Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

The troubadours numbered among their ranks the most illustrious sovereigns and heroes of the age. Among others, Richard Coeur de Lion, who, as a poet and knight, united in his own person all the brilliant qualities of the time. A story is told of him, that when he was detained a prisoner in Germany, the place of his imprisonment was discovered by Blondel, his minstrel, who sang beneath the fortress a tenson which he and Richard had composed in common, and to which Richard responded. Bertrand de Born, who was intimately connected with Richard, and who exercised a powerful influence over the destinies of the royal family of England, has left a number of original poems; Sordello of Mantua was the first to adopt the ballad form of writing, and many of his love songs are expressed in a pure and delicate style. Both of these poets are immortalized in the Divine Comedy of Dante. The history of Geoffrey Rudel illustrates the wildness of the imagination and manners of the troubadours. He was a gentleman of Provence, and hearing the knights who had returned from the Holy Land speak with enthusiasm of the Countess of Tripoli, who had extended to them the most generous hospitality, and whose grace and beauty equaled her virtues, he fell in love with her without ever having seen her, and, leaving the Court of England, he embarked for the Holy Land, to offer to her the homage of his heart. During the voyage he was attacked by a severe illness, and lost the power of speech. On his arrival in the harbor, the countess, being informed that a celebrated poet was dying of love for her, visited him on shipboard, took him kindly by the hand, and attempted to cheer his spirits. Rudel revived sufficiently to thank the lady for her humanity and to declare his passion, when his voice was silenced by the convulsions of death. He was buried at Tripoli, and, by the orders of the countess, a tomb of porphyry was erected to his memory. It is unnecessary to mention other names among the multitude of these poets, who all hold nearly the same rank. An extreme monotony reigns throughout their works, which offer little individuality of character.

After the thirteenth century, the troubadours were heard no more, and the efforts of the counts of Provence, the magistrates of Toulouse, and the kings of Arragon to awaken, their genius by the Courts of Love and the Floral Games were vain. They themselves attributed their decline to the degradation into which the jongleurs, with whom at last they were confounded, had fallen. But their art contained within itself a more immediate principle of decay in the profound ignorance of its professors. They had no other models than the songs of the Arabians, which perverted their taste. They made no attempt at epic or dramatic poetry; they had no classical allusions, no mythology, nor even a romantic imagination, and, deprived of the riches of antiquity, they had few resources within themselves. The poetry of Provence was a beautiful flower springing up on a sterile soil, and no cultivation could avail in the absence of its natural nourishment. From the close of the twelfth century the language began to decline, and public events occurred which hastened its downfall, and reduced it to the condition of a provincial dialect.

Among the numerous sects which sprang up in Christendom during the Middle Ages, there was one which, though bearing different names at different times, more or less resembled what is now known as Protestantism; in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries it was called the faith of the Albigenses, as it prevailed most widely in the district of Albi. It easily came to be identified with the Provençal language, as this was the chosen vehicle of its religious services. This sect was tolerated and protected by the Court of Toulouse. It augmented its numbers; it devoted itself to commerce and the arts, and added much to the prosperity which had long distinguished the south of France. The Albigenses had lived long and peaceably side by side with the Catholics in the cities and villages; but Innocent III. sent legates to Provence, who preached, discussed, and threatened, and met a freedom of thought and resistance to authority which Rome was not willing to brook. Bitter controversy was now substituted for the amiable frivolity of the tensons, and theological disputes superseded those on points of gallantry. The long struggle between the poetry of the troubadours and the preaching of the monks came to a crisis; the severe satires which the disorderly lives of the clergy called forth became severer still, and the songs of the troubadours wounded the power and pride of Rome more deeply than ever, while they stimulated the Albigenses to a valiant resistance or a glorious death. A crusade followed, and when the dreadful strife was over, Provençal poetry had received its death-blow. The language of Provence was destined to share the fate of its poetry; it became identified in the minds of the orthodox with heresy and rebellion. When Charles of Anjou acquired the kingdom of Naples, he drew thither the Provençal nobility, and thus drained the kingdom of those who had formerly maintained its chivalrous manners. In the beginning of the fourteenth century, when the Court of Rome was removed to Avignon, the retinues of the three successive popes were Italians, and the Tuscan language entirely superseded the Provençal among the higher classes.

