The Jewish Muslim Legacy of Secular Love Poetry in the works of William the IX of Aquitaine and the Spread of Eleanor's of Aquitaine Gynocentrism through the migration of the Cathar - Troubadour Art from France to Italy!
An excerpt from "On the Origins of European Gynocentrim and its Sybolism"
The correlation between the Cathars and troubadours has been one of the most debated facets of Southern French culture. It is important as Italy was not only the troubadour's first station outside of native France but in fact it has immensely influenced the enormous misandrist proto feminism of Lucretia Marinella as well as Christine de Pisan and later Heinrich Cornellius Agrippa who was introduced and studied Kabblah in Italy, both the original Jewish concepts as well as the later (from the same Judaic source) developed principles of the Christian kabbalah. Therefore, this dynamic also shows the basic root of the gynocentric spread in Europe namely from Southern France to Italy, from there to Germany and then subsequently to other parts of Europe. In fact, many of those dynamics can be observed even today and especially in the strong cross cultural connection between Italy and France. Moreover, based on profound misunderstanding of the Cathar-troubadour phenomenon as well as the very nature of such research and the methods required, one of the main questions historians have been ignorantly addressing is why, in their own language, "considering that the troubadours and Cathars spent time together at the same courts and wandered the same roads of Southern France and Northern Spain, there are so few literal references to each other in their respective sources".
I will spare you the long, in my opinion useless debate, and will mention here a few aspects that will solve the catch 99 or cut the Gordian knot. First, being hunted by the church, not only the Cathars haven’t had time for long writings but the writing itself was dangerous as it would be a great source for the inquisition to trace them down theologically and persecute their believers and followers. On the other side as we have seen the troubadours consisted of knights and the lower nobility thus endangering the system, if adopted those heretical views, they were warned to withdraw any help and support from the Cathars. Thus it was also in their benefit to hide their trace in this regard while also protecting their patronage from being embarrassed. In fact, to maintain the project of spreading gynocentrism it must have been done in the dark and hidden. And last but not least based on the same profound misunderstanding thus dismissing all the evidences we brought here over the various discourses they did it because they were one and the same; actually, serving the same purposes and protecting each other. Therefore, in fact, all of those reasons are valid so they cooperated together to hide their traces not only for the benefit of themselves and the patronage but also from their point of view for the greater good of gynocentrisc gynocentric project (its spread, propagation and preservation) as well as the Cathar heresy.
I now want to address the really more important aspects of this discussion. Italian-French relationships have much more ancient roots than the average person might assume. In the same way as in the late twelfth century, the Southern French economy had flourished under Italian influence, inspiring Southern French merchants to travel to Italy, so was the additional cultural layer not only strengthening the economic ties but also expanding the cross cultural influence with the emphasize on the propagation of gynocentric ideals through the phenomenon of wandering troubadours which has led Provencal speaking poets to the courts of northern Italy. As a result, as noble Italian patrons had more wealth than their Southern French counterparts, it was a more useful and beneficial source that had the greater ability to support the troubadour's efforts to spread the gynocentric message in Europe. There is also evidence that those new noble Italian patrons still had the traditional enthusiasm for poetic art which had become outdated in Provence maybe due to the long prevailing legacy of the Roman empire and its culture. In addition, the movement to north Italy was increased by the arrival of the Albigensian Crusade, which gradually destroyed the native aristocratic art, music, and literature in Southern France. So, the move from France to Italy was motivated both by historical, economic, cultural as well as religious rational. Consequently, by 1250, the majority of troubadours had, at some time, sought patronage abroad, either in Spain or North Italy.
In the bottom line, the importance of the troubadour phenomenon as well as their move to Italy cannot be underestimated on many level both for spreading the Cathar legacy, the preservation and propagation of the Gynocentric ideal as well as laying the ground for modern pop culture and mainstream media that are the are the up-to-date equivalent in preserving the gynocentric matrix. The same move also opened the door to Southern French culture in Northern Italy and in part explains why nobles, such as Oberto Pelavicino, may have turned to Languedocian rather than native Italian Cathars. At the same time, it provided a safe, yet familiar, environment for the Languedocian Cathars, surely also in the combination or by association to the local Cathars in Italy with the aim at merging into one powerful and united movement. In fact, not only it is "possible that some troubadours were sympathetic to the Cathar cause" or "actual believers themselves" as some historian believe but in reality most of them were Cathars themselves while it is not to rule out that with the growing popularity of the Cathar ideals there were also newcomers and converts to the lines of this heretical sect.
THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF THE TROUBADOURS AND THEIR PATRONS IN SOUTHERN FRANCE
Interpretation of the sources for the study of the lives of the troubadours has always been difficult for the researchers and historians yet in my opinion simply due to the fact that it was based on profound misunderstanding of the academic nature of the scientific inquiry as I have outlined in the beginning of our discussion above. Information has been falsely drawn from exclusively biographical or solely literary references within the poems themselves, the short vidas, written in the mid-thirteenth century and the longer or the more "fanciful" razos, written around the same time to explain specific poems. For the reasons I mentioned above, in lacking and insufficient research, the inquiry has become jeopardized by ignoring the truth that a more inclusive and wider meta-research approach is needed to avoid the exclusive cherry picking trap and subsequently the selective reading and interpretation of reality. Nevertheless, those literary sources are not only interesting but highly important as we are going to discuss them now. For example, the most useful of these sources are the vidas. Although they were written in Provencal language they contain enough 'italianisms' to be identified as having been shaped in Italy and specifically for the native Italian audience. At least one of their authors, Uc de Saint-Circ, was a Provencal exile.
Once again, rooted in the profound misunderstanding and the lack of a meta-research, the vidas present a problem to the average historian. For example, the main narrative that made such a strong "headache" for the historians often dealt with a tale of love won and lost, frequently linking the poet amorously with the wives of the nobility. In other words, it contained the strong and well-known motive of infidelity. The nature of this poems was not a mere phantasy as those historians use to label it and not only an emanating religious concepts incorporated through philosophical emanation as we have already discussed it but especially tied and an adaptation of the Mosarabic influence of Jewish and Arab secular poetry originating from the Iberian Peninsula. Whereas love and wine poetry is a common theme in Jewish secular poetry the infidelity as an expression of divine love is a well know literary metaphor of not only the love between a man and a woman but as a symbol of religiously divine love in Sufism especially in the poetry of Rumi the great Sufi sage, poet and spiritual master. As such and in the context of courtly and chivalric love this motive drawn from Sufi mysticism has become a literary metaphor that equated the self-hating, self-denting and self-deprecating subservient courtly love of a man to woman as a worldly expression of divine love and any love in that context as such.
Moreover, the Cathar heaven is described as a cheerful paradise of eating, drinking, hunting and sex which by the way reminds us a lot of the Muslim concept of the seventy virgins in paradise. Besides the fact, that it points to a repressed and bigoted form of Cathar abstinence from sex that as we have seen was rooted in misandry in fact it also incorporated the suppressed Utopia of the male longing for female intimacy (and vice versa) that exploded in the in the secular dynamics of the Troubadour culture in the form of courtly love as we have seen in the beginning of our discussion about the process of philosophically emanating religious thoughts into the secular mindset. In here we can see despite the hunting that was replaced by the knightly militarism all the other three elements of eating, drinking and sex are all have become the cornerstones of courtly love and poetry while those motive were merged into the Mosarabic poetical tradition, both of Jews and Muslims that have sang about love, wine, festivities and love/sex whereas the same emanation of religious Cathar principles into their secular realm enabled them to blend it with the secular and religious poetry of the Mosarabic tradition in Spain. It was William of Aquitaine who was the first Troubadour to do such work at was him who spend a significant time and Spain and molded this everything together. And last but not least, the utopian image the sexual nature of paradise has emanated into the secular belief that by being a sexual and otherwise slave of a woman one will achieve the end of suffering and thus the so desired paradise on earth.
