The wild dreams of chivalry outraged common sense; yet in an age when might would have been right, it turned the arm of power itself into a protection for the defenceless,
{[footnote]:-- A good picture of a character formed on chivalric principles is drawn by Herbers, a poet of the 13th century, in Dolopatos:
Onkes ne trouva en sa vie
Son parcil de chevalerie;
Les uns par armes sorprenoit,
Les autres par dons qu'il donoit,
Les autres par belles paroles;
C'est un ars ki maint home afole.
As pauvres gens qui le doutoient
Et qui a lui sougiet estoient,
Estoit si dous et debonere
Com s'il nul mal ne seust fere;
Plus fu lore pere que lor sire
Ce puis-je bien par raison dire.}
controlled those for whom there was as yet no other law, and mellowed in the process of time into that principle of honourable courtesy which forms the ornament and cement of modern society. The servile worship of the female sex may raise a smile, and the solemn manner in which this "prostration of the understanding and the will" was carried on may excite a momentary feeling of contempt; yet this was the beginning of that important revolution in society, which, however extravagant in its commencement, fixed on the firm basis of religious justice the destinies of one half of the human race. We may laugh at the whimsical folly which suddenly transformed women from slaves into goddesses, mighty to save and omnipotent to destroy; but the fetters which kings, emperors and warriors thus voluntarily forged for themselves held them in no ungentle thraldom; they felt themselves tamed and humanized they knew not how or why; they were taught to respect one another, and thus they gradually learnt to respect themselves. Public opinion now came to be regarded as of importance, and even Courts of love may in this view have had a beneficial operation; for any thing was good that raised a countervailing power to curb the injustice of the strong, and bring mankind within the control of social regulations and conventional discipline. A writer of Sirventes, who acted honestly and fearlessly up to the impartial principle laid down by the Troubadour Pons Barba,
Sirventes no es leials,
S'om no i ausa dir los mals
Dels menors e dels comunals,
E maiorment dels maiorals:
must have been a powerful agent upon society for the production of good, in days when poetry exercised so strong an influence. The conduct of the politic emperors of Germany in encouraging it as a counterpoise to the encroachments of ignorant superstition and of papal enthralment, will show the value they attached to that influence; and the resistance from public opinion, which was the actual moral result, will convince any inquirer into the history of the age how important was the agency so put in operation.
All the elements of society were thus, to a certain extent, drawn together by an uniting sympathy, and by a common zeal in the promotion of objects, which could not but tend in some degree to temper their asperities. The kings of nations, the aristocracy, and the people, were united in emulation in the field, and the inequalities of rank were still further mitigated by the value set upon poetic talent, by whomsoever displayed. The East opened its wonders, the world was enchanted, and history became a romance. It was the spring time of the mind, "the season of unfolding intellect and mental blossoming;"
'Love, now an universal birth,
From heart to heart was stealing,
From earth to man, from man to earth,
It was the hour of feeling."
The heart of man was bolder, his arm firmer, than in the days of dull reality, and the spirit of adventurous knighthood was softened into heroic gentleness and gallant love. The beauty of woman became a boast and a treasure, and the "mortal mixture of earth's mould" was worshipped as a starry divinity. And then surely was the fit hour of blooming for "the crowning rose of all the wreath," that poetic spirit which tended so much to rub off the rust, and refine away the accumulated barbarism of ages, to stir up the spirit of emulation, and to prepare the way for better things, when better things should come. The fountains of pure and gentle feelings, which were destined to spread refinement and civilization over the world, were at any rate opened.
The chivalry and the poetry of these ages are inseparably connected. They are the fruits of one great moral revolution; they sprung up together, and are mutually illustrative of each other; they have similar blemishes and similar redeeming qualities; and where so much has been said about one, it cannot be uninteresting to exhibit a few specimens of the other.
In this poetry we have the best illustration of the state of society to which it owed its birth; of that striking mixture of strong feelings, religious associations, and metaphysical gallantry, which clothed the object of the poet's adoration with the form of angels; made her eyes the stars in which man was to read his destinies; opened a heaven to the happy lover; and made the woods, the plains, the rivers and the flowers, the witnesses and partners of his joy. With what tender gaiety opens the song of the Troubadour Arnaud de Marveil;
Oh! how sweet the breeze of April,
Breathing soft as May draws near!
