The Troubadours

by H. J. Chaytor

E largueza et amors,

Conoyssensa e cundia,

Troban manten e socors

En Cataluenha a tria,

Entrels, etc.

"Since my star has not granted me that from my lady happiness should fall to me, since no pleasure that I can give pleases her and I have no power to forget her, I must needs enter upon the road of true love and I can learn it well enough in gay Catalonia among the Catalonians, men of worth, and their kindly ladies. For courtesy, worth, joy, gratitude and gallantry, sense, knowledge, honour, fair speech, fair company, liberality and love, learning and grace find maintenance and support in Catalonia entirely."

Between thirty and forty poets of Spanish extraction are known to have written Provençal poetry. Guillem de Tudela of Navarre wrote the first part of the Chanson de la Croisade albigeoise; Serveri de Gerona wrote didactic and devotional poetry, showing at least ingenuity of technique; Amanieu des Escas has left love letters and didactic works for the instruction of young people in the rules of polite behaviour. But the influence of Provençal upon the native poetry of Spain proper was but small, in spite of the welcome which the troubadours found at the courts of Castile, Aragon, Leon and Navarre. Troubadour poetry required a peaceful and an aristocratic environment, and the former at least of these conditions was not provided by the later years of Alfonso X. Northern French influence was also strong: numerous French immigrants were able to settle in towns newly founded or taken from the Moors. The warlike and adventurous spirit of Northern and Central Spain preferred epic to lyric poetry: and the outcome was the cantar de gesta and the romance, the lyrico-narrative or ballad poem.

This was not the course of development followed either in the Eastern or Western coasts of the peninsula. Catalonia was as much a part of the Provençal district as of Spain. To the end of the thirteenth century Catalonian poets continued to write in the language of the troubadours, often breaking the strict rules of rime correspondence and of grammar, but refusing to use their native dialect. Religious poems of popular and native origin appear to have existed, but even the growth of a native prose was unable to overcome the preference for Provençal in the composition of lyrics. Guiraut de Cabreira is remembered for the 213 lines which he wrote to instruct his joglar Cabra; Guiraut upbraids this performer for his ignorance, and details a long series of legends and poems which a competent joglar ought to know. Guiraut de Calanso wrote an imitation of this diatribe. The best known of the Catalonian troubadours is Raimon Vidal of Besadun, both for his novelas and also for his work on Provençal grammar and metre, Las rasos de trobar,[³³] which was written for the benefit of his compatriots who desired to avoid solecisms or mistakes when composing. "For as much as I, Raimon Vidal, have seen and known that few men know or have known the right manner of composing poetry (trobar) I desire to make this book that men may know and understand which of the troubadours have composed best and given the best instruction to those who wish to learn how they should follow the right manner of composing.... All Christian people, Jews, Saracens, emperors, princes, kings, dukes, counts, viscounts, vavassors and all other nobles with clergy, citizens and villeins, small and great, daily give their minds to composing and singing.... In this science of composing the troubadours are gone astray and I will tell you wherefore. The hearers who do not understand anything when they hear a fine poem will pretend that they understand perfectly... because they think that men would consider it a fault in them if they said that they did not understand.... And if when they hear a bad troubadour, they do understand, they will praise his singing because they understand it; or if they will not praise, at least they will not blame him; and thus the troubadours are deceived and the hearers are to blame for it." Raimon Vidal proceeds to say that the pure language is that of Provence or of Limousin or of Saintonge or Auvergne or Quercy: "wherefore I tell you, that when I use the term Limousin, I mean all those lands and those which border them or are between them." He was apparently the first to use the term Limousin to describe classical Provençal, and when it became applied to literary Catalonian, as distinguished from plá Catalá, the vulgar tongue, the result was some confusion. Provençal influence was more permanent in Catalonia than in any other part of Spain; in 1393, the Consistorium of the Gay saber was founded in imitation of the similar association at Toulouse. Most of the troubadour poetical forms and the doctrines of the Toulouse Leys d'Amors were retained, until Italian influence began to oust Provençal towards the close of the fifteenth century.

On the western side of Spain, Provençal influence evoked a brief and brilliant literature in the Galician or Portuguese school. Its most brilliant period was the age of Alfonso X. of Castile, one of its most illustrious exponents, and that of Denis of Portugal (1280-1325). The dates generally accepted for the duration of this literature are 1200-1385; it has left to us some 2000 lyric poems, the work of more than 150 poets, including four kings and a number of nobles of high rank. French and Provençal culture had made its way gradually and by various routes to the western side of the Spanish peninsula.

We have already referred to the pilgrim route to the shrine of Compostella, by which a steady stream of foreign influence entered the country. The same effect was produced by crusaders who came to help the Spaniards in their struggle against the Moors, and by foreign colonists who helped to Christianise the territories conquered from the Mohammedans. The capture of Lisbon in 1147 increased maritime intercourse with the North. Individuals from Portugal also visited Northern and Southern France, after the example of their Spanish neighbours. References to Portugal in the poetry of the troubadours are very scarce, nor is there any definite evidence that any troubadour visited the country. This fact is in striking contrast with the loud praises of the Spanish courts. None the less, such visits must have taken place: Sancho I. had French jongleurs in his pay during the twelfth century and the Portuguese element in the five-language descort of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras shows that communication between Provençal poets and Portuguese or Galician districts must have existed. The general silence of the troubadours may be due to the fact that communication began at a comparatively late period and was maintained between Portugal and Spanish courts, and not directly between Portugal and Southern France.