provence—or, in other words, that part of the South of France which extends from Italy to Spain, and which originally obtained its name in consequence of the consideration it enjoyed as an early and most important province of Rome—was singularly fortunate, during the latter period of the Middle Ages, in its exemption from many of the troubles of those troubled times.[487] While the great movement of the Northern nations lasted, Provence was disturbed chiefly by the Visigoths, who soon passed onward to Spain, leaving few traces of their character behind them, and by the Burgundians, the mildest of all the Teutonic invaders, who did not reach the South of France till they had been long resident in Italy, and, when they came, established themselves at once as the permanent masters of that tempting country.
Greatly favored in this comparative quiet, which, though sometimes broken by internal dissension, or by the ineffectual incursions of their new Arab neighbours, was nevertheless such as was hardly known elsewhere, and favored no less by a soil and climate almost without rivals in the world, the civilization and refinement of Provence advanced faster than those of any other portion of Europe. From the year 879, a large part of it was fortunately constituted into an independent government; and, what was very remarkable, it continued under the same family till 1092, two hundred and thirteen years.[488] During this second period, its territories were again much spared from the confusion that almost constantly pressed their borders and threatened their tranquillity; for the troubles that then shook the North of Italy did not cross the Alps and the Var; the Moorish power, so far from making new aggressions, maintained itself with difficulty in Catalonia; and the wars and convulsions in the North of France, from the time of the first successors of Charlemagne to that of Philip Augustus, flowed rather in the opposite direction, and furnished, at a safe distance, occupation for tempers too fierce to endure idleness.
In the course of these two centuries, a language sprang up in the South and along the Mediterranean, compounded, according to the proportions of their power and refinement, from that spoken by the Burgundians and from the degraded Latin of the country, and slowly and quietly took the place of both. With this new language appeared, as noiselessly, about the middle of the tenth century, a new literature, suited to the climate, the age, and the manners that produced it, and one which, for nearly three hundred years, seemed to be advancing towards a grace and refinement such as had not been known since the fall of the Romans.
Thus things continued under twelve princes of the Burgundian race, who make little show in the wars of their times, but who seem to have governed their states with a moderation and gentleness not to have been expected amidst the general disturbance of the world. This family became extinct, in the male branch, in 1092; and in 1113, the crown of Provence was transferred, by the marriage of its heir, to Raymond Berenger, the third Count of Barcelona.[489] The Provençal poets, many of whom were noble by birth, and all of whom, as a class, were attached to the court and its aristocracy, naturally followed their liege lady, in considerable numbers, from Arles to Barcelona, and willingly established themselves in her new capital, under a prince full of knightly accomplishments and yet not disinclined to the arts of peace.
Nor was the change for them a great one. The Pyrenees made then, as they make now, no very serious difference between the languages spoken on their opposite declivities; similarity of pursuits had long before induced a similarity of manners in the population of Barcelona and Marseilles; and if the Provençals had somewhat more of gentleness and culture, the Catalonians, from the share they had taken in the Moorish wars, possessed a more strongly marked character, and one developed in more manly proportions.[490] At the very commencement of the twelfth century, therefore, we may fairly consider a Provençal refinement to have been introduced into the northeastern corner of Spain; and it is worth notice, that this is just about the period when, as we have already seen, the ultimately national school of poetry began to show itself in quite the opposite corner of the Peninsula, amidst the mountains of Biscay and Asturias.[491]
Political causes, however, similar to those which first brought the spirit of Provence from Arles and Marseilles to Barcelona, soon carried it farther onward towards the centre of Spain. In 1137, the Counts of Barcelona obtained by marriage the kingdom of Aragon; and though they did not, at once, remove the seat of their government to Saragossa, they early spread through their new territories some of the refinement for which they were indebted to Provence. This remarkable family, whose power was now so fast stretching up to the North, possessed, at different times, during nearly three centuries, different portions of territory on both sides of the Pyrenees, generally maintaining a control over a large part of the Northeast of Spain and of the South of France. Between 1229 and 1253, the most distinguished of its members gave the widest extent to its empire by broad conquests from the Moors; but later the power of the kings of Aragon became gradually circumscribed, and their territory diminished, by marriages, successions, and military disasters. Under eleven princes, however, in the direct line, and three more in the indirect, they maintained their right to the kingdom, down to the year 1479, when, in the person of Ferdinand, it was united to Castile, and the solid foundations were laid on which the Spanish monarchy has ever since rested.