While thro' nights of tranquil beauty,
Songs of sweetness meet the ear;
Every bird his well-known language
Uttering in the morning's pride,
Revelling in joy and gladness
By his happy partner's side.
Then all around is smiling,
When to life the young birds spring,
Thoughts of love I cannot hinder,
Come my heart inspiriting, &c.
What frolic jollity revels in the song of the old Minnesinger Earl Conrad of Kirchberg, when he calls the gay circles, on the return of May, to go forth
............................ and see
All her stores of jollity!
O'er the laughing hedgerow's side
She hath spread her treasures wide;
She is in the greenwood shade,
Where the nightingale hath made
Every branch and every tree
Ring with her sweet melody;
Hill and dale are May's own treasures,
Youth rejoice in sportive measures!
Sing ye! join the chorus gay,
Hail this merry, merry May!
The coincidence in tone between the society and the poetry of the age, is also observable in the whimsical institutions to which the reigning passion for gallantry gave birth. "La société, jeune encore, (as the entertaining author of 'De l'Amour,' Paris 1822, observes,) se plaisait dans les formalités et les cérémonies qui alors montraient la civilization, et qui aujourd'hui feraient mourir d'ennui. Le même caractère se retrouve dans la langue des Provençaux, dans la difficulté et l'entrelacement de leurs rimes, dans leur mots masculins et féminins pour exprimer le même objet, enfin dans le nombre infini de leur poëtes. Tout ce qui est forme dans la société, et qui aujourd'hui est si insipide, avait alors toute la fraicheur et la saveur de la noveauté."
In the same period is to be observed the ground-work of the striking distinctions which mark the school of modern poetry, as opposed to the ancient or classic. The latter had in every respect an essentially masculine character: even in its tenderest effusions woman was treated only as subservient to the caprices and pleasures of a nobler sex. Our poetry, on the contrary, owes much of its charms to the gentler character which the different position of woman in society has necessarily infused into it. In the early ages the new feeling was wildly and extravagantly pursued: but in modern times its spirit is subdued, and it has subsided into those quieter pictures of social affection, of which classic literature contained little or nothing.
The poetry of the Troubadours has seldom been impartially dealt with, even by the very few who have sought it in the originals. The public will judge whether they ought to be dismissed with such sweeping indiscriminate obloquy as is often heaped upon them, by critics, who pretend at the same time to be in ecstasies with the rimes of Petrarch and his imitators. The German Minnesingers [love-singers], the cotemporaries of the Troubadours, are now for the first time introduced to the English reader, and must surely often succeed in winning their way to the hearts of those who are glad to recognise any where the poetry of nature and feeling. ........................
.... Much remained to be said and learned, and M. Raynouard has at last (in his Recueil des Poesies des Troubadours, 6 vols.) amply supplied the deficiency, particularly in the careful reprint of originals and the formation of a grammar of the language. In this elaborate work the early monuments of the Provençal language and poetry may be found, collected with diligence, and published with taste and critical accuracy. Much has doubtless perished; for the polished style and metrical symmetry of the songs of the earliest known lyric poet, William IX. count of Poictiers, who was born in 1070 and died in 1126, render it hardly probable that a new dialect should at once have started into so perfect and regular a form. But enough has survived to enable the reader to form for himself a correct estimate of the talents and influence of the Troubadour school; and an exceedingly interesting stock of historic materials is laid open to future investigators, often of far higher value than the dry labours of professed chroniclers.
The gay smiling climate of the South of France seemed to combine with the superiority and freedom of its political institutions to call forth the earliest fruits of chivalry and its attendant song. During the greater part of the 10th century, while Northern France was a prey to intestine commotions, Provence and part of Burgundy and its dependencies had enjoyed repose under the mild rule of Conrad the Pacific. Perhaps we may even look higher up, and trace the superior civilization of some of the Southern states to the influence of the laws of the Burgundians, which certainly formed the most equitable and mild of the codes established on the basis of Roman jurisprudence. The courts of the Berengars, the sovereigns of Catalonia and part of Southern France, became the principal nurseries of the opening talent, and the centre of union with other European nations. The period of their power embraces the whole bloom of Provençal literature, and their patronage of it every where stimulated the foreign courts, with which they were connected, to the cultivation of similar pursuits.