As Those were also the ideals of Jewish Muslim (Mosarabic) poetry in the golden age of both religions in Christian Spain, it was William from Aquitaine, the first troubadour, who adopted this legacy in the time he spent in the Iberian Peninsula. However, the vidas normally begin with an almost unfailingly accurate opening statement, which gives the rank and place of origin of the subject. They are also usually accurate when they describe the patrons with whom the troubadour was associated, and even when they are not completely accurate, they are generally in the right geographical area." By the way, such sources can be cautiously used to trace the lives and patrons of the troubadour's patronage. However, when it comes to literary understanding of the context one needs a lot of knowledge in literature itself and especially esotericism and mysticism. Anyway, the troubadour culture was spread by means of the poets themselves that is the troubadour. The troubadours not only wrote the works, but often sang them as well; indeed, the vidas are not slow to point out those who did not have a good singing voice. In addition to the troubadours, there were also the joqlar. Most historians, using a narrow approach of exclusive literary cherry picking of sources have failed to explain this phenomenon subsequently lacking the background knowledge of the joqlar except that they usually sang the songs of the troubadours in the courts. They often combined their songs with acrobatics and jokes, and were consequently regarded as inferior to the troubadours and did not have a comparable social status. In this context it is interesting to note that while conceptually as well as in many other aspects the troubadours have taken their origins and were influenced by the Muslim Sufi and Indian Gynocentric school of thought as for example in the above adaptation of the Sufi infidelity motive, in more practical terms as a wandering artist and singer the troubadours and specifically their other counterparts are almost direct derivative of the Jewish Talmudic BADHANIM (Heb. בַּדְחָן ; “entertainer”); the merrymaker, rhymester who entertained guests, especially at weddings. The Talmud mentions professional jesters (jogler) who cheered the melancholy (Ta’an. 22a) or who amused bride and groom (Ket. 17a; Ber. 30b–31a).
An additional interesting aspect is that while the Talmudic Badhanim have spread the gynocentric ideal within a closed and specific culture including its familial frame of the marriage, the Christian European troubadours have taken upon themselves and within the feudal Gynocentric society to spread those cultural values not only around Europe but also all over the world. This, however, led later to cross-cultural influence where Jewish itinerant singers, learning upon the Christian Troubadours have developed and merged into more professional and organized or institutionalized artists while still being traditionally called Badhanim or Leizanim (“jesters”) and later developed into the more actual version of the Kleyzmers. Those badhanim or leizanim are mentioned in medieval rabbinical literature (e.g., R. Elijah b. Isaac of Carcassonne’s Asufot); they seem to have appeared as professional entertainers at weddings and at Hanukkah and Purim celebrations, much after the pattern of the troubadours and ballad singers. It is especially at those weddings as well as the Hanukkah and Purim festivities that the Badhanim includes also acrobatic stunts and shows.
Whereas the importance of Music originates from the Leviim who sang in the temple in Jerusalem, thus in historical terms, practicing music as a profession also appears to be a characteristic of Jewish life in Christian Spain, as one of the services offered by Jewish vassals at the courts of their rulers. As the jogler lacked the same social status and were considered inferior to the troubadours themselves the question that arises and needs a further research is whether those jogler or at least many of them were not of Jewish origin themselves. Anyway, some names of Jewish instrumentalists active in Christian Spain are while we're on the subject are recorded in historic annals. Alharizi (ca. 1220), for example, dedicated a poem to the Jewish Ud player Yshayah (yode’a nagen be-kinnor). The famous illuminated miniatures in the manuscripts of the Cantigas de Santa Maria of King Alfonso X depict Jewish musicians. One of the earliest and well documented cases of a Jewish trovador is Ha-Gorni, who was active in Provence and probably Aragon during the second half of the 13th century. In his eighteen extant Hebrew poems, he clearly depicts his own persona as a troubadour, stresses his proficiency as an instrumentalist and recalls his ties with his contemporary non-Jewish colleagues. But Ha-Gorni was an exceptional case of a combination of Hebrew poet and troubadour. Most Jews who engaged in this profession in medieval Spain were mainly involved with the dominant non-Jewish culture. In other words, they were proficient in poetry in Roman languages and its musical performance rather than in composing Hebrew poems. Names of Jewish troubadours and minstrels (juglares or jongleurs which linguistically ties us to the jogler) appear in royal records. Jews were part of the musical chapel of King Sancho IV of Castille. Annals of the royal court for 1293–1294 mention a Jewish juglar and his wife next to Moorish and Christian juglares. “Barzalay judeum joculatorem” appeared before the court of Jaime II in Barcelona in 1315.159 Bonafas and his son Sento (Shemtov), Jewish juglares from Pamplona, received payments from Charles II (1349–1387).
Additionally, Romano gathered remarkable records about Jewish musicians who served in the court of the kings of Aragon in the second half of the 14th century. The Jewish musicians appear in the Aragonese sources with different denominations: mim, jouglar, tocador de viola, sonador de laut, minister, minister de corda, and ministers d’instruments de corda. All these Jewish musicians played string instruments. All except for two (Bonafas Gentili Jacob from Navarra and Natan de Molina from Castille) were from Aragon: Simuel Fichell, Bonafas Aven Mayor and Avraham el Mayor were from Saragossa, Jucef Axivil from Borja. Yohanan (no family name) served the bishop of Valencia; Sasson Salom, minister de corda e sonador de laut served King Juan I and King Martn; Yohanan Semuel Yohanan Baruch served Queen Sibilla de Forti. Romano concludes that Jewish juglares and minstrels, local and visiting ones, served most of the kings of Aragon and their families. We cannot know if there were differences between the repertories or techniques of Jewish and non-Jewish musicians. Blasco expanded Romano’s findings by locating other Jewish juglares and sonadores from the city of Saragossa.163 terms juglar, ministril, and sonador were used interchangeably in 14th and 15th century Saragossa. Jewish minstrels and string players in the courts of Aragon took advantage of their privileged position in order to obtain benefits, favors and even posts in the Jewish community. Some artists moved to other kingdoms due to the animosity of their neighbors. Others combined their art with mundane trades such as clothes merchant. So, the evidences already gathered strongly point to the direction we pointed out above, yet as I have said more research is need to 100% define the jogler as Jews.
Now, back to the Vidas, one specific that of the Uc de la Bacalaria speaks disparagingly of Uc's talents:
'Joglars fo de pauc valor; e pauc annet e pauc fo conogutz.
To some extent this was also a matter of birth. The jioqlar can be distinguished by their names and the remarks made about them. They were not drawn from the nobility, but tended to form part of the lord's entourage. A few jioqlar were mentioned by name. Bertran de Born makes repeated reference to one of his jioqlar Papiol and mentions three others: Guilhem, Mailoli and Arnaud. Occasionally, a joqlar might become a troubadour, but he was seldom acclaimed and his origins were not forgotten. Pistoleta started as the ioqlar for Arnaut de Marvoill, (the precise word used in the vida is cantaire; singer) and then went on to compose his own material:
'e fo ben grazitz entre la bona gen; mais horn f o de pauc-solatz e de paubra enduta e de pauc vaillimen.
