Sordello of Mantua, whose name is familiar to all the readers of Dante, as occurring in one of the finest passages of his great poem,[15] was an Italian, but like all the best poets of his day, wrote in the Provençal tongue: he is said to have carried off the sister of that modern Phalaris, the tyrant Ezzelino of Padua. There is a very elegant ballad (ballata) by Sordello, translated in Millot's collection; it is properly a kind of rondeau, the first line being repeated at the end of every stanza; "Helas! à quoi me servent mes yeux?"—"Alas! wherefore have I eyes?"—It describes the pleasures of the Spring, which are to him as nothing, in the absence of the only object on which his eyes can dwell with delight. The arrangement of the rhymes in this pastoral song is singularly elegant and musical.
Lastly, as illustrating the history of the amatory poetry of this age, I extract from Nostradamus[16] the story of the young Countess de Die; she loved and was beloved by the Chevalier d'Adhèmar: (ancestor I presume to that Chevalier d'Adhèmar who figures in the letters of Madame de Sevigné.) It was not in this case the lover who celebrated the charms of his mistress, but the lady, who, being an illustrious female Troubadour, "docte en poësie," celebrated the exploits and magnanimity of her lover. The Chevalier, proud of such a distinction, caused the verses of his mistress to be beautifully copied, and always carried them in his bosom; and whenever he was in the company of knights and ladies, he enchanted them by singing a couplet in his own praise out of his lady's book. The publicity thus given to their love, was quite in the spirit of the times, and does not appear to have injured the reputation of the Countess for immaculate virtue,[17] which Adhèmar would probably have defended with lance and spear, against any slanderous tongue which had dared to defame her.
The conclusion of this romantic story is melancholy. Adhèmar heard a false report, that the Countess, whose purity and constancy he had so proudly maintained, had cast away her smiles on a rival: he fell sick with grief and bitterness of heart: the Countess, being informed of his state, set out, accompanied by her mother, and a long train of knights and ladies, to visit and comfort him with assurances of her fidelity; but when she appeared at his bed-side, and drew the curtain, it was already too late: Adhèmar expired in her arms. The Countess took the veil in the convent of St. Honoré, and died the same year of grief, says the chronicle;—and to conclude the tragedy characteristically, the mother of the young Countess buried her in the same grave with her lover, and raised a superb monument to the memory of both. The Countess de Die was one of the ten ladies who formed the Court of Love, held at Pierrefeu, (about 1194) and in which Estifanie de Baux presided.
These Courts of Love, and the scenes they gave rise to, were certainly open to ridicule; the "belles et subtiles questions d'amour" which were there solemnly discussed, and decided by ladies of rank, were often absurd, and the decisions something worse: still the fanciful influence they gave to women on these subjects, and the gallantry they introduced into the intercourse between the sexes, had a tendency to soften the manners, to refine the language, and to tinge the sentiments and passions with a kind of philosophical mysticism. But these gay and gallant Courts of Love, the Provençal Troubadours, their lays, which for two centuries had been the delight of all ranks of people, and had spread music, love, and poetry through the land;—their language, which had been the chosen dialect of gallantry in every court of Europe,—were at once swept from the earth.
The glory of the Provençal literature began when Provence was raised to an independent Fief, under Count Berenger I. about the year 1100; it lasted two entire centuries, and ended when that fine and fertile country became the scene of the horrible crusade against the Albigenses; when the Inquisition sent forth its exterminating fiends to scatter horror and devastation through the land, and the wars and rapacity of Charles of Anjou, its new possessor, almost depopulated the country. The language which had once celebrated deeds of love and heroism, now sang only of desolation and despair. The Troubadours, in a strain worthy of their gentle and noble calling, generally advocated the part of the Albigenses, and the oppressed of whatever faith; and in many provinces, in Lombardy especially, their language was interdicted, lest it might introduce heretical or rebellious principles; gradually it fell into disuse, and at length into total oblivion. The Troubadours, no longer welcomed in castle or in hall, where once
They poured to lords and ladies gay,
The unpremeditated lay,
were degraded to wandering minstrels and itinerant jugglers. An attempt was made, about a century later, (1324) by the institution of the Floral Games at Thoulouse, to keep alive this high strain of poetical gallantry. They were formerly celebrated with great splendour, and a shadow of this institution is, I believe, still kept up, but it has degenerated into a mere school of affectation. The original race of the Troubadours was extinct long before Clemence d'Isaure and her golden violet were thought of.
I cannot quit the subject of the Troubadours without one or two concluding observations. To these rude bards we owe some new notions of poetical justice, which never seem to have occurred to Horace or Longinus, and are certainly more magnanimous, as well as more true to moral feeling, than those which prevailed among the polished Greeks and Romans. For instance, the generous Hector and the constant Troilus are invariably exalted above the subtle Ulysses and the savage Achilles. Theseus, Jason, and Æneas, instead of being represented as classical heroes and pious favourites of the gods, are denounced as recreant knights and false traitors to love and beauty. In the estimation of these chivalrous bards, a woman's tears outweighed the exploits of demi-gods; all the glory of Theseus is forgotten in sympathy for Ariadne; and Æneas, in the old ballads and romances, is not, after all his perfidy, dismissed to happiness and victory, but is plagued by the fiends, haunted by poor Dido's "grimly ghost," and, finally, doomed to perish miserably.[18] Nor does Jason fare better at their hands; in all the old poets he is consigned to just execration. In Dante, we have a magnificent and a terrible picture of him, doomed to one of the lowest circles of hell, amid a herd of vile seducers, who betrayed the trusting faith, or bartered the charms of women. Demons scourge him up and down, without mercy or respite, in vengeance for the wrongs of Hypsipyle and Medea.
Guarda quel grande che viene
E per dolor, non par lagrima spanda;
Quanto aspetto reale ancor ritiene!
Quelli è Giasone—
—Con segni e con parole ornate
Isifile inganno——
Tal colpa a tal martiro lui condanna,
Ed anche di Medea si fa vendetta.