TROTZENDORFF (or Trocedorfius), VALENTIN FRIEDLAND (1490–1556), German educationist, called Trotzendorff from his birthplace, near Görlitz, in Prussian Silesia, was born on the 14th of February 1490, of parents so poor that they could not keep him at school. The boy taught himself to read and write while herding cattle; he made paper from birch bark and ink from soot. When difficulties were overcome and he was sent for education to Görlitz, his mother's last words were “Stick to the school, dear son.” The words determined his career: he refused all ecclesiastical promotion, and lived and died a schoolmaster. He became a distinguished student, learned Ciceronian Latin from Peter Mossellanus and Greek from Richard Croke, and after graduation was appointed assistant master in the school at Görlitz. There he also taught the rector and other teachers. When Luther began his attack on indulgences, Trotzendorff resigned his position and went to study under Luther and Melanchthon, supporting himself by private tuition. Thence he was called to be a master in the school at Goldberg in Silesia, and in 1524 became rector. There he remained three years, when he was sent to Liegnitz. He returned to Goldberg in 1531 and began that career which has made him the typical German schoolmaster of the Reformation period. His system of education and discipline speedily attracted attention. He made his best elder scholars the teachers of the younger classes, and insisted that the way to learn was to teach. He organized the school in such a way that the whole ordinary discipline was in the hands of the boys themselves. Every month a “consul,” twelve “senators” and two “censors” were chosen from the pupils, and over all Trotzendorff ruled as “dictator perpetuus.” One hour a day was spent in going over the lessons of the previous day. The lessons were repeatedly recalled by examinations, which were conducted on the plan of academical disputations. Every week each pupil had to write two “exercitia styli,” one in prose and the other in verse, and Trotzendorff took pains to see that the subject of each exercise was something interesting. The fame of the Goldberg School extended over all Protestant Germany, and a large number of the more famous men of the following generation were taught by Trotzendorff. He died on the 20th of April 1556.
See Herrmann, Merkwürdige Lebensgeschichte eines berühmten Schulmanns, V. F. Trotzendorffs (1727); Frosch, V. F. Trotzendorff, Rektor zu Goldberg (1818); Pinzger, V. F. Trotzendorff (with the Goldberg portrait, and a complete list of his writings, 1825); Koehler, V. F. Trotzendorff, ein biographischer Versuch (1848). The biographical facts appear to be derived from a funeral or memorial oration delivered by Balthasar Rhau in the university of Wittenberg on the 15th of August 1564, and published in an edition of Trotzendorffs Rosarium (1565).
TROUBADOUR, the name given to the poets of southern
France and of northern Spain and Italy who wrote in the langue
d’oc from the 12th to the 14th centuries. In Provençal the word
is spelt trobaire or trovador, and is derived from the verb trobar,
to find, or to invent (Fr. trouver). The troubadour was one who
invented, and originally improvised, poetry, who “found out”
new and striking stanzaic forms for the elaborate lyrics he
composed. In later times, the word has been used for romantic and
sentimental persons, who dress in what is supposed to be
medieval fashion, and who indite trivial verses to the sound of
a lute; but this significance does less than justice to the serious
artistic aims of the original and historic troubadours of
Provence.
The earliest troubadour of whom anything definite is known is Guilhem IX. (b. 1071), count of Poitiers and duke of Aquitaine, whose career was typical of that of his whole class, for, according to his Provençal biographer, “he knew well how to sing and make verses, and for a long time he roamed all through the land to deceive the ladies.” The high rank of this founder of the tradition was typical of its continuation; by far the largest number of the troubadours belonged to the noble class, while no fewer than twenty-three of their number were reigning princes. Among them is a king of England, Richard I., who is believed to have written in langue d’oil as well as in langue d’oc, and who has left at least one canzo, that written in prison, which is of remarkable beauty. These noble troubadours were distinguished by their wealth and independence from those who made their song their profession, and who wandered from castle to castle and from bower to bower. But whether dependent or independent, the poets exercised a social influence which was extremely remarkable, and had been paralleled by nothing before it in the history of medieval poetry. They had great privileges of speech and censure, they entered into questions of politics, and above all they created around the ladies of the court an atmosphere of cultivation and amenity which nothing had hitherto approached. The troubadour was occasionally accompanied in his travels by an apprentice or servant, called a joglar, whose business was to provide a musical setting for the poet's words; sometimes it was not the troubadour himself, but his joglar, who sang the songs. It was a matter of jealous attention to the troubadour to keep his name and fame clear of the claims of the joglar, who belonged to a lower caste; although it is true that some poets of very high talent rose from being joglars and attained the rank of troubadours. The latter were looked upon with deep admiration, and their deeds and sayings, as well as their verses, were preserved and were even embroidered with fiction.
There were recognized about four hundred troubadours, during the whole period in which they flourished, from Guilhem de Poitiers down to Guiraut Riquier (c. 1230-–294). Several MS. collections of biographies have been preserved, and from these we gain some idea of the careers of no fewer than 111 of the poets. In this respect, the troubadours possess an immense advantage over the trouvères of northern France, of whose private life very little is any longer known. Early in the living history of the troubadours their personal adventures came to be thought worthy of record. One of themselves, Uc of St Cyr (c. 1200–1240), interested himself in “the deeds and words of goodly men and women,” and in the collection of lives he seems to claim to be, in several instances, the biographer. At the beginning of the 14th century it became the practice to preface the MS. works of each poet by a life of him, and even where the text seems to be quite independent, it is noticeable that there is little variation in the biography. One late troubadour, Rambaud of Orange, left a commentary on his own poems, and Guiraut Riquier one on those of a fellow troubadour, Guiraut of Calanson (1280). All this proves the poetry of Provence to have passed early into the critical stage, and to have been treated very seriously by those who were proficient in it. This is further shown by the respect with which the Provençal poets are mentioned by Dante, Petrarch and the authors of the Novelle Critiche.
The principal source of the lives of the troubadours is a collection, evidently written by various hands, which was made towards the middle of the 13th century. Of these we have said that Uc of Saint Cyr was certainly one of the authors. Another source of information is the Vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provencaux, published by Jehan de Notredame or Nostradamus, in 1575. This work professed to be founded on the MSS. of a learned monk, who was librarian of the monastery of St Honorat, in the island of Lérins, and died there in 1408. He was known by no other name than that of the Monk of the Golden Isles. This book, unfortunately, lies under more than a suspicion of forgery. Nostradamus no doubt possessed valuable documents, but he did not hesitate to deal with them in a highly fantastic way. His Vies des poètes has yet to be examined by careful and searching criticism. Even the genuine biographies, and they are numerous and above suspicion, are often embroidered with fantastic and whimsical statements which make a severe demand upon the credulity of a modern reader.
The verse form most frequently employed by the troubadours was the sirventés, a term which is earliest met with in the second half of the 12th century. The early critics believed this word to be derived from servir, and to mean that the poem was made by a servant; but Paul Meyer has contested this derivation, and holds that a sirventés is a poem composed by a sirvent, that is to say a soudoyer or paid man-at-arms. The troubadours also employed the ballada, which was a song with a long refrain, not much like the formal ballade of the north of France; the pastourella; and the alba. This last took its name from the circumstance that the word alba (dawn) was repeated in each