However, Pistoleta's career ended abruptly when he married at Marseilles, and became a merchant there. When the noble Raimbaut d'Orange addressed Maria de,Vertfuoil, herself a noblewoman, as mos belhs Jocqlars. Indeed, she may well have been capable of composition in Provencal, since there are references to several women troubadours. In other words, the picture we might draw now and it still requires more research is that at least the sub troubadour culture of the jogler might have been a complex and diverse phenomenon of Jews, Christians including men and women yet extremely crucial and important as the root through which the cross cultural and religious pollination too place. Although it can be said that the joqlar were apparently not drawn from the nobility and they were taken from a whole range of backgrounds whereas the troubadours themselves were in general of a higher status.
Now having this historical back ground in mind, one should remember that at the height of the Andalusi Arabic and Hebrew poetic upheaval, a young nobleman in what is now Southern France began to compose vernacular verses of courtly love. At the end of the 11th century this would be not only accepted but also warmly embraced in Córdoba or Seville, both as a social as well as in the art itself as poets there had been composing vernacular zajals for centuries. Yet, across the Pyrenees where such cross cultural pollination still haven't presented itself, it encapsulated a revolutionary break in poetic practice. Anyway, it is William IX of Acquitaine, the “first troubadour,” who is credited with writing these first verses of courtly poetry in the Roman vernaculars. Thus the question which arose earlier and has generated volume after volume of scholarly dispute and lots of controversy as to whether and to what extent the two phenomena might be related has been answered. They simply cannot be separated. The so-called "thèse arabe" asserts that Andalusi poetic practice crossed the Pyrenees with William VIII of Acquitaine in the form of a troop of Andalusi qiyan —technically singer-slaves but in practice closer to indentured professors of music. However, as we have seen above it was not only the technical aspect of the music the mountains but also the cultural, religious and gynocentric legacy of the East.
Anyway, William, the father of the first troubadour had crossed the Pyrenees in the assistance of Sancho Ramírez of Aragon in the Siege of Barbastro (Huesca), then held by al-Muzaffar of Zaragoza. As part of the spoils of this successful campaign he brought back with him to Acquitaine a troop of Andalusi qiyan, who then introduced Aquitainian musicians, singers, and audiences to courtly strophic song in the form of muwashshahat and zajals (Nykl 1946, 371–411; Boase 1977, 62–75; Menocal 1987, 28–33; Robinson 2001, 295–299). As the story goes, young William IX, having been reared on such musical and poetic heritage, simply followed the lessons of his father’s qiyan in composing the first verses of troubadour poetry, thus converting himself into the Muqaddam of Cabra or Dunash ibn Labrat of the north. The poetic movement begun (according to tradition) by William IX soon spread southward into the Peninsula, where poets working in Provençal, Catalan, or Galician- Portuguese performed at the courts of Christian Iberian Monarchs. Even by the thirteenth century, Alfonso X “The Learned” was patron to many poets who performed troubadouresque poetry in Provençal and Galician-Portuguese. These Roman languages, as we have noted, still held pride of place in poetic practice, while Castilian was as yet not used for profane courtly poetry (though by the time of Alfonso X it was already a well-established language of prosaic learning and religious narrative poetry).
Modern literary history makes very little of this important poetic practice at the court of Alfonso X, and the courtly poetry performed in Provençal and Galician-Portuguese receives very little attention in literary histories of the period, particularly in those studies geared toward more general or student audiences (Valbuena Prat 1937; Alborg 1966; M. Alvar 1980; Deyermond 1980), with some exceptions (Filgueira Valverde 1949, 599-603; Deyermond 1971, 10-11). This is to be expected, because the interstitial, the poetic practice that crosses the linguistic and national boundaries constructed in modernity, is often minimized or altogether omitted in the story of what poetry used to be. After all, if literary history is an “act of forgetting” (Gies 2001, 3), something must be forgotten. This can be true even in the case of a single author, such as the iconic King Alfonso X, who himself composed a great deal of verse. His canonical songs of devotion to the Virgin Mary, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, despite being written in Galician-Portuguese (due to their royal authorship) achieved canonical status. The same Alfonso is also author of a corpus of scurrilous invective poetry in Galician-Portuguese, the so-called Cantigas d’escarnho e maldizer, that have almost completely evaded the gaze of the literary historiographer (Snow 1990). This is most likely due to the off-color nature more than to the language in which they were written, but the fact that the Cantigas de Santa Maria pass muster while the Cantigas d’escarnho do not tells us much about how modern literary historiography distorts the data in order to produce neater, more linguistically and culturally homogeneous narratives that serve national and regional agendas. This distortion is even more extreme in the case of non-Romance languages. Literary histories of the court of Alfonso X make almost no mention of the Hebrew poets working in the service of the Learned King, the most notable of which was Todros Abulafia, who wrote a number of poems in which he writes of Alfonso’s liteary patronage and of life at his court (Procter 1951, 130–132; Roth 1985, 440; O’Callaghan 1993, 144–146; Salvador Martínez 2003, 446 n 44). Seen from the angle of Hebrew literary History, Abulafia is an outlier for his experimentation with troudabouresque styles, and as a consequence has received less critical attention than other Hebrew poets of his era who hewed more closely to the Andalusi models favored by Sephardic poets. These models mixed freely in Abulafia’s verse with Biblical, troubadouresque, and other themes, motifs, and techniques of his own innovation, in a massive corpus totaling over 1200 compositions (Schirmann 1956, 2: 416; Targarona Borrás 1985; Doron 1989, 42; Brann 1991, 149; Cole 2007, 257).
If one accepts the "thèse arabe" or Andalusi genesis of troubadour poetry in term of art, which was one of at least four or five major roots of legacies that influenced the troubadours and that in fact as we have seen must be broaden to the "Mosarabic (Jewish Arab) Thesis" this mixture of Andalusi and troubadouresque verse performed at the court of a Castilian king is nothing less than a poetic family reunion. In Abualafia’s verse, the Andalusi muwashshah that gave rise to the Provençal cansó are reunited in Hebrew back in the Iberian Peninsula, where interstitiality was the norm and was responsible for any number of important innovations. Al-Andalus was home to unparalleled poetic traditions in both Arabic and Hebrew, celebrated to this day as important classical legacies in the histories of both languages. Provençal gave us the troubadours, Galician-Portuguese gave us Alfonso’s great collection of Marian verse, but all that Castilian could manage in the thirteenth century, when the Sicilian poets were inventing the sonnet that would catapult Petrarch to immortality, was Marian and hagiographic verse for priests and the faithful, but nothing actually sung at court (Antonelli 1989; Pötters 1998; Weiss 2006). Castile-León during this period was home to a great deal of poetic innovation by poets working in the interstices of national lingustic traditions, who for purposes of the History of Spanish Literature were not Spanish, despite the fact that they might have lived their entire lives in Castile-León. Similarly, poets writing in the interstices between Hispano-Roman language and Semitic languages or even simply Semitic alphabets have been glossed over in the history of the Peninsula’s literature (and when we say this we often mean the history of Castile-León). A quick perusal of almost any literary history of Spain, Portugal, or Catalonia written in the twentieth century reveals little to no mention of the Hebrew, Arabic, or Hispano-Roman other than the national tradition in question. Even Hebrew poetry written in the full flower of Roman vernacularity does not make the cut, with very few exceptions (de Riquer 1997; Cabo Aseguinolaza et al. 2010; Barletta et al. 2013). Though the Histories of Hebrew literature tend to minimize the contributions of poets who wrote after the flowering of Romance vernacularization in the thirteenth century, Hebrew poets in Castile and Aragon were active well into the fifteenth century. Their work (as demonstrated in the Andalusi period by the Hebrew muwashshahat with Romance kharjat) was in constant dialogue with the Romance literatures of the Peninsula, a dialogue likewise minimized by critics of medieval Hebrew literature, who have tended to focus on what they perceive as the hermetically “Jewish” aspects of the Hebrew literature of the period. Just as the Hebrew poet Todros Abulafia experimented with troubadouresque motifs and techniques, including the cansó (love song) and tensó (invective) forms, other poets working in Hebrew likewise participated in the poetic practice of the day, in ways that would not seem extraordinary among poets working in Romance languages (Sáenz-Badillos 1996b).