2. THE TROUVÈRES.—While the Provençal was thus relapsing into a mere dialect, the north of France was maturing a new language and literature of an entirely different character. Normandy, a province of France, was invaded in the tenth century by a new northern tribe, who, under the command of Rollo or Raoul the Dane, incorporated themselves with the ancient inhabitants. The victors adopted the language of the vanquished, stamped upon it the impress of their own genius, and gave it a fixed form. It was from Normandy that the first writers and poets in the French language sprang. While the Romance Provençal spoken in the South was sweet, and expressive of effeminate manners, the Romance-Wallon was energetic and warlike, and represented the severer manners of the Germans. Its poetry, too, was widely different from the Provençal. It was no longer the idle baron sighing for his lady-love, but the songs of a nation of hardy warriors, celebrating the prowess of their ancestors with all the exaggerations that fancy could supply. The Langue d'oui became the vehicle of literature only in the twelfth century,—a hundred years subsequent to the Romance Provençal. The poets and reciters of tales, giving the name of Troubadour a French termination, called themselves Trouvères. They originated the brilliant romances of chivalry, the fabliaux or tales of amusement, and the dramatic invention of the Mysteries. The first literary work in this tongue is the versified romance of a fabulous history of the early kings of England, beginning with Brutus, the grandson of AEneas, who, after passing many enchanted isles, at length establishes himself in England, where he finds King Arthur, the chivalric institution of the Round Table, and the enchanter Merlin, one of the most popular personages of the Middle Ages. Out of this legend arose some of the boldest creations of the human fancy. The word "romance," now synonymous with fictitious composition, originally meant only a work in the modern dialect, as distinguished from the scholastic Latin. There is little doubt that these tales were originally believed to be strictly true. One of the first romances of chivalry was "Tristam de Léonois," written in 1190. This was soon followed by that of the "San Graal" and "Lancelot;" and previously to 1213 Ville-Hardouin had written in the French language a "History of the Conquest of Constantinople." The poem of "Alexander," however, which appeared about the same time, has enjoyed the greatest reputation. It is a series of romances and marvelous histories, said to be the result of the labors of nine celebrated poets of the time. Alexander is introduced, surrounded not by the pomp of antiquity, but by the splendors of chivalry. The high renown of this poem has given the name of Alexandrine verse to the measure in which it is written.

The spirit of chivalry which burst forth in the romances of the trouvères, the heroism of honor and love, the devotion of the powerful to the weak, the supernatural fictions, so novel and so dissimilar to everything in antiquity or in later times, the force and brilliancy of imagination which they display, have been variously attributed to the Arabians and the Germans, but they were undoubtedly the invention of the Normans. Of all the people of ancient Europe, they were the most adventurous and intrepid. They established a dynasty in Russia; they cut their way through a perfidious and sanguinary nation to Constantinople; they landed on the coasts of England and France, and surprised nations who were ignorant of their existence; they conquered Sicily, and established a principality in the heart of Syria. A people so active, so enterprising, and so intrepid, found no greater delight in their leisure hours than listening to tales of adventures, dangers, and battles. The romances of chivalry are divided into three distinct classes. They relate to three different epochs in the early part of the Middle Ages, and represent three bands of fabulous heroes. In the romances of the first class, the exploits of Arthur, son of Pendragon, the last British king who defended England against the invasion of the Anglo-Saxons, are celebrated. In the second we find the Amadises, but whether they belong to French literature has been reasonably disputed. The scene is placed nearly in the same countries as in the romances of the Round Table, but there is a want of locality about them, and the name and the times are absolutely fabulous. "Amadis of Gaul," the first of these romances, and the model of all the rest, is claimed as the work of Vasco Lobeira, a Portuguese (1290-1325); but no doubt exists with regard to the continuations and numerous imitations of this work, which are incontestably of Spanish origin, and were in their highest repute when Cervantes produced his inimitable "Don Quixote." The third class of chivalric romances, relating to the court of Charlemagne and his Paladins, is entirely French, although their celebrity is chiefly due to the renowned Italian poet who availed himself of their fictions. The most ancient monument of the marvelous history of Charlemagne is the chronicle of Turpin, of uncertain date, and which, though fabulous, can scarcely be considered as a romance. This and other similar narratives furnished materials for the romances, which appeared at the conclusion of the Crusades, when a knowledge of the East had enriched the French imagination with all the treasures of the Arabian. The trouvères were not only the inventors of the romances of chivalry, but they originated the allegories, and the dramatic compositions of southern Europe. Although none of their works have obtained a high reputation or deserve to be ranked among the masterpieces of human intellect, they are still worthy of attention as monuments of the progress of mind.

