With the exception of the coat of arms at the foot, the design on the title page is a reproduction of one used by the earliest known Cambridge printer, John Siberch, 1521

PREFACE

This book, it is hoped, may serve as an introduction to the literature of the Troubadours for readers who have no detailed or scientific knowledge of the subject. I have, therefore, chosen for treatment the Troubadours who are most famous or who display characteristics useful for the purpose of this book. Students who desire to pursue the subject will find further help in the works mentioned in the bibliography. The latter does not profess to be exhaustive, but I hope nothing of real importance has been omitted.

H.J. CHAYTOR.

THE COLLEGE, PLYMOUTH, March 1912.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

CHAP.

I. INTRODUCTORY

II. THE THEORY OF COURTLY LOVE

III. TECHNIQUE

IV. THE EARLY TROUBADOURS

V. THE CLASSICAL PERIOD

VI. THE ALBIGEOIS CRUSADE

VII. THE TROUBADOURS IN ITALY

VIII. THE TROUBADOURS IN SPAIN

IX. PROVENCAL INFLUENCE IN GERMANY, FRANCE, AND ENGLAND

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND NOTES

INDEX

THE TROUBADOURS

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

Few literatures have exerted so profound an influence upon the literary history of other peoples as the poetry of the troubadours. Attaining the highest point of technical perfection in the last half of the twelfth and the early years of the thirteenth century, Provençal poetry was already popular in Italy and Spain when the Albigeois crusade devastated the south of France and scattered the troubadours abroad or forced them to seek other means of livelihood. The earliest lyric poetry of Italy is Provençal in all but language; almost as much may be said of Portugal and Galicia; Catalonian troubadours continued to write in Provençal until the fourteenth century. The lyric poetry of the "trouvères" in Northern France was deeply influenced both in form and spirit by troubadour poetry, and traces of this influence are perceptible even in early middle-English lyrics. Finally, the German minnesingers knew and appreciated troubadour lyrics, and imitations or even translations of Provençal poems may be found in Heinrich von Morungen, Friedrich von Hausen, and many others. Hence the poetry of the troubadours is a subject of first-rate importance to the student of comparative literature.

The northern limit of the Provençal language formed a line starting from the Pointe de Grave at the mouth of the Gironde, passing through Lesparre, Bordeaux, Libourne, Périgueux, rising northward to Nontron, la Rochefoucauld, Confolens, Bellac, then turning eastward to Guéret and Montluçon; it then went south-east to Clermont-Ferrand, Boën, Saint Georges, Saint Sauveur near Annonay. The Dauphiné above Grenoble, most of the Franche-Comté, French Switzerland and Savoy, are regarded as a separate linguistic group known as Franco-Provençal, for the reason that the dialects of that district display characteristics common to both French and Provençal.¹ On the south-west, Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Isles must also be included in the Provençal region. As concerns the Northern limit, it must not be regarded as a definite line of demarcation between the langue d'oil or the Northern French dialects and the langue d'oc or Provençal. The boundary is, of course, determined by noting the points at which certain linguistic features peculiar to Provençal cease and are replaced by the characteristics of Northern French. Such a characteristic, for instance, is the Latin tonic a before a single consonant, and not preceded by a palatal consonant, which remains in Provençal but becomes e in French; Latin cantare becomes chantar in Provençal but chanter in French. But north and south of the boundary thus determined there was, in the absence of any great mountain range or definite geographical line of demarcation, an indeterminate zone, in which one dialect probably shaded off by easy gradations into the other.

Within the region thus described as Provençal, several separate dialects existed, as at the present day. Apart from the Franco-Provençal on the north-east, which we have excluded, there was Gascon in the south-west and the modern départements of the Basses and Hautes Pyrénées; Catalonian, the dialect of Roussillon, which was brought into Spain in the seventh century and still survives in Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands. The rest of the country may be subdivided by a line to the north of which c before a becomes ch as in French, cantare producing chantar, while southwards we find c(k) remaining. The Southern dialects are those of Languedoc and Provence; north of the line were the Limousin and Auvergne dialects. At the present day these dialects have diverged very widely. In the early middle ages the difference between them was by no means so great. Moreover, a literary language grew up by degrees, owing to the wide circulation of poems and the necessity of using a dialect which could be universally intelligible. It was the Limousin dialect which became, so to speak, the backbone of this literary language, now generally known as Provençal, just as the Tuscan became predominant for literary purposes among the Italian dialects. It was in Limousin that the earliest troubadour lyrics known to us were composed, and this district with the adjacent Poitou and Saintonge may therefore be reasonably regarded as the birthplace of Provençal lyric poetry.

Hence the term "Provençal" is not entirely appropriate to describe the literary language of the troubadours, as it may also be restricted to denote the dialects spoken in the "Provincia". This difficulty was felt at an early date. The first troubadours spoke of their language as roman or lingua romana, a term equally applicable to any other romance language. Lemosin was also used, which was too restricted a term, and was also appropriated by the Catalonians to denote their own dialect. A third term in use was the lingua d'oc, which has the authority of Dante ² and was used by some of the later troubadours; however, the term "Provençal" has been generally accepted, and must henceforward be understood to denote the literary language common to the south of France and not the dialect of Provence properly so-called.

For obvious reasons Southern France during the early middle ages had far outstripped the Northern provinces in art, learning, and the refinements of civilisation. Roman culture had made its way into Southern Gaul at an early date and had been readily accepted by the inhabitants, while Marseilles and Narbonne had also known something of Greek civilisation. Bordeaux, Toulouse, Arles, Lyons and other towns were flourishing and brilliant centres of civilisation at a time when Northern France was struggling with foreign invaders. It was in Southern Gaul, again, that Christianity first obtained a footing; here the barbarian invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries proved less destructive to