Some, like Shem Tov ben Isaac Ardutiel of Carrión (Castile, 14th c., known as Santob de Carrión in Spanish), wrote verse in both Hebrew and Castilian, and carried on an internal dialogue between both languges which, for the modern literary critic, is crucial to fully understanding Ardutiel’s work (Ardutiel 1947; Shepard 1978; Ardutiel 1980; Zemke 1997; Alba Cecilia 2008; Wacks 2012). Others, like Vidal Benvenist (Zaragoza, 14th-15th c.), adapted popular themes and motifs in learned Hebrew compositions. Benvenist’s Tale of Efer and Dinah is a rhyming prose narrative gloss on the canción de malmaridada, in which a young girl laments her loveless marriage to an older man. Benvenist reworks this topos into a morality tale ostensibly sung —or perhaps produced on stage— for the Purim festival of the Jewish communities of Zaragoza (Benvenist 2003; Wacks 2013). In other cases Hebrew poets borrowed the melodies themselves of popular lyrics for their compositions in Hebrew, as they did in the Andalusi period for the Hebrew and Arabic muwashshah. We have manuscripts of Hebrew poetry both devotional and secular from the fifteenth century that specify, at the end of each composition, the first line of the Castilian popular lyric that lends its melody to the poem (Seroussi and Havassy 2009). In Catalonia we have a collection of bilingual Catalan-Hebrew Jewish wedding songs in which the bulk of each verse is in Catalan, with rhyming words in Hebrew. These Cants de noces demonstrate a literary diglossia that (as the muwashshahat and other genres of lyric poetry practiced on the Peninsula crossed both language and register, in this case colloquial Catalan with Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew (Riera i Sans 1974; Argenter 2001). It is not surprising that Jewish or Muslim Iberians sang the songs of their day in their native languages; nor is it surprising that they would produce poems in which elements of their colloquial and confessional languages intertwine. We should remember that at no point in their history did Iberian Jews speak Hebrew as a native language, and that by the fifteenth century there were significant populations of Iberian Muslims whose primary language was Castilian or Aragonese (Harvey 1990, 7; Boswell 1977, 382; López-Morillas 2000, 54–57). However, literary histories that focus on the poetic production of a single dialect of Hispano-Romance or a single Semitic language of the Peninsula tend to obviate these interstitial voices. Just as the Jewish Iberian who wrote in Hebrew, and the Muslim poets who wrote in Arabic have been marginalized in national literary histories, the poetry of the Iberian Muslims who wrote in Castilian or Aragonese, but in the Arabic alphabet have likewise suffered poorly in literary history.
The aljamiado poetry of the Morisco authors of the fifteenth through early seventeenth centuries gives us an example of Islamic Spanish literature that, like the poetry by Iberia’s Jews, demonstrates a familiarity and facility with the poetics of the dominant culture while putting these in the service of Islamic religion in a specific ethno-cultural milieu (Harvey 1974; Vázquez 2007; López Baralt 2009, 24-25). While the majority of aljamiado texts are in prose, there is a corpus of aljamiado poetry that bears striking resemblance to the mester de clerecía genre of hagiographic and Marian verse that flourished in Castilian in the thirteenth century (Barletta 2005, 151-55). Later aljamiado poets, writing at or after the time of the Moriscos’ expulsion from the Peninsula, write sonnets and other popular forms in imitation of the most renowned Christian authors of the day. In similar fashion, the Jews expelled from the Peninsula in 1492 continued to practice poetic forms both popular and learned that they brought with them from Spain well into Modernity and throughout the Mediterranean and the New World. A tour of the “afterlife” of medieval Castilian poetic forms as practiced by Sephardic Jews would take you around the Mediterranean and across the centuries. In the seventeenth century you might attend a prayer service of the Muslim-Jewish donmeh sect of the false messiah Shabbetai Tzvi in Constantinople, where they would sing the ballad of “La linda Melosina” as a kabbalistic hymn for welcoming the Sabbath on Friday night (Perets 2006). One hundred years later we join a Purim celebration in Izmir where we hear the story of Queen Esther sung in coplas de Purim (Hassán 2010; Romero 2011). In another hundred years, while out walking in Salonika we hear a mother Salonika singing a medieval romance (ballad) to her child at bedtime (Díaz Mas 1992, 123). Finally, in current-day Jerusalem we enjoy a drink in a café while a young singer fronting a jazz band performs a program including traditional songs such as Los bilbilicos and her own original compositions, likewise sung in a dialect of medieval Castilian mixed with loanwords from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, and French (Cohen 2011). Other poetic forms forged in the interstices of medieval Iberian poetic practice continue to bear fruit in the present day. In the Arab world, popular singers perform muwashshahat and zajals. Classical Andalusi orchestras in North Africa, France, and Israel perform settings for compositions by Andalusi poets. Many of the popular Iberian poetic forms that were born at the interstices escaped literary history, and were free to live their own lives outside of books and without being linked to the modern national project.
It is under those historical developments that that all of this has culminated during the reign of Eleanor of Aquitaine, the queen and mother of the troubadours and as we have seen at the beginning of the discourse spread first to Italy, then to Germany and from there all over Europe. Eleanor of Aquitaine (1137-1152) was one of the most powerful and influential figures of the Middle Ages. As John Davis elaborates in his book "Inheriting a vast estate at the age of 15 made her the most sought-after bride of her generation. She would eventually become the queen of France, the queen of England and the crusade to the Holy Land. She is also credited with establishing and preserving many of the courtly rituals of chivalry. Courtly rituals of chivalry refer to an actual court system, presided over by Eleanor of Aquitaine herself, her daughter Marie and sixty other women (but not a single man). They were known as “les cours d’amour” - “The Courts of Love.” This amounted to little more than state sponsored feminism. In this “court” system, Eleanor, a woman, and sixty other women were the sole arbiters of customs between men and women engaged in intimacy. If a woman felt aggrieved by her lover, she would bring her complaint to the Court and either Eleanor, or Marie, or other high-born women would “resolve” the dispute. The queen’s resolutions were enforceable by means of the queen’s command over state violence. They were also enforceable through severe social sanctions such as shunning. In addition, literary poets and troubadours of the time, spread gynocentric viewpoints of the powerful Queen Eleanor all across Europe. The literary poets and troubadours were the “mainstream media” of the time. The gynocentric judgments of les cours d’amour (the courts of love), coupled with Eleanor’s political power as Queen of both France and England, insured that the gynocentric attitudes of the Poitevin Code [the courts of love were located in Poitiers in the South of France] became the law and the prevailing gender attitudes across most of Europe. What were the codes of the courts of love?