But the once brilliant literature, and even the language, of the South of France was doomed to oblivion and neglect. Its most beautiful regions became the scene of bigoted devastation during the bloody wars against Albigenses. The poets had never been friends of the church; many of the last efforts of Troubadour song were exerted in vindicating the rights of humanity against the cruelty and corruption of Rome and its retainers; and it is singular also that some of the earliest remains of the poetry of this dialect collected by M. Raynouard are those of the heretic Vaudois or Waldenses. ......
... The southern provinces lost their independence, and were one by one annexed to the crown of France. With the princes and princesses, nobles and knights of Provence, its poets also vanished, or carried their gaiety and gallantry to the rising courts of Naples and Sicily; the romantic tales of chivalry and the gay fabliaux, which appeared in the court dialect of the Norman princes, became the popular favourites; princes and nobles ceased to sing, or adopted, like Thibaut king of Navarre, the more fashionable dialect; and the Provençal muse expired, or lived only in the lingering efforts of some poor minstrel, compelled (to the use the words of Albert Marquis de Malespina)
Anar a pe a ley de croy joglar,
Pauvre d'aver, e malastrucx d'amiex;
As vagrant juglar doom'd on foot to rove,
Poor in his purse, and luckless in his love;
till at last it is only left to Nostradamus to lament, that "nostre langue Provensalle s'est tellement avallie et embastardie, que a piene est elle de nous qui sommes du pays entendue."
Several vain attempts were however made in Southern France to rally a spirit which had arisen in a pecular state of society, and vanished with the circumstances to which it owed its existence. Even so late as 1323 an academy was formed at Toulouse for the cultivation of the Gai Saber; and floral games were instituted, which it is said exist at this day, though the language in which the prizes are contended for is the Northern French. ...........
... A complete estimate of the varied character of a Troubadour knight can only be formed by tracing its bold lineaments in his various works; one while breathing the fire of martial glory, animating his followers on to heroic enterprise; another time turning his muse into a powerful political engine, that shook the thrones of kings, or made profligate churchmen tremble in their corrupt hypocrisy, and yet soon afterwards melting into the soft and luxuriant harmony of a chanson.
Such was Bertrand de Born, -- restless, ambitious, and impetuous in his counsels,-- a faithless friend and a rebellious subject. From his castle of Hautefort he sent forth lyrics which bade defiance to France, England and Spain, while his biting satires excited distrust and divisions among his enemies. At another time he rushed to arms, and carried havoc among the vassals of Philip Augustus, and of Henry II., in whose family he was perpetually sowing discords, and making
.... il padre e'l figlio in se ribelli:
Achitophel non fe piu d' Assalone,
E di Dauid, co malvaggi punzelli.
DANTE, INF. c. 28.
.........................
... It has been usual to mark a broad line of distinction between the productions of the Northern and Southern schools of early French poetry, between the writers in the Langue d'oeil and the Langue d'oc. The Provençaux are supposed to have confined themselves to their love-lyrics, pastorals, tensons, and sirventes; while the Normans are stated to have devoted themselves as entirely to romances, lais, and fabliaux. Both assumptions are probably equally incorrect; and we shall hereafter see that the Northern school was almost as prolific as the Southern, in what are usually considered as the peculiar characteristics of the latter, though few specimens of this class of Northern poetry have as yet been published: and there is as little doubt that the Provençaux were the authors of the very many tales and romances, although hitherto few of such productions have reached us in the Southern language. It is strange indeed that these latter subjects should be supposed never to have been handled by the very class of men who, we are told almost in the same breath, took a prominent part in introducing into Europe (as the spoils of the Crusades, or the results of their contiguity to the Spanish Arabs,) the splendid ornaments of romantic fiction, the gay tales and fairy imagery of the East.
The most popular or fashionable effusions of the Provençaux seem undoubtedly to have been the lyric and amatory. No where did the courts of love, which M. Raynouard traces up beyond the commencement of the 12th century, obtain such sway as in Provence and Catalonia; and their influence probably directed the talents of the poet to kindred topics. But that the Troubadours neglected the celebration of warlike gests and romantic adventure, or that they abstained from amusing their hearers with tales of fiction, cannot be believed in any sort of consistency with probability or with direct historic testimony. "Il n'y avoit maison noble en Provence," says Nostradamus, "qu'elle n'eust un registre en forme de Romant, auquel estoyent descripts les hauts faicts et gestes de leurs ancestres en langage Provençal." These too have perished, but we do not on that account entertain any doubts of their having once existed.