With this slight outline of the course of political power in the northeastern part of Spain, it will be easy to trace the origin and history of the literature that prevailed there from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of the fifteenth century; a literature which was introduced from Provence, and retained the Provençal character, till it came in contact with that more vigorous spirit which, during the same period, had been advancing from the northwest, and afterwards succeeded in giving its tone to the literature of the consolidated monarchy.[492]
The character of the old Provençal poetry is the same on both sides of the Pyrenees. In general, it is graceful and devoted to love; but sometimes it becomes involved in the politics of the time, and sometimes it runs into a severe and unbecoming satire. In Catalonia, as well as in its native home, it belonged much to the court; and the highest in rank and power are the earliest and foremost on its lists. Thus, both the princes who first wore the united crowns of Barcelona and Provence, and who reigned from 1113 to 1162, are often set down as Limousin or Provençal poets, though with slight claims to the honor, since not a verse has been published that can be attributed to either of them.[493]
Alfonso the Second, however, who received the crown of Aragon in 1162, and wore it till 1196, is admitted by all to have been a Troubadour. Of him we still possess a few not inelegant coblas, or stanzas, addressed to his lady, which are curious from the circumstance that they constitute the oldest poem in the modern dialects of Spain, whose author is known to us; and one that is probably as old, or nearly as old, as any of the anonymous poetry of Castile and the North.[494] Like the other sovereigns of his age, who loved and practised the art of the gai saber, Alfonso collected poets about his person. Pierre Rogiers was at his court, and so were Pierre Raimond de Toulouse, and Aiméric de Péguilain, who mourned his patron’s death in verse,—all three famous Troubadours in their time, and all three honored and favored at Barcelona.[495] There can be no doubt, therefore, that a Provençal spirit was already established and spreading in that part of Spain before the end of the twelfth century.
In the beginning of the next century, external circumstances imparted a great impulse to this spirit in Aragon. From 1209 to 1229, the shameful war which gave birth to the Inquisition was carried on with extraordinary cruelty and fury against the Albigenses; a religious sect in Provence accused of heresy, but persecuted rather by an implacable political ambition. To this sect—which, in some points, opposed the pretensions of the See of Rome, and was at last exterminated by a crusade under the Papal authority—belonged nearly all the contemporary Troubadours, whose poetry is full of their sufferings and remonstrances.[496] In their great distress, the principal ally of the Albigenses and Troubadours was Peter the Second of Aragon, who, in 1213, perished nobly fighting in their cause at the disastrous battle of Muret. When, therefore, the Troubadours of Provence were compelled to escape from the burnt and bloody ruins of their homes, not a few of them hastened to the friendly court of Aragon, sure of finding themselves protected, and their art held in honor, by princes who were, at the same time, poets.