Davis continues and writes, the most accurate statement comes from a scholar writing in 1937 in a well-respected journal article. Writing in Speculum: A Journal of Mediaeval Studies (January, 1937), Amy Kelly writes: “In the Poitevin code, man is the property, the very thing of woman.”7 Chivalry, therefore, had little or nothing to do with equality between men and women. Chivalry became modern feminism, in which men are merely “disposable property and things,” for women who want to “have it all.” This “Court of Love,” and the Poitevin code, evolved over the ensuing 800 years into what we now know as the “system of family courts.” Although there are many male judges presiding over our system of “family courts,” those males have been subjected to 800 years of gynocentric conditioning and modern feminism. As a result, current “family courts” isolate most Fathers from their children, strip the Fathers of their assets and income (through alimony, property distributions and child support) and routinely seize children to be placed into the “foster home” or adoption system of the State pending the award of sole custody to the mother. Nothing could be more pleasing to modern feminism than this wholesale destruction of the nuclear family by the state. To quote one modern feminist, Linda Gordon: “The nuclear family must be destroyed, and people must find better ways of living together.... Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process Families will be finally destroyed only when a revolutionary social and economic organization permits people’s needs for love and security to be met in ways that do not impose divisions of labor, or any external roles, at all.”8 However noble chivalry may have been considered in medieval times, what is clear is that modern feminism has used the obligations men feel to be “chivalrous” in a way that imposes only burdens and responsibilities on men, and bestows lofty rights and privileges on women. The concept of chivalry has now evolved (or corrupted) to impose unwarranted and unnecessary privileges upon women, solely at the expense of men.
Anyway, given the full scope of information here which might be unique in its intensity and the full data available we got a more complete and inclusive information about the origins, both conceptually, socially, artistically, religiously as well as geographically and finally their patronage too. The sources as we see and contrary to earlier assumption make us understand that the widespread influence of the troubadour culture was at this period in fact already gigantic. As we see a huge amount of poetry from all over Europe is recorded. The vidas are only a small fraction that once again was selectively and exclusively cherry picked in the past. Both in wider terms of literary evidence as well as in these four one appear to be reasonably accurate about social status. However, there are also two specific vidas that are of high value as they back up linguistic evidence suggesting Gasgon origins. Here we should also note that the most influential poets in the first half of the twelfth century were both nobles and men/women of substance. We can also witness here the growing importance of the noblewoman or domna as the object of love, and this signals not only to the increasing importance of women in the life of the court but to the very essence of the belief in the preeminence as well as putting them on the pedestal and elevating to the level of God.
More information can be drawn for example when reading an analyzing the Vidas of the 28 poets of the late twelfth century. Eight were born into the upper strata of the nobility, including two women and King Alfonso II of Aragon; eight were members of the minor nobility, 21 including two women; PP but only five, all men, came from the merchant class. Using such information on patronage as we have, six poets seem to have begun their careers or spent all their productive lives at the courts of minor nobles" and five apparently spent nearly all their creative lives at the courts of major nobles. There is no record of any of these troubadours being patronised by merchants, however exalted. Again, a similar pattern can be traced among those people who became Cathars. A distinction must be drawn between those who became perfecti and those who were their patrons and supporters. There were also accounts, such as that of Heribert of Perigueux who had reported that many people who had 'entered this trickery and not only nobles who had abandoned their wealth, but also clerks, priests, monks and nuns. It is logical whereas if there was no threat on masses converting to the Cathars and their significance would have been minor to fight Catharism with the Inquisition and a crusade. One possibility might be that at least many of the converts choose to go the paths of poetry than others offered by the Cathars like the chosen Perfecti.
Specifically, there is also evidence and several examples of the wives of nobles becoming Cathar perfectae and the poetry of the troubadours is mainly concerned with ladies of precisely this class. This, however, is not only important in that sense but also from the point of view that it is another yet from un-endless evidences that refute the nonsensical feminist lies about women being chattels and oppressed by evil patriarchy as seems that as standing opposed to others who were really oppressed this virtual patriarchy couldn't do anything against a simple woman who decided to follow the path of heresy. Women from the ranks of the lower nobility may also have become Cathar supporters or even perfectae. Again, in a yet another refutation of the above mentioned patriarchal nonsense, Jordan of Saxony recalled that bishop Diego founded his house at Prouille in 1206 for daughters of the nobility as even the parents send their daughters to the heretics for their education. There is a mention of poverty yet that is a lie sense how the nobility was poor in feudal society not to speak from the lower real class that also joined the ranks of the heresy. This account is extremely important as it show the huge role of women the Cathar gynocentric message, the gynocentrism of the troubadour themselves as well as feudal Europe's matri-focal nature. As we have proven in another discourse those were also the women not the husbands who stood behind those decisions.
There is also another comment about the clergy that is of great interest. Many of the troubadours had ecclesiastical connections, and frequently troubadours would retire into a monastery at the end of their career. However, some came from the ranks of the clergy. According to their vidas Arnaut de Maroill was originally a poor clerk from the diocese of Perigord and Peire Rogier was probably a canon at Clermont cathedral. Indeed, the breadth of learning which modern scholarship is revealing the troubadours to have possessed would suggest that many more of them may have become educated during some sort of religious training. This is very important as it shows the full participation of the church in spreading the gynocentric ideals which benefited their cause. Moreover, specific evidence of troubadour patrons, who were also Cathar supporters, is rather harder to find hence as we've already stated above due to the church's theological persecution those tracks had to be hidden. Possibly, the best example is Roger II Trencavel (Tailiefer), a notorious defender of the heretics of Lavaur, Laurac, Fanjeaux and Minerve 31 and whose wife Azalais, daughter of Raymond V of Toulouse, was a patron of troubadours, notably of Arnaut de Maroill. The court of the Count of Foix was also a well-known centre of heresy; both Raymond-Roger's sister Esclarmonde and his wife Philippa were perfectae together with his aunt and another sister. The count himself remained carefully distant from the Cathars, and refused to give the customary greeting to the perfecti whom he met.
There were also troubadours at court with Peire Vidal, calling Raymond-Roger the comte ros as in the poem Estat ai gran sazo. The policy of the Count of Foix helps explain why the links between the troubadours, heresy and patronage are by no means clear. As I said fear and the need to hide their tracks was mainly at play. Prominent patrons could never afford to alienate the Church by outright endorsement of heresy, while the troubadours would not be so foolish as to embarrass their patrons as well as endanger or incriminate themselves by any direct reference to the Cathars. As has been seen, a very close association can be drawn between heresy, the troubadours and parts of the nobility. Therefore, when considering the relationship between the troubadours and Cathars, once again not a complex picture arises but and not only that of enmeshed interest, ideal, targets, and so but in fact that of the Troubadours at least most of them as being Cathars themselves. It was the result that both in the realm of life in the court in which both troubadours and Cathars participated on a roughly equal level as well as on the sphere of the appeal of Catharism to a wider section of society they met and interlaced together. Moreover, it is quite clear that all of them wouldn’t have joined the lines of the perfecti who preached in the streets of Toulouse but joined the credentes which were the lay aspect of Catharism and in a later development laid the basis for its secular form. In the city, the perfecti probably had little connection with the work of the troubadours or the joglar, who may have recited their songs. In the world of the court (and spiritually), however, the two were more closely connected and it is not only this world that gave the conceptual frame to queen Eleanor of Aquitaine to form her courts of love as well as the Pointevin code of men as being the thing of the woman as Amy Kelly points out but also one of the earliest cultural connections between southern France and northern Italy can be traced here. Namely, the patronage of troubadours in Italian society.
