The Troubadours

by H. J. Chaytor

And said, Ah me!" (Inf. xxviii. 119-142.)

The genius of Dante, and the poetical fame of Bertran himself, have given him a more important position in history than is, perhaps, entirely his due. Jaufré, the prior of Vigeois, an abbey of Saint-Martial of Limoges, is the only chronicler during the reigns of Henry II. and Richard Coeur de Lion who mentions Bertran's name. The razos prefixed to some of his poems by way of explanation are the work of an anonymous troubadour (possibly Uc de Saint-Círe); they constantly misinterpret the poems they attempt to explain, confuse names and events, and rather exaggerate the part played by Bertran himself. Besides these sources we have the cartulary of Dalon, or rather the extracts made from it by Guignières in 1680 (the original has been lost), which give us information about Bertran's family and possessions. From these materials, and from forty-four or forty-five poems which have come down to us, the poet's life can be reconstructed.

Bertran de Bern's estates were situated on the borders of Limousin and Périgord. The family was ancient and honourable; from the cartulary Bertran appears to have been born about 1140; we find him, with his brother Constantin, in possession of the castle of Hautefort, which seems to have been a strong fortress; the lands belonging to the family were of no great extent, and the income accruing from them was but scanty. In 1179 Bertran married one Raimonde, of whom nothing is known, except that she bore him at least two sons. In 1192 he lost this first wife, and again married a certain Philippe. His warlike and turbulent character was the natural outcome of the conditions under which he lived; the feudal system divided the country into a number of fiefs, the boundaries of which were ill defined, while the lords were constantly at war with one another. All owed allegiance to the Duke of Aquitaine, the Count of Poitou, but his suzerainty was, in the majority of cases, rather a name than a reality. These divisions were further accentuated by political events; in 1152 Henry II., Count of Anjou and Maine, married Eleanor, the divorced wife of Louis VII. of France, and mistress of Aquitaine. Henry became king of England two years later, and his rule over the barons of Aquitaine, which had never been strict, became the more relaxed owing to his continual absence in England.

South of Aquitaine proper the dominions of the Count of Toulouse stretched from the Garonne to the Alps; this potentate was also called the Duke of Narbonne, and was not disposed to recognise the suzerainty of the Duke of Aquitaine. But in 1167 Alfonso II., King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, had inherited Provence, to which the Duke of Toulouse laid claim. Henry and Alfonso thus became natural allies, and the power of Alfonso in Aragon and Catalonia, was able to keep in check any serious attempt that the Count of Toulouse might have meditated on Aquitaine. On the other hand, Henry had also to deal with a formidable adversary in the person of the French king, his lawful suzerain in France. Louis VII. (or Philippe Auguste) was able to turn the constant revolts that broke out in Aquitaine to his own ends. These circumstances are sufficient to account for the warlike nature of Bertran de Born's poetry. The first sirventes which can be dated with certainty belongs to 1181, and is a call to the allies of Raimon V, Count of Toulouse, to aid their master against the King of Aragon. What Bertran's personal share in the campaign was, we do not know. He was soon involved in a quarrel with his brother Constantin, with whom he held the castle of Hautefort in common. Constantin was driven out and succeeded in persuading the Count of Limoges and Richard, Duke of Aquitaine, to help him. Richard, however, was occupied elsewhere, and Bertran survived all attacks upon the castle. In 1182 he went to the court of Henry II., during a temporary lull in the wars around him; there he proceeded to pay court to the Princess Matilda, daughter of Henry II., whose husband, Henry of Saxony, was then on a pilgrimage. He also took part in the political affairs of the time. Henry II.'s eldest son, Henry "the young king," had been crowned in 1170 at Westminster, and was anxious to have something more than the title, seeing that his brother Richard was Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Poitou, and practically an independent sovereign. Bertran had not forgotten Richard's action against him on behalf of his brother Constantin, and was, moreover, powerfully attracted by the open and generous nature of the young king. He therefore took his side, and on his return to Limousin became the central point of the league which was formed against Richard. Henry II. succeeded in reconciling his two sons, the young Henry receiving pecuniary compensation in lieu of political power. But the young Henry seems to have been really moved by Bertran's reproaches, and at length revolted against his father and attacked his brother Richard. While he was in Turenne, the young king fell sick and died on June 11, 1183. Bertran lamented his loss in two famous poems, and soon felt the material effects of it. On June 29, Richard and the King of Aragon arrived before Hautefort, which surrendered after a week's resistance. Richard restored the castle to Constantin, but Bertran regained possession, as is related in the second biography.