Among those who thus appeared in Spain in the time of Peter the Second were Hugues de Saint Cyr;[497] Azémar le Noir;[498] Pons Barba;[499] Raimond de Miraval, who joined in the cry urging the king to the defence of the Albigenses, in which he perished;[500] and Perdigon,[501] who, after being munificently entertained at his court, became, like Folquet de Marseille,[502] a traitor to the cause he had espoused, and openly exulted in the king’s untimely fate. But none of the poetical followers of Peter the Second did him such honor as the author of the curious and long poem of “The War of the Albigenses,” in which much of the king of Aragon’s life is recorded, and a minute account given of his disastrous death.[503] All, however, except Perdigon and Folquet, regarded him with gratitude, as their patron, and as a poet,[504] who, to use the language of one of them, made himself “their head and the head of their honors.”[505]
The glorious reign of Jayme or James the Conqueror, which followed, and extended from 1213 to 1276, exhibits the same poetical character with that of the less fortunate reign of his immediate predecessor. He protected the Troubadours, and the Troubadours, in return, praised and honored him. Guillaume Anélier addressed a sirvente to him as “the young king of Aragon, who defends mercy and discountenances wrong.”[506] Nat de Mons sent him two poetical letters, one of which gives him advice concerning the composition of his court and government.[507] Arnaud Plagnés offered a chanso to his fair queen, Eleanor of Castile;[508] and Mathieu de Querci, who survived the great conqueror, poured forth at his grave the sorrows of his Christian compatriots at the loss of the great champion on whom they had depended in their struggle with the Moors.[509] At the same period, too, Hugues de Mataplana, a noble Catalan, held at his castle courts of love and poetical contests, in which he himself bore a large part;[510] while one of his neighbours, Guillaume de Bergédan, no less distinguished by poetical talent and ancient descent, but of a less honorable nature, indulged himself in a style of verse more gross than can easily be found elsewhere in the Troubadour poetry.[511] All, however, the bad and the good,—those who, like Sordel[512] and Bernard de Rovenac,[513] satirized the king, and those who, like Pierre Cardenal, enjoyed his favor and praised him,[514]—all show that the Troubadours, in his reign, continued to seek protection in Catalonia and Aragon, where they had so long been accustomed to find it, and that their poetry was constantly taking deeper root in a soil where its nourishment was now become so sure.
James himself has sometimes been reckoned among the poets of his age.[515] It is possible, though none of his poetry has been preserved, that he really was such; for metrical composition was easy in the flowing language he spoke, and it had evidently grown common at his court, where the examples of his father and grandfather, as Troubadours, would hardly be without their effect. But however this may be, he loved letters, and left behind him a large prose work, more in keeping than any poetry with his character as a wise monarch and successful conqueror, whose legislation and government were far in advance of the condition of his subjects.[516]
The work here referred to is a chronicle or commentary on the principal events of his reign, divided into four parts;—the first of which is on the troubles that followed his accession to the throne, after a long minority, with the rescue of Majorca and Minorca from the Moors, between 1229 and 1233; the second is on the greater conquest of the kingdom of Valencia, which was substantially ended in 1239, so that the hated misbelievers never again obtained any firm foothold in all the northeastern part of the Peninsula; the third is on the war James prosecuted in Murcia, till 1266, for the benefit of his kinsman, Alfonso the Wise, of Castile; and the last is on the embassies he received from the Khan of Tartary, and Michael Palæologus of Constantinople, and on his own attempt, in 1268, to lead an expedition to Palestine, which was defeated by storms. The story, however, is continued to the end of his reign by slight notices, which, except the last, preserve throughout the character of an autobiography; the very last, which, in a few words, records his death at Valencia, being the only portion written in the third person.
From this Chronicle of James the Conqueror there was early taken an account of the conquest of Valencia, beginning in the most simple-hearted manner with the conversation the king held at Alcañiç (Alcañizas) with Don Blasco de Alagon and the Master of the Hospitallers, Nuch de Follalquer, who urge him, by his successes in Minorca, to undertake the greater achievement of the conquest of Valencia; and ending with the troubles that followed the partition of the spoils after the fall of that rich kingdom and its capital. This last work was printed in 1515, in a magnificent volume, where it serves for an appropriate introduction to the Foros, or privileges, granted to the city of Valencia from the time of its conquest down to the end of the reign of Ferdinand the Catholic;[517] but the complete work, the Chronicle, did not appear till 1557, when it was published to satisfy a requisition of Philip the Second.[518]