The move to Italy from Southern France and Northern Spain
It was only around 1190 that troubadours started to find patrons on the other side of the Alps. Peire de la Mula became involved with Ottone, Count of Carretto, and podesta of Genoa in 1194, and also found patronage in Montferrat and Cortemiglia acording to his vida. Peire Vidal, after visiting the courts of Raymond V of Toulouse, Barral, viscount of Marseilles and Alfonso II of Aragon, went to Lombardy in the early 1190s and visited the minor courts of Lombardy and Piedmont as well as that of Boniface of Montferrat. Boniface was the crucial figure in the spread of troubadour culture to Italy. When he set out on the Fourth Crusade he was patron to both Gaucelm Faidit and Raimbaut de Vaqueyras. By this time, at least one other member of the Lombard nobility was also a patron to the troubadours. Boniface's brother-in-law Albert, Marqurs of Malaspina, featured in a tenso composed in 1195 by Raimbaut de Vaqueiras. There is considerable evidence, therefore, that even before the Albigensian Crusade, Southern French troubadours were going to North Italy for a variety of reasons. This movement of troubadours from Southern France to Italy was connected to the growing Italian trade domination of the Southern French coast. This had led to an increasing exposure of Provencal culture and is paralleled by a growing taste for poetry, and specifically Provengal poetry, in North Italy.
These developing links are illustrated by, for example, the background of the troubadour Folquet de Marseilles, born on the Southern French coast but the son of a Genoese merchant. On another level, the presence of great patrons on the Third Crusade, such as Richard, king of England might well have stimulated interest in Southern French culture among the Montferrats, Genoese and Pi sans. The second reason for the growing interest lies in the slightly ironic fact that, at the point when Provencal achieved its' greatest success as a literary language in Southern Europe, the quality of the poetry was starting to decline. The troubadours may have been forced to go abroad to find an audience. Whereas the great novelty of the troubadours poetry was the expression of romantic love by the poet to his lady, there is evidence that the basic subject matter became too familiar. The greatness of a poet such as Arnaut Daniel who was active between 1180 and 1200. was that his ingenuity was able to squeeze new life from fairly hackneyed themes by use of the occasional startling image, new form or clever word play.
The qualitative change in Provencal poetry can also be seen in the crusade songs of the troubadours. The message in Marcabrun's Pax in nomine Domini written in the 1140s is simple: all able-bodied knights should give up their worldly concerns and "iran a! lavador" by which he means Jerusalem. The songs composed for the Fourth Crusade strike a different attitude Raimbaut de Vaqueiras wrote "Ara pot horn conoisser e proar". But this is more a hymn of praise his patron, to Boniface of Montferrat than a true rallying of the faithful. A more tangible problem for the troubadours was the decline of major patrons in the traditional areas. Raymond V of Toulouse died in December 1194, Alfonso II of Aragon in 1196 and Barral, Viscount of Marseilles in 1192. Lesser patrons also disappeared; Roger II Trencavel died in 1194 as did Ermengarde, countess of Narbonne, after two years of retirement in a nunnery. 5This brought to an end a generation of troubadour patronage. Raymond VI does not appear to have had many troubadours at his court and Raimon de Miraval is the only recorded recipient of his patronage. The power of the viscounts of Marseilles died with Barral Pedro II of Aragon continued to be generous, but in comparative isolation" in Spain.
Additionally, there was also a decline in the numbers of leading troubadours: Bertran de Born retired to a monastery before 1197, between 1195 and 1200 Folquet de Marseilles did the same. Arnaut Daniel ceased composition around 1200, as did Guiraut de Bornelh. Even before the Albigensian Crusade, therefore, leading troubadours were making for North Italy, since nobles such as Boniface of Montferrat or Albert, Marquis of Malaspina, could offer more substantial patronage than the poets could obtain in Southern France. In addition, ''he courts of the Italian nobility still considered the Provencal lyric a novelty. Finally, the problems of finding patronage in Southern France were exacerbated by the arrival of the Albigensian Crusade in 1209. The Crusade not only resulted in the violent deaths of some patrons, but the consequent confiscations of land meant that many courts were dispersed. All of these factors, as outlined above, served to increase the attractions of Italy for the troubadours. Of the forty poets with vidas dated during the period of the Albigensian Crusade, eight moved to Italy to join those who left in the 1190s and early years of the thirteenth century. Eight more moved to Spain during the same period. Although it cannot be said that literary life collapsed in Provence and Languedoc, influential patrons in Italy became noticeably more important.
The timings of the troubadours' movements are also significant. Only Aimeric de Peguilhan left in the first months of the Crusade, which would suggest that most saw it as another campaign in the endless military skirmishing, characteristic of politics of the area. However, the disastrous defeats suffered by the South between 1211 and 1214 convinced many that the future was more promising abroad. There is also a fragment of evidence suggesting troubadours faced economic hardship in Southern France: according to his vida. Peirol became too poor to maintain his' status as a knight. By 1215 four more of the troubadours had left for Italy. The fact that many returned to Southern France when Southern faidits had reestablished themselves shows that this emigration differed from the drift to Lombardy before the Crusade. The early 1220s saw Raymond VI and his son victorious and the return of Peirol and two other troubadours, but this respite was short-lived. Guilhem Figueira fled from Toulouse as soon as the city was handed over to the invaders in early 1229. We have therefore seen how, in twelfth century Languedoc, there were considerable similarities between the social origins of the heretics and their supporters, and those of the troubadours and their patrons. We have also seen the major role played by the troubadours in establishing contacts between Southern France and Italy, and in introducing the Italians to Southern French culture.
REFERENCES
1) On the rise of the troubadours, the most convincing argument that
troubadour poetry grew out of 'informal acculturation 1 from
Spanish-Arabic origins is deftly summarised in A. MacKay, Spain
in the Middle Ages; from Frontier to Empire. 1000-1500. (London,
1977), 90-4, although the alternative theories are given in T. S.
R. Boase, The Origin and Meaning of Courtly Love. (Manchester,
1977).
For the relationship between troubadours and heresy, see. D. de
Rougemont, L'Amour et L'Occident. 2nd edn., (Paris, 1956), 68-76,
[first published 1939] who desribes an elaborate code by which
the troubadours referred to Cathar concepts. His ideas have
subsequently been largely discredited, (Boase. 80) and Davenson
could later write that there would be no need to take the idea
seriously, had it not been proposed by such an eminent figure [H.
Davenson, Les Troubadours. (Paris, 1961), 142-4]. A less
explicit connection between Cathars and troubadours was suggested
from de Rougemont's arguments by R. S. Briffault, The
Troubadours. (Bloomington, Indiana, 1965) [first published in
French, (Paris, 1945)]. Briffault argues that the Church
disapproved of troubadour 'immorality' at the same time as Cathar
beliefs and troubadours responded by turning to orthodox
religious themes [147-57].
Present scholarship has been cautious in drawing any direct link
between troubadours and heresy. See R. Nelli, Les Cathars.
(Paris, 1972) 106-9 and Duvernov. Religion (I). 271-9. The
current position is described in Robert Lafont's article
'Catharisme et litterature occitane: la marque par 1'absence' in
Les Cathares en Occitanie. ed. R. Lafont, (Paris, 1982), 350-89.