Henceforward, Bertran remained faithful to Richard, and directed his animosity chiefly against the King of Aragon. At the same time it appears that he would have been equally pleased with any war, which would have brought profit to himself, and attempted to excite Richard against his father, Henry II. This project came to nothing, but war broke out between Richard and the French king; a truce of two years was concluded, and again broken by Richard. The Church, however, interfered with its efforts to organise the Third Crusade, which called from Bertran two sirventes in honour of Conrad, son of the Marquis of Montferrat, who was defending Tyre against Saladin. Bertran remained at home in Limousin during this Crusade; his means were obviously insufficient to enable him to share in so distant a campaign; other, and for him, equally cogent reasons for remaining at home may be gathered from his poems. There followed the quarrels between Richard and the French king, the return to France of the latter, and finally Richard's capture on the Illyrian coast and his imprisonment by Henry VI. of Austria, which terminated in 1194. Richard then came into Aquitaine, his return being celebrated by two poems from Bertran.

The Provençal biography informs us that Bertran finally became a monk in the Order of Citeaux. The convent where he spent his last years was the abbey of Dalon, near Hautefort. The cartulary mentions his name at various intervals from 1197 to 1202. In 1215 we have the entry "octavo, candela in sepulcro ponitur pro Bernardo de Born: cera tres solidos empta est." This is the only notice of the poet's death.

Dante perhaps exaggerated the part he played in stirring up strife between Henry II. and his sons; modern writers go to the other extreme. Bertran is especially famous for his political sirventes and for the martial note which rings through much of his poetry. He loved war both for itself and for the profits which it brought: "The powerful are more generous and open-handed when they have war than when they have peace." The troubadour's two planhs upon the "young king's" death are inspired by real feeling, and the story of his reconciliation with Henry after the capture of his castle can hardly have been known to Dante, who would surely have modified his judgment upon the troubadour if he had remembered that scene as related by the biography. Sir Bertran was summoned with all his people to King Henry's tent, who received him very harshly and said, "Bertran, you declared that you never needed more than half your senses; it seems that to-day you will want the whole of them." "Sire", said Bertran, "it is true that I said so and I said nothing but the truth." The king replied, "Then you seem to me to have lost your senses entirely". "I have indeed lost them", said Bertran. "And how?" asked the king. "Sire, on the day that the noble king, your son, died, I lost sense, knowledge and understanding." When the king heard Bertran speak of his son with tears, he was deeply moved and overcome with grief. On recovering himself he cried, weeping, "Ah, Bertran, rightly did you lose your senses for my son, for there was no one in the world whom he loved as you. And for love of him, not only do I give you your life, but also your castle and your goods, and I add with my love five hundred silver marks to repair the loss which you have suffered."

The narrative is unhistorical; Henry II. was not present in person at the siege of Hautefort; but the fact is certain that he regarded Bertran as the chief sower of discord in his family.

Mention must now be made of certain troubadours who were less important than the three last mentioned, but are of interest for various reasons.

Raimbaut d'Aurenga, Count of Orange from 1150-1173, is interesting rather by reason of his relations with other troubadours than for his own achievements in the troubadours' art. He was a follower of the precious, artificial and obscure style, and prided himself upon his skill in the combination of difficult rimes and the repetition of equivocal rimes (the same word used in different senses or grammatical forms). "Since Adam ate the apple," he says, "there is no poet, loud as he may proclaim himself, whose art is worth a turnip compared with mine." Apart from these mountebank tricks and certain mild "conceits" (his lady's smile, for instance, makes him happier than the smile of four hundred angels could do), the chief characteristic of his poetry is his constant complaints of slanderers who attempt to undermine his credit with his lady. But he seems to have aroused a passion in the heart of a poetess, who expressed her feelings in words which contrast strongly with Raimbaut's vapid sentimentalities.