It is written in a simple and manly style, which, without making pretensions to elegance, often sets before us the events it records with a living air of reality, and sometimes shows a happiness in manner and phraseology which effort seldom reaches. Whether it was undertaken in consequence of the impulse given to such vernacular histories by Alfonso the Tenth of Castile, in his “General Chronicle of Spain,” or whether the intimations which gave birth to that remarkable Chronicle came rather from Aragon, we cannot now determine. Probably both works were produced in obedience to the demands of their age; but still, as both must have been written at nearly the same time, and as the two kings were united by a family alliance and constant intercourse, a full knowledge of whatever relates to these two curious records of different parts of the Peninsula would hardly fail to show us some connection between them. In that case, it is by no means impossible that the precedence in point of time would be found to belong to the Chronicle of the king of Aragon, who was not only older than Alfonso, but was frequently his wise and efficient counsellor.[519]
But James of Aragon was fortunate in having yet another chronicler, Ramon Muntaner, born at Peralada, nine years before the death of that monarch; a Catalan gentleman, who in his old age, after a life of great adventure, felt himself to be specially summoned to write an account of his own times.[520] “For one day,” he says, “being in my country-house, called Xilvella, in the garden plain of Valencia, and sleeping in my bed, there came unto me in vision a venerable old man, clad in white raiment, who said unto me, ‘Arise, and stand on thy feet, Muntaner, and think how to declare the great wonders thou hast seen, which God hath brought to pass in the wars where thou wast; for it hath seemed well pleasing to Him that through thee should all these things be made manifest.’” At first, he tells us, he was disobedient to the heavenly vision, and unmoved by the somewhat flattering reasons vouchsafed him, why he was elected to chronicle matters so notable. “But another day, in that same place,” he goes on, “I beheld again that venerable man, who said unto me, ‘O my son, what doest thou? Why dost thou despise my commandment? Arise, and do even as I have bidden thee! And know of a truth, if thou so doest, that thou and thy children and thy kinsfolk and thy friends shall find favor in the sight of God.’” Being thus warned a second time, he undertook the work. It was, he tells us, the fifteenth day of May, 1325, when he began it; and when it was completed, as it notices events which happened in April, 1328, it is plain that its composition must have occupied at least three years.
It opens, with much simplicity, with a record of the earliest important event he remembered, a visit of the great conqueror of Valencia at the house of his father, when he was himself a mere child.[521] The impression of such a visit on a boyish imagination would naturally be deep;—in the case of Muntaner it seems to have been peculiarly so. From that moment the king became to him, not only the hero he really was, but something more; one whose very birth was miraculous, and whose entire life was filled with more grace and favor than God had ever before shown to living man; for, as the fond old chronicler will have it, “He was the goodliest prince in the world, and the wisest and the most gracious and the most upright, and one that was more loved than any king ever was of all men; both of his own subjects and strangers, and of noble gentlemen everywhere.”[522]
The life of the Conqueror, however, serves merely as an introduction to the work; for Muntaner announces his purpose to speak of little that was not within his own knowledge; and of the Conqueror’s reign he could remember only the concluding glories. His Chronicle, therefore, consists chiefly of what happened in the time of four princes of the same house, and especially of Peter the Third, his chief hero. He ornaments his story, however, once with a poem two hundred and forty lines long, which he gave to James the Second, and his son Alfonso, by way of advice and caution, when the latter was about to embark for the conquest of Sardinia and Corsica.[523]
The whole work is curious, and strongly marked with the character of its author;—a man brave, loving adventure and show; courteous and loyal; not without intellectual training, yet no scholar; and, though faithful and disinterested, either quite unable to conceal, or quite willing, at every turn, to exhibit, his good-natured personal vanity. His fidelity to the family of Aragon was admirable. He was always in their service; often in captivity for them; and engaged at different times in no less than thirty-two battles in defence of their rights, or in furtherance of their conquests from the Moors. His life, indeed, was a life of knightly loyalty, and nearly all the two hundred and ninety-eight chapters of his Chronicle are as full of its spirit as his heart was.
In relating what he himself saw and did, his statements seem to be accurate, and are certainly lively and fresh; but elsewhere he sometimes falls into errors of date, and sometimes exhibits a good-natured credulity that makes him believe many of the impossibilities that were related to him. In his gay spirit and love of show, as well as in his simple, but not careless, style, he reminds us of Froissart, especially at the conclusion of the whole Chronicle, which he ends, evidently to his own satisfaction, with an elaborate account of the ceremonies observed at the coronation of Alfonso the Fourth at Saragossa, which he attended in state as syndic of the city of Valencia; the last event recorded in the work, and the last we hear of its knightly old author, who was then near his grand climacteric.
