The Troubadours

by H. J. Chaytor

ez a la captenensa sembla mielhs Antecritz

que messatges de Roma.

"And of the bishop, who is so zealous, I tell you that in him both God and we ourselves are betrayed; for with lying songs and insinuating words, which are the damnation of any who sings or speaks them, and by his keen polished admonitions, and by our presents wherewith he maintained himself as joglar, and by his evil doctrine, he has risen so high, that one dare say nothing to that which he opposes. So when he was vested as abbot and monk, was the light in his abbey put out in such wise that therein was no comfort or rest, until that he was gone forth from thence; and when he was chosen bishop of Toulouse such a fire was spread throughout the land that never for any water will it be quenched; for there did he bring destruction of life and body and soul upon more than fifteen hundred of high and low. By the faith which I owe to you, by his deeds and his words and his dealings, more like is he to Anti-Christ than to an envoy of Rome." (Chanson de la croisade contre les Albigeois, v. 3309.)

Folquet died on December 25, 1231, and was buried at the Cistercian Abbey of Grandselve, some thirty miles north-west of Toulouse. Such troubadours as Guilhem Figueira and Peire Cardenal, who inveighed against the action of the Church during the crusade, say nothing of him, and upon their silence and that of the biography as regards his ecclesiastical life the argument has been founded that Folquet the troubadour and Folquet the bishop were two different persons. There is no evidence to support this theory. Folquet's poems enjoyed a high reputation. The minnesinger, Rudolf, Count of Neuenberg (end of the twelfth century) imitated him, as also did the Italians Rinaldo d'Aquino and Jacopo da Lentino.

The troubadours as a rule stood aloof from the religious quarrels of the age. But few seem to have joined the crusaders, as Perdigon did. Most of their patrons were struggling for their existence: when the invaders succeeded in establishing themselves, they had no desire for court poetry. The troubadour's occupation was gone, and those who wished for an audience were obliged to seek beyond the borders of France. Hence it is somewhat remarkable to find the troubadour Raimon de Miraval, of Carcassonne, continuing to sing, as though perfect tranquillity prevailed. His wife, Gaudairenca, was a poetess, and Paul Heyse has made her the central figure of one of his charming Troubadour Novellen. Raimon's poems betray no forebodings of the coming storm; when it broke, he lost his estate and fled to Raimon of Toulouse for shelter. The arrival of Pedro II. of Aragon at Toulouse in 1213 and his alliance with the Count of Toulouse cheered the troubadour's spirits: he thought there was a chance that he might recover his estate. He compliments Pedro on his determination in one poem and in another tells his lady, "the king has promised me that in a short time, I shall have Miraval again and my Audiart shall recover his Beaucaire; then ladies and their lovers will regain their lost delights." Such was the attitude of many troubadours towards the crusade and they seem to represent the views of a certain section of society. There is no trace on this side of any sense of patriotism; they hated the crusade because it destroyed the comforts of their happy existence. But the South of France had never as a whole acquired any real sense of nationalism: there was consequently no attempt at general or organised resistance and no leader to inspire such attempts was forth-coming.

On the other hand, special districts such as Toulouse, showed real courage and devotion. The crusaders often found much difficulty in maintaining a force adequate to conduct their operations after the first energy of the invasion had spent itself, and had the Count of Toulouse been an energetic and vigorous character, he might have been able to reverse the ultimate issue of the crusade. But, like many other petty lords his chief desire was to be left alone and he was at heart as little interested in the claims of Rome as in the attractions of heresy. His townspeople thought otherwise and the latter half of the Chanson de la Croisade reflects their hopes and fears and describes their struggles with a sympathy that often reaches the height of epic splendour. Similarly, certain troubadours were by no means absorbed in the practice of their art or the pursuit of their intrigues. Bernard Sicart de Marvejols has left us a vigorous satire against the crusaders who came for plunder, and the clergy who drove them on. The greatest poet of this calamitous time is Peire Cardenal. His work falls within the years 1210 and 1230. The short notice that we have of him says that he belonged to Puy Notre Dame in Velay, that he was the son of a noble and was intended for an ecclesiastical career: when he was of age, he was attracted by the pleasures of the world, became a troubadour and went from court to court, accompanied by a joglar: he was especially favoured by King Jaime I. of Aragon and died at the age of nearly a hundred years. He was no singer of love and the three of his chansos that remain are inspired by the misogyny that we have noted in the case of Marcabrun. Peire Cardenal's strength lay in the moral sirventes: he was a fiery soul, aroused to wrath by the sight of injustice and immorality and the special objects of his animosity are the Roman Catholic clergy and the high nobles. "The clergy call themselves shepherds and are murderers under a show of saintliness: when I look upon their dress I remember Isengrin (the wolf in the romance of Reynard, the Fox) who wished one day to break into the sheep-fold: but for fear of the dogs he dressed himself in a sheepskin and then devoured as many as he would. Kings and emperors, dukes, counts and knights used to rule the world; now the priests have the power which they have gained by robbery and treachery, by hypocrisy, force and preaching." "Eagles and vultures smell not the carrion so readily as priests and preachers smell out the rich: a rich man is their friend and should a sickness strike him down, he must make them presents to the loss of his relations. Frenchmen and priests are reputed bad and rightly so: usurers [86] and traitors possess the whole world, for with deceit have they so confounded the world that there is no class to whom their doctrine is unknown." Peire inveighs against the disgraces of particular orders; the Preaching Friars or Jacobin monks who discuss the relative merits of special wines after their feasts, whose lives are spent in disputes and who declare all who differ from them to be Vaudois heretics, who worm men's private affairs out of them, that they may make themselves feared: some of his charges against the monastic orders are quite unprintable.

