"Love is of a detestable lineage; he has killed thousands of men without a sword. God has created no more terrible enchanter." These invectives may have been the outcome of personal disappointment; the theory has also been advanced that the troubadour idea of love had not yet secured universal recognition, and that Marcabrun is one who strove to prevent it from becoming the dominant theme of lyric poetry. His best known poem was the "Starling," which consists of two parts, an unusual form of composition. In the first part the troubadour sends the starling to his love to reproach her for unfaithfulness, and to recommend himself to her favour; the bird returns, and in the second part offers excuses from the lady and brings an invitation from her to a meeting the next day. Marcabrun knows the technical terms cortesia and mesura, which he defines: mesura, self-control or moderation, "consists in nicety of speech, courtesy in loving. He may boast of courtesy who can maintain moderation." The poem concludes with a dedication to Jaufre Rudel—
Lo vers e·l son vueill envier
A'n Jaufre Rudel outra mar.
"The words and the tune I wish to send to Jaufre Rudel beyond the sea."
This was the troubadour whom Petrarch has made famous—
Jaufre Rudel che usò la vela e'l remo
A cercar la sua morte.
His romantic story is as follows in the words of the Provençal biography: "Jaufre Rudel of Blaya was a very noble man, the Prince of Blaya; he fell in love with the Countess of Tripoli, though he had never seen her, for the good report that he had of her from the pilgrims who came from Antioch, and he made many poems concerning her with good tunes but poor words.[18] And from desire to see her, he took the cross and went to sea. And in the ship great illness came upon him so that those who were with him thought that he was dead in the ship; but they succeeded in bringing him to Tripoli, to an inn, as one dead. And it was told to the countess, and she came to him, to his bed, and took him in her arms; and he knew that she was the countess, and recovering his senses, he praised God and gave thanks that his life had been sustained until he had seen her; and then he died in the lady's arms. And she gave him honourable burial in the house of the Temple, and then, on that day, she took the veil for the grief that she had for him and for his death." Jaufre's poems contain many references to a "distant love" which he will never see, "for his destiny is to love without being loved." Those critics who accept the truth of the story regard Melisanda, daughter of Raimon I., Count of Tripoli, as the heroine; but the biography must be used with great caution as a historical source, and the mention of the house of the order of Templars in which Jaufre is said to have been buried raises a difficulty; it was erected in 1118, and in the year 1200 the County of Tripoli was merged in that of Antioch; of the Rudels of Blaya, historically known to us, there is none who falls reasonably within these dates. The probability is that the constant references in Jaufre's poems to an unknown distant love, and the fact of his crusading expedition to the Holy Land, formed in conjunction the nucleus of the legend which grew round his name, and which is known to all readers of Carducci, Uhland and Heine.
Contemporary with Jaufre Rudel was Bernard de Ventadour, one of the greatest names in Provençal poetry. According to the biography, which betrays its untrustworthiness by contradicting the facts of history, Bernard was the son of the furnace stoker at the castle of Ventadour, under the Viscount Ebles II., himself a troubadour and a patron of troubadours. It was from the viscount that Bernard received instruction in the troubadours' art, and to his patron's interest in his talents he doubtless owed the opportunities which he enjoyed of learning to read and write, and of making acquaintance with such Latin authors as were currently read, or with the anthologies and books of "sentences" then used for instruction in Latin. He soon outstripped his patron, to whose wife, Agnes de Montluçon, his early poems were addressed. His relations with the lady and with his patron were disturbed by the lauzengiers, the slanderers, the envious, and the backbiters of whom troubadours constantly complain, and he was obliged to leave Ventadour. He went to the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the granddaughter of the first troubadour, Guillaume IX. of Poitiers, who by tradition and temperament was a patroness of troubadours, many of whom sang her praises. She had been divorced from Louis VII. of France in 1152, and married Henry, Duke of Normandy, afterwards King of England in the same year. There Bernard may have remained until 1154, in which year Eleanor went to England as Queen. Whether Bernard followed her to England is uncertain; the personal allusions in his poems are generally scanty, and the details of his life are correspondingly obscure. But one poem seems to indicate that he may have crossed the Channel. He says that he has kept silence for two years, but that the autumn season impels him to sing; in spite of his love, his lady will not deign to reply to him: but his devotion is unchanged and she may sell him or give him away if she pleases. She does him wrong in failing to call him to her chamber that he may remove her shoes humbly upon his knees, when she deigns to stretch forth her foot. He then continues[19]
Faitz es lo vers totz a randa,