During the latter part of the period recorded by this Chronicle, a change was taking place in the literature of which it is an important part. The troubles and confusion that prevailed in Provence, from the time of the cruel persecution of the Albigenses and the encroaching spirit of the North, which, from the reign of Philip Augustus, was constantly pressing down towards the Mediterranean, were more than the genial, but not hardy, spirit of the Troubadours could resist. Many of them, therefore, fled; others yielded in despair; and all were discouraged. From the end of the thirteenth century, their songs are rarely heard on the soil that gave them birth three hundred years before. With the beginning of the fourteenth, the purity of their dialect disappears. A little later, the dialect itself ceases to be cultivated.[524]
As might be expected, the delicate plant, whose flower was not permitted to expand on its native soil, did not long continue to flourish in that to which it was transplanted. For a time, indeed, the exiled Troubadours, who resorted to the court of James the Conqueror and his father, gave to Saragossa and Barcelona something of the poetical grace that had been so attractive at Arles and Marseilles. But both these princes were obliged to protect themselves from the suspicion of sharing the heresy with which so many of the Troubadours they sheltered were infected; and James, in 1233, among other severe ordinances, forbade to the laity the Limousin Bible, which had been recently prepared for them, and the use of which would have tended so much to confirm their language and form their literature.[525] His successors, however, continued to favor the spirit of the minstrels of Provence. Peter the Third was numbered amongst them;[526] and if Alfonso the Third and James the Second were not themselves poets, a poetical spirit was found about their persons and in their court;[527] and when Alfonso the Fourth, the next in succession, was crowned at Saragossa in 1328, we are told that several poems of Peter, the king’s brother, were recited in honor of the occasion, one of which consisted of seven hundred verses.[528]
But these are among the later notices of Provençal literature in the northeastern part of Spain, where it began now to be displaced by one taking its hue rather from the more popular and peculiar dialect of the country. What this dialect was has already been intimated. It was commonly called the Catalan or Catalonian, from the name of the country, but probably, at the time of the conquest of Barcelona from the Moors in 985, differed very little from the Provençal spoken at Perpignan, on the other side of the Pyrenees.[529] As, however, the Provençal became more cultivated and gentle, the neglected Catalan grew stronger and ruder; and when the Christian power was extended, in 1118, to Saragossa, and in 1239 to Valencia, the modifications which the indigenous vocabularies underwent, in order to suit the character and condition of the people, tended rather to confirm the local dialects than to accommodate them to the more advanced language of the Troubadours.
Perhaps, if the Troubadours had maintained their ascendency in Provence, their influence would not easily have been overcome in Spain. At least, there are indications that it would not have disappeared so soon. Alfonso the Tenth of Castile, who had some of the more distinguished of them about him, imitated the Provençal poetry, if he did not write it; and even earlier, in the time of Alfonso the Ninth, who died in 1214, there are traces of its progress in the heart of the country, that are not to be mistaken.[530] But failing in its strength at home, it failed abroad. The engrafted fruit perished with the stock from which it was originally taken. After the opening of the fourteenth century we find no genuinely Provençal poetry in Castile, and after the middle of that century it begins to recede from Catalonia and Aragon, or rather to be corrupted by the harsher, but hardier, dialect spoken there by the mass of the people. Peter the Fourth, who reigned in Aragon from 1336 to 1387, shows the conflict and admixture of the two influences in such portions of his poetry as have been published, as well as in a letter he addressed to his son;[531]—a confusion, or transition, which we should probably be able to trace with some distinctness, if we had before us the curious dictionary of rhymes, still extant in its original manuscript, which was made at this king’s command, in 1371, by Jacme March, a member of the poetical family that was afterwards so much distinguished.[532] In any event, there can be no reasonable doubt, that, soon after the middle of the fourteenth century, if not earlier, the proper Catalan dialect began to be perceptible in the poetry and prose of its native country.[533]