Quar dos regismes ten, e per l'un non es pros;
Mas, s'elh en vol manjar, tanh qu'en manj'a rescos,
Que, si·l mair'o sabra, batria·l ab bastos.
"As concerns the English King (Henry III.) it pleases me, for he is little courageous, that he should eat well of the heart; then he will be valiant and good and will recover the land (for loss of which he lives bereft of worth), which the King of France took from him, for he knows him to be of no account. And the King of Castile (Ferdinand III. of Castile and Leon), it is fitting that he eat of it for two, for he holds two realms and he is not sufficient for one; but if he will eat of it, 'twere well that he eat in secret: for if his mother were to know it, she would beat him with staves."
This idea, which is a commonplace in the folklore of many countries, attracted attention. Two contemporary troubadours attempted to improve upon it. Bertran d'Alamanon said that the heart should not be divided among the cowards, enumerated by Sordello, but given to the noble ladies of the age: Peire Bremen proposed a division of the body. The point is that Dante in the Purgatorio represents Sordello as showing to Virgil the souls of those who, while singing Salve Regina, ask to be pardoned for their neglect of duty and among them appear the rulers whom Sordello had satirised in his sirventes. Hence it seems that it was this composition which attracted Dante's attention to Sordello. The other important poem is the Ensenhamen, a didactic work of instruction upon the manner and conduct proper to a courtier and a lover. Here, and also in some of his lyric poems, Sordello represents the transition to a new idea of love which was more fully developed by the school of Guido Guinicelli and found its highest expression in Dante's lyrics and Vita Nuova. Love is now rather a mystical idea than a direct affection for a particular lady: the lover is swayed by a spiritual and intellectual ideal, and the motive of physical attraction recedes to the background. The cause of love, however, remains unchanged: love enters through the eyes; sight is delight.
We must now turn southwards. A school of poetry had grown up in Sicily at the court of Frederick II. No doubt he favoured those troubadours whose animosity to the papacy had been aroused by the Albigeois crusade: such invective as that which Guillem Figueira could pour forth would be useful to him in his struggle against the popes. But the emperor was himself a man of unusual culture, with a keen interest in literary and scientific pursuits: he founded a university at Naples, collected manuscripts and did much to make Arabic learning known to the West. He was a poet and the importance of the Sicilian school consists in the fact that while the subject matter of their songs was lifted from troubadour poetry, the language which they used belonged to the Italian peninsula. The dialect of these provenzaleggianti was not pure Sicilian but was probably a literary language containing elements drawn from other dialects, as happened long before in the case of the troubadours themselves. The best known representatives of this school, Pier delle Vigne, Jacopo da Lentini and Guido delle Colonne are familiar to students of Dante. After their time no one questioned the fact that lyric poetry written in Italian was a possible achievement. The influence of the Sicilian school extended to Central Italy and Tuscany; Dante tells us that all Italian poetry preceding his own age was known as Sicilian. The early Tuscan poets were, mediately or immediately, strongly influenced by Provençal. The first examples of the sonnet, by Dante da Majano, were written in that language. But such poetry was little more than a rhetorical exercise. It was the revival of learning and the Universities, in particular that of Bologna, which inspired the dolce stil nuovo, of which the first exponent was Guido Giunicelli. Love was now treated from a philosophical point of view: hitherto, the Provençal school had maintained the thesis that "sight is delight," that love originated from seeing and pleasing, penetrated to the heart and occupied the thoughts, after passing through the eyes. So Aimeric de Pegulhan.
Perque tuit li fin aman
Sapchan qu'amors es fina bevolenza
Que nais del cor e dels huelh, ses duptar.
"Wherefore let all pure lovers know that love is pure unselfishness which is born undoubtedly from the heart and from the eyes," a sentiment thus repeated by Guido delle Colonne of the Sicilian school.