[x] Gregorius, cognomento Bechada, de Castro de Turribus, professione miles, subtilissimi ingenii vir, aliquantulum imbutus literis, horum gesta præliorum maternâ linguâ rhythmo vulgari, ut populus pleniter intelligeret, ingens volumen decenter composuit, et ut vera et faceta verba proferret, duodecim annorum spatium super hoc opus operam dedit. Ne verò vilesceret propter verbum vulgare, non sine præcepto episcopi Eustorgii, et consilio Gauberti Normanni, hoc opus aggressus est. I transcribe this from Heeren's Essai sur les Croisades, p. 447; whose reference is to Labbé, Bibliotheca nova MSS. t. ii. p. 296.
[y] De Sade, Vie de Pétrarque, t. i. p. 155. Sismondi, Litt. du Midi, t. i. p. 228.
[z] For the Courts of Love, see De Sade, Vie de Pétrarque, t. ii. note 19. Le Grand. Fabliaux, t. i. p. 270. Roquefort, Etat de la Poésie Françoise. p. 94. I have never had patience to look at the older writers who have treated this tiresome subject.
[a] Histoire Littéraire des Troubadours Paris, 1774.
[] Two very modern French writers, M. Ginguené (Histoire Littéraire d'Italie, Paris, 1811) and M. Sismondi (Littérature du Midi de l'Europe, Paris, 1813), have revived the poetical history of the troubadours. To them, still more than to Millot and Tiraboschi, I would acknowledge my obligations for the little I have learned in respect of this forgotten school of poetry. Notwithstanding, however, the heaviness of Millot's work, a fault not imputable to himself, though Ritson as I remember, calls him, in his own polite style, "a blockhead," it will always be useful to the inquirer into the manners and opinions of the middle ages, from the numerous illustrations it contains of two general facts; the extreme dissoluteness of morals among the higher ranks, and the prevailing animosity of all classes against the clergy.
[c] Hist. Litt. de la France, t. vii. p. 58. Le Bœuf, according to these Benedictines, has published some poetical fragments of the tenth century; and they quote part of a charter as old as 940 in Romance. p. 59. But that antiquary, in a memoir printed in the seventeenth volume of the Academy of Inscriptions, which throws more light on the infancy of the French language than anything within my knowledge, says only that the earliest specimens of verse in the royal library are of the eleventh century au plus tard. p. 717. M. de la Rue is said to have found some poems of the eleventh century in the British Museum. Roquefort, Etat de la Poésie Françoise, p. 206. Le Bœuf's fragment may be found in this work, p. 379; it seems nearer to the Provençal than the French dialect.
[d] Gale, XV Script. t. i. p. 88.
[e] Ritson's Dissertation on Romance, p. 66. [The laws of William the Conqueror, published in Ingulfus, are translated from a Latin original; the French is of the thirteenth century. It is now doubted whether any French, except a fragment of a translation of Boethius, in verse, is extant of an earlier age than the twelfth. Introduction to Hist. of Literat. 3rd edit. p. 28.]
[f] Hist. Litt. t. ix. p. 149; Fabliaux par Barbasan, vol. i. p. 9, edit. 1808; Mém. de l'Académie des Inscr. t. xv. and xvii, p. 714, &c.
[g] Mabillon speaks of this as the oldest French instrument he had seen. But the Benedictines quote some of the eleventh century. Hist. Litt. t. vii. p. 59. This charter is supposed by the authors of Nouveau Traité de Diplomatique to be translated from the Latin, t. iv. p. 519. French charters, they say, are not common before the age of Louis IX.; and this is confirmed by those published in Martenne's Thesaurus Anecdotorum, which are very commonly in French from his reign, but hardly ever before.