2) J. Boutiere and A. H. Schutz, Biographies des Troubadour's. (Paris
1964), viii-xi.
3) Boutiere and Schutz. 239-43.
4) Boutiere and jchutz. 16-9.
'Jaufre Rudel of Blaye was a very noble man, prince of Blaye. 1
5) The Vidas of the Troubadours, trans. M. Egan, (New York 1984),
xxii-xxiii.
6) A good example of an inaccurate vida which can be cross-checked
and remains useful is that of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras in The Poems
of the Troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras. ed. J. Linskill (The
Hague 1964), 65-76 and Introduction.
7) Boutiere and Schutz. 218.
'He was a joqlar of little merit, and he travelled little and was
little known.'
8) J. Lindsay, The Troubadours and their World. (London 1976), 120
and Anthology of the Provencal Troubadours, ed. T. Bergin et al,
(Yale 1973), vol. 1, 115.
9) Boutiere and Schutz. 491-2.
'and he was welcomed among good society, but was a man of little
conversation, of poor appearance and little worth. 1
10 Berqin. vol. 1, 58.
11) For example La Comtessa de Dia [Boutiere and Schutz. 445-6], Ne
Castellaz fBoutiere and Schutz. 333-4] and Na Lombarda [ Boutiere
and Schutz. - 416-9]. See also M. Bogin, The Women Troubadours.
(London, 1976).
12) Boutiere and Schutz. 7-8.
13) Boutiere and Schutz. 10-13.
14) Boutiere and Schutz. 9.
15) Moore. 203.
16) Peire de Valeira, Peire Rogier, Bernart de Ventadour, Guiraut de
Bornelh. Various references in poems and vidas suggest that the
last three may have come from poor backgrounds. See Boutiere ana
Schutz. 14-15, 267-70, 20-8, 40-2.
17) Boutiere and Schutz. 441-4, 299-300 respectively.
18) Boutiere and Schutz. 523-4, 149-52 respectively.
19) Boutiere and Schutz. 263-6.
20) Boutiere and Schutz. GUI'Hem de Berguedan 527-9, Guillem de Saint
Leidier 271-3, Raimon Jordan 159-66, Bertran ds Born 65-7, Albert
Marques 559, Azalais de Porcairagues 341-2, La Comtessa de Dia
445-6, Amfos d'Aragon 525-6.
21) Boutiere and Schutz. Peire Bremon lo Tort 497, Arnaut Daniel 59-
61, Raimon de Durfort and Turc Malec 147-8, Guiraudo lo Ros 345-
6, Raimbaut de Vaqueyras 447-50, Almuc de Castelnou and Iseut de
Capio 422-4.
22) Boutiere and Schutz. Folquet de Marseille 503-4, Sail d'Escola
63, Gaucelm Faidit 167-9, Peire Vidal (son of a furrier) 351-5,
Peire Raimon 347-8.
23) Folquet de Marseilla was at the court of Lord Barcl de Marseilles
FRoutiere and Schutz. 470-1]. Arnaut de Maroill was at the court
of Roger II Taillefer fBoutiere and Schutz. 32-3]. Sail d'Escola
was at the court of Ermengarde of Narbonne [Boutiere and Schutz.
64]. Gaucelm Faidit was at the court of Marie de Ventadour,
Raimon d'Argout, Hugh IX Count of La Marche [Boutiere and Schutz.
167-9]. See Berqin. vol. 1, 128.
Jordan Bonel was at the court of Na Guibors de Montausier and
Peire Vidat was at the court of Baral of Marseilles fLindsav.
144-7].
24) Guiraudo lo Ros was at the court of Amfos, brother of Raymond V
of Toulouse fBoutiere and Schutz. 167-9] and Bertran de Born was
at the court of Henry the Young King, Richard Duke of Aquitaine
and possibly Geoffrey Duke of Brittany [Boutiere and Schutz. 65-
7]. See Lindsav. 144-7.
Peire de la Mula was at the court of Boniface of Montferrat and
Ottone, Court of Carreto fBoutiere and Schutz. 560] and Raimbaut
de Vaqueiras was at the court of Boniface of Montferrat [Boutiere
and Schutz, 447-50]. See Raimbaut de Vaqueiras. 6-7.
Guilhelm Magret was at the court of Peter II of Aragon, Alfons IX
of Leon fBoutiere and Schutz. 493-4]. Peire Raimon de Tolosa was
at the court of Alfonso II of Aragon, Guilhem VIII of Montpellier
and Raymond V or VI of Toulouse FBoutiere and Schutz. 347-8].
25) Moore. 200-3. Mansi. vol. 22, cols. 167-68.
26) Duvernov. Histoire (II). 207. Miqne. PL. vol. 181, cols. 1721-2.
27) Jordan of Saxony. 7.
28) Boutiere and Schutz. 32-5.
29) Boutiere and Schutz. 267-70. The Poems of the Troubadour Peire
Roqier. ed. D. E. T. Nicholson, (Manchester, 1976), 2.
30) S. Packard, Twelfth Century Europe. (Massachusetts, 1973), 226-7.
Packard cites the influence of classical learning on the
troubadours. See also Linda M. Paterson, Troubadours and
Eloquence. (Oxford, 1975).
31) Sumption. 59.
32) Les Poesies Lvriques du Troubadour Arnaut de Mereuil. ed. R. C.
Johnston, (Paris, 1935), xi-xvii. In his introduction, Johnston
states that Roger II was himself Arnaut's patron.
33) Sumption. 59-60. Moore. 236.
34) Peire Vidal, Poesie. ed. D'A. S. Avalle, vol. 1 of 2, (Milan,
Naples, 1960), 95-6.
35) Mundv. Liberty. 76-80.
36) F. A. Ugolini, La Poesia Provenzale e 1'Italia. (Modena, 1939)
did valuable work on listing the Southern French troubadours in
Italy and their patrons. However, much is based on internal
evidence from the troubadours' work. For his comments on Peire
d'Alvernhe, xi-xii.
37) Boutiere and Schutz. 263.
38) The controversy centres round two points:
(a) who was the author of the vida and what did autra mon refer
to; and
(b) the status of so-called corroborative evidence that Peire
d'Alvernhe knew of the work of contemporary Lombard poets
around 1170, from a reference in stanza 13 of Cantarai
d'aquestz trobadors
On (a) see the debate in Boutiere and Schutz, 266, n.2.
On (b) see Peire d'Alvernhe, Liriche: testa, traduzione e note,
ed. A. Del Monte, (Turin, 1953), 126, Berqin. vol. 2, 27 and C.
Pasquali, 'II Piu Antico Trovatore Italiano' in Uqolini, 118-20.
Pasquali concludes that the Italian poet probaiJy lived in
Southern France.
39) Boutiere and Schutz. 560-61.
40) Boutiere and Schutz, 351-55.
41) Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, 31. J. Longnon, 'Les Troubadours a la
Cour de Boniface de Montferrat et en Orient', Revue de Svnthese.
vol. 23, (1948), 45-6 puts the date of the first meeting between
Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and Boniface at 1175, but this seems
unlikely. Pasquali puts it as around 1184. See 'La Vita di
Rimbaldo di Vaqueiras' in Uqolini. 68.
42) Raimbaut de Vaqueiras. 108-16. Ara.m diqatz. Rambaut, si vos
aqrada. The other court in Italy which may have been involved in
Provencal poetry was that of Marchesopulo Pelavicino, whose
daughter may have been the 'Isabella' who shared a tenso with
Elias Cairel in the early thirteenth century. Boqin. 111-3.
