Dal cor si move un spirito in vedere
D'in ochi'n ochi, di femina e d'omo
Per lo quel si concria uno piacere.
The philosophical school entirely transformed this conception. Love seeks the noble heart by affinity, as the bird seeks the tree: the noble heart cannot but love, and love inflames and purifies its nobility, as the power of the Deity is transmitted to the heavenly beings. When this idea had been once evolved, Provençal poetry could no longer be a moving force; it was studied but was not imitated. Its influence had lasted some 150 years, and as far as Italy is concerned it was Arabic learning, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas who slew the troubadours more certainly than Simon de Montfort and his crusaders. The day of superficial prettiness and of the cult of form had passed; love conjoined with learning, a desire to pierce to the roots of things, a greater depth of thought and earnestness were the characteristics of the new school.
Dante's debt to the troubadours, with whose literature he was well acquainted, is therefore the debt of Italian literature as a whole. Had not the troubadours developed their theory of courtly love, with its influence upon human nature, we cannot say what course early Italian literature might have run. Moreover, the troubadours provided Italy and other countries also with perfect models of poetical form. The sonnet, the terza rima and any other form used by Dante are of Provençal origin. And what is true of Dante and his Beatrice is no less true of Petrarch and his Laura and of many another who may be sought in histories specially devoted to this subject.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TROUBADOURS IN SPAIN
The South of France had been connected with the North of Spain from a period long antecedent to the first appearance of troubadour poetry. As early as the Visigoth period, Catalonia had been united to Southern France; in the case of this province the tie was further strengthened by community of language. On the western side of the Pyrenees a steady stream of pilgrims entered the Spanish peninsula on their way to the shrine of St James of Compostella in Galicia; this road was, indeed, known in Spain as the "French road." Catalonia was again united with Provence by the marriage of Raimon Berengar III. with a Provençal heiress in 1112. As the counts of Barcelona and the kings of Aragon held possessions in Southern France, communications between the two countries were naturally frequent.
We have already had occasion to refer to the visits of various troubadours to the courts of Spain. The "reconquista," the reconquest of Spain from the Moors, was in progress during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and various crusade poems were written by troubadours summoning help to the Spaniards in their struggles. Marcabrun was the author of one of the earliest of these, composed for the benefit of Alfonso VIII. of Castile and possibly referring to his expedition against the Moors in 1147, which was undertaken in conjunction with the kings of Navarre and Aragon. The poem is interesting for its repetition of the word lavador or piscina, used as an emblem of the crusade in which the participants would be cleansed of their sins.[32]
Pax in nomine Domini!