The French possessed, above every other nation of modern times, an inventive spirit, but they were, at the same time, the originators of those tedious allegorical poems which have been imitated by all the romantic nations. The most ancient and celebrated of these is the "Romance of the Rose," though not a romance in the present sense of the word. At the period of its composition, the French language was still called the Romance, and all its more voluminous productions Romances. The "Romance of the Rose" was the work of two authors, Guillaume de Lorris, who commenced it in the early part of the thirteenth century, and Jean de Meun (b. 1280), by whom it was continued. Although it reached the appalling length of twenty thousand verses, no book was ever more popular. It was admired as a masterpiece of wit, invention, and philosophy; the highest mysteries of theology were believed to be concealed in this poetical form, and learned commentaries were written upon its veiled meaning by preachers, who did not scruple to cite passages from it in the pulpit. But the tedious poem and its numberless imitations are nothing but rhymed prose, which it would be impossible to recognize as poetry, if the measure of the verse were taken away.

In considering the popularity of these long, didactic works, it must not be forgotten that the people of that day were almost entirely without books. A single volume was the treasure of a whole household. In unfavorable weather it was read to a circle around the fire, and when it was finished the perusal was again commenced. No comparison with other books enabled men to form a judgment upon its merits. It was reverenced like holy writ, and they accounted themselves happy in being able to comprehend it.

Another species of poetry peculiar to this period had at least the merit of being exceedingly amusing. This was the fabliaux, tales written in verse in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. They are treasures of invention, simplicity, and gayety, of which other nations can furnish no instances, except by borrowing from the French. A collection of Indian tales, translated into Latin in the tenth or eleventh century, was the first storehouse of the trouvères. The Arabian tales, transmitted by the Moors to the Castilians, and by the latter to the French, were in turn versified. But above all, the anecdotes collected in the towns and castles of France, the adventures of lovers, the tricks of gallants, and the numerous subjects gathered from the manners of the age, afforded inexhaustible materials for ludicrous narratives to the writers of these tales. They were treasures common to all. We seldom know the name of the trouvère by whom these anecdotes were versified. As they were related, each one varied them according to the impression he wished to produce. At this period there were neither theatrical entertainments nor games at cards to fill up the leisure hours of society, and the trouvères or relators of the tales were welcomed at the courts, castles, and private houses with an eagerness proportioned to the store of anecdotes which they brought with them to enliven conversation. Whatever was the subject of their verse, legends, miracles, or licentious anecdotes, they were equally acceptable. These tales were the models of those of Boccaccio, La Fontaine, and others. Some of them have had great fame, and have passed from tongue to tongue, and from age to age, down to our own times. Several of them have been introduced upon the stage, and others formed the originals of Parnell's "Hermit," of the "Zaïre" of Voltaire, and of the "Renard," which Goethe has converted into a long poem. But perhaps the most interesting and celebrated of all the fabliaux is that of "Aucassin and Nicolette," which has furnished the subject for a well-known opera.

It was at this period, when the ancient drama was entirely forgotten, that a dramatic form was given to the great events which accompanied the establishment of the Christian religion. The first to introduce this grotesque species of composition, were the pilgrims who had returned from the Holy Land. In the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, their dramatic representations were first exhibited in the open streets; but it was only at the conclusion of the fourteenth that a company of pilgrims undertook to amuse the public by regular dramatic entertainments. They were called the Fraternity of the Passion, from the passion of our Saviour being one of their most celebrated representations. This mystery, the most ancient dramatic work of modern Europe, comprehends the whole history of our Lord, from his baptism to his death. The piece was too long for one representation, and was therefore continued from day to day. Eighty-seven characters successively appear in this mystery, among whom are the three persons of the Trinity, angels, apostles, devils, and a host of other personages, the invention of the poet's brain. To fill the comic parts, the dialogues of the devils were introduced, and their eagerness to maltreat one another always produced much laughter in the assembly. Extravagant machinery was employed to give to the representation the pomp which we find in the modern opera; and this drama, placing before the eyes of a Christian assembly all those incidents for which they felt the highest veneration, must have affected them much more powerfully than even the finest tragedies can do at the present day.

The mystery of the Passion was followed by a crowd of imitations. The whole of the Old Testament, and the lives of all the saints, were brought upon the stage. The theatre on which these mysteries were represented was always composed of an elevated scaffold divided into three parts,—heaven, hell, and the earth between them. The proceedings of the Deity and Lucifer might be discerned in their respective abodes, and angels descended and devils ascended, as their interference in mundane affairs was required. The pomp of these representations went on increasing for two centuries, and, as great value was set upon the length of the piece, some mysteries could not be represented in less than forty days.