The tale of the Parroquet, very briefly told by Mr. Dunlop, but now published in the elegant and spirited language of the original by M. Raynouard, and the fabliau "Castia Gilos" of Raymond Vidal, cannot have been singular instances. Several fragments of longer romances survive, and innumerable references to others exist in the published poetry of the Troubadours; and it is not probable that they contended themselves with perusing their favourite works of amusement in a foreign tongue. The beautiful tale of "Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelone" was undoubtedly first written in Provençal by Bernard de Treviez, canon of Maguelone, in the 12th century; and in this form it must have been, that Petrarch "polit et donna des graces nouvelles" to this delightful tale. The French romance is only a version, printed first at Lyons in 1457, and, as the title confesses, then "mis en cestui languaige."
Arnaud Daniel, a Troubadour poet, who, in the opinion of Dante,
...... versi d'amore e prose de romanzi
Soverchiò tutti ---------
published Lancelot du Lac in his own tongue; for the German translator, in the 13th century, expressly names him as the author whom he followed. Probably the Provençal was the language in which Francesca and Paulo perused this romance in the beautiful story told in the Inferno, c. 5.
Noi leggiavamo un giorno per diletto
Di Lancilotto, come amor lo strinse:
Soli eravamo, e senza alcun sospetto, &c.
Pulci also (c. 27) records Arnaud as a chronicler of the exploits of Rinaldo:
Dopo costui venne il famoso Arnaldo,
Che molto diligentemente ha scritto,
E investigò le opre di Rinaldo
De la gran cose che fece in Egitto.
Wolfram von Eschenbach, the great German poet of the 13th century, composed two romances, -- Parcival and Titurel, -- in which he expressly declares that he follows the Provençal of one "Kyot der Provenzal," and finds fault with Chretien de Troyes, the Norman-French poet, who, he says, falsified the history.
The Lais, or tales drawn from the legends of Brittany, were well known, and formed a constant topic of delight and amusement to the Provençaux. Thus the bishop Folquet de Marseille, in one of his beautiful songs, says,
Ia no volgra qu'hom auzis
Los doulz chans dels auzellos
Mas cill qui son amoros;
Que res tan no m'esbaudis
Co il auzelet per la planha;
E ilh belha cui son aclis,
Cella m'platz mais que chansos,
Volta, ni lais de Bretanha.
I would not any man should hear
The birds that sweetly sing above,
Save he who knows the power of love;
For nought beside can soothe or cheer
My soul like that sweet harmony,
And her who, yet more sweet and dear,
Hath greater power my soul to move
Than songs or lays of Brittany.
Surely it is not likely that these popular tales were told to the audience in a foreign tongue.
But those who are desirous of maintaining the superiority of the poets of the North will still claim for them the merit of originating these romances and tales, even if similar topics can be admitted to have been handled in the Provençal tongue. This may be conceded; but it is perhaps better not to enter too deeply upon these questions here, nor to embark on so doubtful a sea of disputation, on which so many hardy adventurers have suffered shipwreck. Thus far is clear, that the Langue d'oeil soon became the favourite of courts and people; that its poets principally devoted themselves to works more calculated to ensure popularity; and that the productions of its less fortunate rival fell into unmerited neglect. The real extent of Provençal genius and literature is likely to remain for ever buried in oblivion, unless the researches of Spanish critics,-- among whom, especially in Arragon, a great mass of Troubadour poetry appears to have been mouldering unnoticed,-- shall restore the treasures that are known to be still in existence in that land which saw so much of their ancient glory.
~ Lays of the Minnesingers or German Troubadours of the 12th and 13th Centuries. (anonymous). Printed in London for Longman, etc. 1825. {1st edition}.
The 11th, 12th and 13th centuries form a great period of fermentation, during which the elements of European civilization were separating and fashioning themselves for the reception of new forms. Principles were yet crude and indigested, but feeling was every where strong. The fervour of religious zeal often misled the mind and inflamed the passions; yet we should not forget that this religion was the medium of civilization, the guardian angel that watched over the walls of the sanctuaries of learning, shielding them from the devastations of ignorant and lawless power.
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