APPENDIX B
The compositions written and performed at Eleanor’s courts in London, Angers and Poitiers were far from being all love songs. The 1,100 texts in medieval Occitan still extant, attributed to 450 poets, are the legacy of a cultural explosion that influenced all subsequent European lyrical poetry and might well have stimulated the Renaissance three centuries earlier than was to be the case, had not Simon de Montfort’s genocidal Albigensian Crusade effectively stamped out the fires of the southern civilisation shortly after Eleanor’s death.
The forms of the verses are as varied as the subjects. L’amor de lonh, or love from afar, is the yearning for a lady whose charms are withheld or distant, and becomes her would-be lover’s overlord by unattainability. In mystical love she is the Virgin Mary, whose praises were sung by the monk Marcabru. La canso is a love song, generally of five or six short verses and a refrain. L’alba is a song in which a watcher warns the lady that dawn approaches and she must leave her lover or risk discovery by an informer who will tell her husband.
Of other popular themes, the pastorela tells of a pretty shepherdess being surprised by a knight, who pays her court; sometimes she yields, but she can refuse and call the other shepherdesses to her aid. La balada is a song to dance to, la romança an account of an amorous adventure, la tenson or joc partit a philosophical dialogue. Lo sirventès is a satire on human nature, religion or politics.
L’ensenhament is literally a lesson in verse on morals or behaviour, for the troubadours were preaching a whole philosophy, vaunting the qualities of leialtat or loyalty and drechura, which is sincerity – and pretz, meaning a proper self-esteem. Valor is a sense of values, melhorament self-improvement, and jòi not just a transient emotion but the sense of moral well-being that comes from leading an honourable life. Perhaps strangest of all for feudal times was the ideal of paratge, meaning equality – not of wealth or power, but of personal dignity.
If yearning for the beloved and the pain of separation are themes common to trobador and trobairitz, some themes are peculiar to the female view. In the masculine planh, the poet laments the death of a hero such as Richard Coeur de Lion or William IX; the poetess laments her unheroic beloved who has died. Among other typical themes were prayers for the Virgin’s intercession, like this one by the trobairitz Na Bieiris de Romans. Na Maria, prètz e fina valors is a profane rewrite of the Hail Mary, recently approved by Urban IV:
Per ço vos prèc, si’us platz, que fin amors … e gauziment e dous umilitatz …
[I beg you, please, confer on me / a pure love and joy and sweet humility …]
Another poetess, Na Castelosa of Auvergne, expressed the anguish of being abandoned by her lover:
Mout avètz fach long estatge
Amics, pòis de mi’us partitz
et es mi greu e salvatge
car me juretz e’m plevitz
que als jorns de vòstra vida
non ascetz domna mas me.…
[You’ve let a long time pass, my friend / since the sad day you left me / and yet you swore until life’s end / to have no other lady.…]
The troubadour’s romantic compositions are masculine and self-centred; the pain that hurts is always his, but the trobairitz relates to other women in her situation, as in this anonymous warning ‘not to make the same mistakes I did’:
Domna qui amic non a,
ben si gart que mais non n’aia
qu’amors ponh òi e demà
ni tan ni quan non s’apaia
senes còlp fai mòrt e plaia
tal no’n garia per nul mètge que ja n’aia
[The lady who has no lover, / let her never take one either, / for Love hurts today and tomorrow / and leaves you with naught but sorrow / and the wound that does not kill / but leaves you grieving still.]
Troubadours and trobairitz both gave advice, but usually the men were positive, while often the ladies, like this anonymous Catalan poetess, were saying don’t.
No’l prenatz lo fals jurat,
que pèc es mal ensanhat, Jana delgada.
No jaga ab vos el lit,
mes vos i valrà l’amic, Jana delgada.
[Don’t marry this cheat, sweet Jeanne / for he is stupid and unlettered. / Don’t take him to your bed, sweet Jeanne. / Your boyfriend would be far better.]
And a young trobairitz could ask an older woman for advice:
Na Carenza ab bèl còrs avenenz
donatz conselh a nos doas serors
e car saubetz mielhz triar la melhors
consilhatz mi segon vostr’escienz.…
Penrai marit a vòstra conoissença
O’starai mi pulcela?
[O fair and gracious Lady Carenz, / please advise us two sisters what is best. / You know better than us what stands the test / from your own long and rich experience.… / Shall I find me a husband, would you say / or stay single? Which is the way?]
The trobairitz Contesa Beatrix de Dia wrote of the heartache when betrayed by her lover:
En grand pena lo còr me dol
per un cavalièr qu’ai perdut.
En tot temps aquò siá sauput
que l’ai contentat mòrt e fol.
Ara per el soi traïda.
Tant amor es pas pro amor
quand l’ai contentat nuèit e jorn
Al lèit e tota vestida.
[Let this be known by one and all: / my heart is rent with pain, you see / for the lover who has left me / though I pleasured him body and soul. / Betrayed by him, I’m sore distressed. / I need his love, but he’s gone away / though I pleasured him night and day / both in bed and when fully dressed.]
But the saddest of all trobairitz poetry is the canso de mau maridada:
Si anc fui bèlha ni prezada
ar sui d’aut en bas tornada
qu’a un vilan sui donada
tot per sa gran manentia.…
[Though once for beauty I was renowned / now the whole world’s turned upside-down. / Just because he’s rich and powerful / they’ve given me to a man who’s evil.…]
Although love was an important theme of both male and female troubadours, the word amor means far more than just carnal desire, while fin amar is pure and perfect love in what came to be the courtly sense. In Occitan, love is the motor of all things, so much so that a common way of saying ‘because’ is per amor de.
Some academics have traced the inspiration of the troubadours to Ovid’s Art of Love, but the thrice-married Roman poet was compiling a male hunter’s manual of tricks to snare the female prey, whereas troubadours depicted women as desirable equals or unattainable superiors lording it over men they enslaved. A more likely inspiration lies in the erotic and romantic poetry of Moorish Spain.