43) Boutiere and Schutz. 470-3.
44) Runciman. Crusades, vol. 3, 37-8.
44) The Poetrv of Arnaut Daniel, ed. J. J. Wilhelm, (New York, 1981),
2-5. For the idea that the initial themes of the troubadours
were becoming played out, see L. T. Topsfield, Troubadours and
Love. (Cambridge, 1975), 244-5. J. Anglade, Les Troubadours.
(Paris, 1903), 172-3.
46) Dante Alighieri, La Dlvlna Commedia. ed. and trans. G. L.
Bickersteth (Oxford, 1972), Purgatorio, canto 26, lines 115-48,
especially lines 117-9.
47) Berqin. vol. 1, 13-15.
48) Raimbaut de Vaqueiras. 218-24.
49) A. Press, An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry. (Edinburgh, 1973),
206-11.
'I see the whole world in the grip of guile and treachery; and so
many are the unbelievers that right and good faith scarce hold
sway, for each one is eager to betray his friend so as to enrich
himself. Yet the betrayers are as much betrayed as he who drinks
poison with milk.'
50) Histoire Generale de Lanquedoc, vol 6, Barral, 181; Roger II
Trencavel, 6, 155; Ermengarde, 6, 48.
51) P. Meyer, 'Les Troubadours a la cour des comtes de Toulouse 1 ,
Histoire Generale de Lanquedoc. vol. 7, 445.
52) Histoire Generale de Lanquedoc. vol. 6, 181-2; vol. 8, col. 1959.
53) Boutiere and Schutz. 68-71.
54) Arnaut Daniel, xi.
55) There is some discussion about this. See [Giraut de Borneil]
Giraldo de Borne!h. Trovatore del secolo XII. ed. B. Panvini,
(Catania, 1949), 19-20, 24 and The Poems of Avmeric de Pequilhan.
eds. W. P. Shepard and F. M. Chambers, (Evanston, Illinois,
1950), 8-19.
56) Boutiere and Schutz, 425-31 and Aimeric de Pequilhan. 8-19.
57) Boutiere and Schutz. 503-4.
58) Boutiere and Schutz. 488-90.
59) Boutiere and Schutz. 508-9.
60) Boutiere and Schutz. 303-6 and Peirol; Troubadour of Auverqne.
ed. S. L. Aston, (Cambridge, 1953), 12-17.
61) Boutiere and Schutz. 252-3.
62) Boutiere and Schutz. 236-8.
63) Boutiere and Schutz. 434-5.
64) For reference sec table on page 109.
65) Boutiere and Schutz. 239-43.
66) The 'Donatz Proensals' of Uc Faidit. ed. J. H. Marshall, (Durham,
1969), 62-5.
67) Boutiere and Schutz. 569-70.
68) Boutiere and Schutz. 581-3. The other two were Bertonone Zorzi
rBoutiere and Schutz. 576-7] and Sordel FBoutiere and Schutz.
563-4]. The latter spent much of his later career in Southern
France.
69) Berqin. vol. 1, 248.
70) Anqlade. 172-3.
71) Briffault. 129-30.
72) Topsfield. 244.
73) For references see table on page 109.
74) M.-L. Meneghetti, II Pubblico dei Trovatori. (Modena, 1984), 248-
9.
75) Arnaut Daniel. 40-3.
'For her heart floods full into mine entirely, and it does not
subside; she has in truth practised usury so much that she owns
by it worker and workshop.'
76) Poesies Completes du Troubadour Peire Cardenal. ed. R. Lavaud,
(Toulouse, 1957), 160-8.
77) Berqin. vol. 1, 111-2.
78) Press. 246-9.
'Ah! How can any man of good birth be so unashamed as to
bastardise his lineage for gold or silver?'
79) Press. 244-7.
'Such do I yield myself, noble and true, to you who are peerless
in worth, that I would rather die in grief than that any pleasure
should come to me from you which, to the noble merit which dwells
in you might be of harm. And if every you find me otherwise
disposed towards you, then may you never have mercy or
indulgence. 1
80) Press. 312-5. For example:
'Fis e verays e pui ferms que no suelh 1
81) Topsfield. 247.
82) Boutiere and Schutz. 159-60.
83) Press. 260-3.
'But the Inquisition does not displease me; rather it pleases me
that they should pursue error, and with fair pleasant words
without anger, lead the lost heretics back to the faith, and that
he who repents should find sweet mercy and that they should so
conduct their business rightly that they do not lose sight of
right or wrong, such as they have of it. 1
84) Peire Cardenal, 206-15.
'From here come out the heretics and the sandal-wearers that
swear and blaspheme and play at three dice: this the black friars
do in place of charity. 1
85) Boutiere and Schutz. 202-4.
86) M. Raynouard, Choix des Poesies Oriqinales des Troubadours, vol.
5 of 6, (Paris, 1870), 230 and see P. Meyer, 'Le Debat d'lzarne
et de Sicart de Figueiras', Annuaire Bulletin de la Societe de
1'Histoire de France, vol. 16, 1879, 233-292.
87) Peire Cardenal. no. 36, 222-7.
88) L. Varga, 'Peire Cardenal etait-il heretique?', Revue de
1'Histoire des Religions, vol. 117, 1938-9, 220.
89) Peire Cardenal. no. 38, 232-8.
90) Varga, 211. Hakefield and Evans, 380.
91) Peire Cardenal. no. 43, 254-8.
'In the name of the rightful Lord, God who is Lord of all which
exists and noneexcept him is Lord.'
92) Varga, 216-7.
93) Topsfield. 251.
94) See below, Chapter 8, page 7.53-4.
95) Press. 258-61, lines 28-32.
'Del tot vey remaner valor
Enquer dizon mais de folor:
Qu'aurfres a dompnas non s'eschai
Pero si dompna piegz no fai
Ni.n leva erguelh ni ricor,
Per qen tener no pert Dieu ni s'amor.'
'Still more folly do they speak, saying that cloth of gold does
not befit ladies. Yet if a lady does no worse and feels neither
pride nor haughtiness for that, then through fine apparel she
loses neither God nor His love.'
96) Sumption. 180.
97) Little. 203-4.
98) Lindsav. 256. Peire Cardenal. 617-18.
99) Poesies de Uc de Saint-Circ. ed. A. Jeanroy and J.-J. Salverda de
Grave, (Toulouse, 1913), ix-xv.
100) F. Zufferey, 'Un document relatif a Uc de Saint Circ a la
Bibliotheque Capitulaire de Trevise 1 , Cultura Neolatina. ann.
XXIV, (Modena, 1974), fasc. 1, 9-14.
'Uc de Saint Circ promised on the orders of the Holy Church and
of master Bonifaccio de Pyro the receiving canon of Treviso in
turn [to pay] as much for action of usuries and ill-gotten gains
as for heresy and he has mortgaged to master Bonifaccio de Pyro
all the goods which he has. 1
101) Zufferey, 12-13.
102) T. P. McLaughlin, 'The Teaching of the Canonists on Usury 1 ,
Medieval Studies, vol. 2, 1940, 7-11.
103) Uc de Saint Circ. 96-99.
104) Uc de Saint Circ. 87-90.
105) David A. Sack: The discussion about Jewish Troubadours and Joglares (under CCA Licence)
106) Andrew Roach: THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE ITALIAN
AND SOUTHERN FRENCH CATHARS, 1170-1320