E melhs sui faitz a son coman.
("It is no wonder if I sing better than any other singer, for my heart draws nearer to love and I am better made for love's command.") The troubadour amor, especially in its Italian development, eventually attained the moral power of the minne; but in its early stages, it was a personal and selfish influence. The stanza form and rime distribution of the minnesinger poems continually betray Provençal influence: the principle of tripartition is constantly followed and the arrangement of rimes is often a repetition of that adopted in troubadour stanzas. Friedrich von Hausen, the Count Rudolf von Fenis, Heinrich von Morungen and others sometimes translate almost literally from troubadour poetry, though these imitations do not justify the lines of Uhland.
In den Thälern der Provence ist der Minnesang entsprossen,
Kind des Frühlings und der Minne, holder, inniger Genossen.
Northern France, the home of epic poetry, also possessed an indigenous lyric poetry, including spring and dance songs, pastorals, romances, and "chansons de toile." Provençal influence here was inevitable. It is apparent in the form and content of poems, in the attempt to remodel Provençal poems by altering the words to French forms, and by the fact that Provençal poems are found in MS. collections of French lyrics. Provençal poetry first became known in Northern France from the East, by means of the crusaders and not, as might be expected, by intercommunication in the centre of the country. The centre of Provençal influence in Northern France seems to have been the court of Eleanor of Poitiers the wife of Henry II. of England and the court of her daughter, Marie of Champagne. Here knights and ladies attempted to form a legal code governing love affairs, of which a Latin edition exists in the De arte honeste amandi of André le Chapelain, written at the outset of the thirteenth century. Well-known troubadours such as Bertran de Born and Bernart de Ventadour visited Eleanor's court and the theory of courtly love found its way into epic poetry in the hands of Chrétien de Troyes.
The Provençal school in Northern France began during the latter half of the twelfth century. The chanson properly so called is naturally most strongly represented: but the Provençal forms, the tençon (Prov. tenso) and a variant of it, the jeu-parti (Prov. jocs partitz or partimens) are also found, especially the latter. This was so called, because the opener of the debate proposed two alternatives to his interlocutor, of which the latter could choose for support either that he preferred, the proposer taking the other contrary proposition: the contestants often left the decision in an envoi to one or more arbitrators by common consent. Misinterpretation of the language of these envois gave rise to the legend concerning the "courts of love," as we have stated in a previous chapter. One of the earliest representatives of this school was Conon de Bethune, born in 1155; he took part in the Crusades of 1189 and 1199. Blondel de Nesles, Gace Brulé and the Châtelain de Coucy are also well-known names belonging to the twelfth century. Thibaut IV., Count of Champagne and King of Navarre (1201-1253), shared in the Albigeois crusade and thus helped in the destruction of the poetry which he imitated. One of the poems attributed to him by Dante (De Vulg. El.) belongs to Gace Brulé; his love affair with Blanche of Castile is probably legendary. Several crusade songs are attributed to Thibaut among some thirty poems of the kind that remain to us from the output of this school. These crusade poems exhibit the characteristics of their Provençal models: there are exhortations to take the cross in the form of versified sermons; there are also love poems which depict the poet's mind divided between his duty as a crusader and his reluctance to leave his lady; or we find the lady bewailing her lover's departure, or again, lady and lover lament their approaching separation in alternate stanzas. There is more real feeling in some of these poems than is apparent in the ordinary chanson of the Northern French courtly school: the following stanzas are from a poem by Guiot de Dijon,[34] the lament of a lady for her absent lover—
Chanterai por mon corage
Que je vueill reconforter
Car avec mon grant damage
Ne quier morir n'afoler,