No less vigorous are his invectives against the rich and the social evils of his time. The tone of regret that underlies Guiraut de Bornelh's satires in this theme is replaced in Peire Cardenal's sirventes by a burning sense of injustice. Covetousness, the love of pleasure, injustice to the poor, treachery and deceit and moral laxity are among his favourite themes. "He who abhors truth and hates the right, careers to hell and directs his course to the abyss: for many a man builds walls and palaces with the goods of others and yet the witless world says that he is on the right path, because he is clever and prosperous. As silver is refined in the fire, so the patient poor are purified under grievous oppression: and with what splendour the shameless rich man may feed and clothe himself, his riches bring him nought but pain, grief and vexation of spirit. But that affrights him not: capons and game, good wine and the dainties of the earth console him and cheer his heart. Then he prays to God and says 'I am poor and in misery.' Were God to answer him He would say, 'thou liest!'" To illustrate the degeneracy of the age, Peire relates a fable, perhaps the only instance of this literary form among the troubadours, upon the theme that if all the world were mad, the one sane man would be in a lunatic asylum: "there was a certain town, I know not where, upon which a rain fell of such a nature that all the inhabitants upon whom it fell, lost their reason. All lost their reason except one, who escaped because he was asleep in his house when the rain came. When he awoke, he rose: the rain had ceased, and he went out among the people who were all committing follies. One was clothed, another naked, another was spitting at the sky: some were throwing sticks and stones, tearing their coats, striking and pushing... The sane man was deeply surprised and saw that they were mad; nor could he find a single man in his senses. Yet greater was their surprise at him, and as they saw that he did not follow their example, they concluded that he had lost his senses.... So one strikes him in front, another behind; he is dashed to the ground and trampled under foot... at length he flees to his house covered with mud, bruised and half dead and thankful for his escape": The mad town, says Peire Cardenal, is the present world: the highest form of intelligence is the love and fear of God, but this has been replaced by greed, pride and malice; consequently the "sense of God" seems madness to the world and he who refuses to follow the "sense of the world" is treated as a madman.

Peire Cardenal is thus by temperament a moral preacher; he is not merely critical of errors, but has also a positive faith to propound. He is not an opponent of the papacy as an institution: the confession of faith which he utters in one of his sirventes shows that he would have been perfectly satisfied with the Roman ecclesiastical and doctrinal system, had it been properly worked. In this respect he differs from a contemporary troubadour, Guillem Figueira, whose violent satire against Rome shows him as opposed to the whole system from the papacy downwards. He was a native of Toulouse and migrated to Lombardy and to the court of Frederick II. when the crusade drove him from his home. "I wonder not, Rome, that men go astray, for thou hast cast the world into strife and misery; virtue and good works die and are buried because of thee, treacherous Rome, thou guiding-star, thou root and branch of all iniquity... Greed blindeth thy eyes, and too close dost thou shear thy sheep... thou forgivest sins for money, thou loadest thyself with a shameful burden. Rome, we know of a truth that with the bait of false forgiveness, thou hast snared in misery the nobility of France, the people of Paris and the noble King Louis (VIII., who died in the course of the Albigeois crusade); thou didst bring him to his death, for thy false preaching enticed him from his land. Rome, thou has the outward semblance of a lamb, so innocent is thy countenance, but within thou are a ravening wolf, a crowned snake begotten of a viper and therefore the devil greeteth thee as the friend of his bosom." This sirventes was answered by a trobairitz, Germonde of Montpelier, but her reply lacks the vigour and eloquence of the attack.

It is not to be supposed that the troubadours turned to religious poetry simply because the Albigeois crusade had raised the religious question. Purely devotional poetry is found at an earlier period.[²⁹] It appears at first only sporadically, and some of the greatest troubadours have left no religious poems that have reached us. The fact is, that the nature of troubadour poetry and its homage to the married woman were incompatible with the highest standard of religious devotion. The famous alba of Guiraut de Bornelh invokes the "glorious king, true light and splendour, Lord Almighty," for the purpose of praying that the lovers for whom the speaker is keeping watch may be undisturbed in interchange of their affections. Prayer for the success of attempted adultery is a contradiction in terms. For a theory of religion which could regard the Deity as a possible accomplice in crime, the Church of Southern France in the twelfth century is to blame: we cannot expect that the troubadours in general should be more religious than the professional exponents of religion. On the other hand, poems of real devotional feeling are found, even from the earliest times: the sensual Count of Poitiers, the first troubadour known to us, concludes his career with a poem of resignation bidding farewell to the world, "leaving all that I love, the brilliant life of chivalry, but since it pleases God, I resign myself and pray Him to keep me among His own." Many troubadours, as has been said, ended their lives in monasteries and the disappointments or griefs which drove them to this course often aroused religious feelings, regrets for past follies and resolutions of repentance, which found expression in poetry. Peire d'Auvergne wrote several religious hymns after his retirement from the world; these are largely composed of reiterated articles of the Christian faith in metrical form and are as unpoetical as they are orthodox, Crusade poems and planhs upon the deaths of famous nobles or patrons are religious only in a secondary sense. A fine religious alba is ascribed to Folquet of Marseilles—

Vers Dieus, e·l vostre nom e de sancta Maria