stanza. This was a morning-song, as the serena, a later invention, was an evensong. The planh was a funeral elegy, composed by the troubadour for the obsequies of his protector, or for those of the lady of his devotion. Most interesting of all, perhaps, was the tenson, which was a lyrical dialogue between two persons, who discussed in it, as a rule, some point of amorous casuistry, but sometimes matters of a religious, metaphysical or satirical nature. The notion that the troubadours cultivated epic or dramatic poetry is now generally discarded; they were in their essence lyrical (see Provençal Literature).
The biographies of the troubadours, which, in spite of their imperfection and conventionality of form, throw an unparalleled light upon medieval literary life, may perhaps be most conveniently treated in connexion with the courts at which each group of them flourished. It is in Poitou that we trace them first, where Guilhem, count of Poitiers, who reigned from 1087 to 1127, was both the earliest patron and the earliest poet of the school. This prince was the type of medieval gallantry, sudden and violent in arms, brilliant and impudent in wit, with women so seductive as to be esteemed irresistible. He led an army of 300,000 men in the crusade of 1101, being then thirty years of age; he returned in dismal disarray, supported in his defeat by the arts of love and song. His levity was the wonder and delight of his contemporaries; William of Malmesbury, who speaks much of him, tells us of Guilhem's project to found a religious house at Niort for the worship of Venus. Guilhem of Poitiers was handsome, bold and of easy access; Gottfried of Vendôme says that he moved among other men as a god among mortals for the beauty of his body and the magnanimity of his soul. The surviving poems of the great count are simple in form; he does not attempt the technical subtleties of later poets; but he laboured at the art, and he was anxious to be thought a professional, not an amateur writer. His songs are highly personal and betray the author's variety, sensuality, wit and skill as a versifier.
The son of the earliest of the troubadours is known neither as a poet nor as a patron of poets, but the daughter of Guilhem IX. carried on her father's tradition. This was Eleanor of Guienne, at whose court Bernart of Ventadour rose to eminence. This poet was an exception to the rule that the troubadours belonged to the princely class. He seems to have been the son of a kitchen-scullion in the castle of Eble II., viscount of Ventadour. Eble was himself a poet, valde gratiosus in cantilenis, but his compositions have wholly disappeared; he was early impressed, we know not how, by the talents of his serving-boy, and he trained him to be a poet. The wife of Eble, the viscountess Agnes of Montluçon, who was extremely beautiful, encouraged the suit of the youthful Bernart; indeed, they had secretly loved one another from their childhood. The poems which this passion inspired are among the most admirable lyrics which have come down to us from the middle ages. The husband at last discovered the intrigue between his wife and the poet, and exiled Bernart from Ventadour, although, as it would seem, without violence. The troubadour took shelter with Eleanor of Guienne, who became in 1152 the queen-consort of Henry II. of England, himself a protector of poets. It has been supposed that Bernart accompanied the royal pair to London. He afterwards proceeded to the court of Raymond V. at Toulouse, where he is said to have remained until the death of that prince in 1194, when he withdrew to a cloister at Dalou in Poitou. He must at that time have been a very old man.
The son of Henry II., Henry Curtmantle, was the patron of another eminent troubadour. Bertran de Born, viscount of Hautefort in Perigord, had become a vassal of England by the marriage of Eleanor. He is the member of his class about whom we possess the most exact historical information. Dante saw Bertran de Born in hell, carrying his severed head before him like a lantern, and compared him with Achitophel, who excited the sons of David against their father. This referred to the subtle intrigues by which the troubadour had worked on the jealousy existing between the three sons of the king of England. The death of Prince Henry (1183) produced from Bertran de Born two planhs, which are among the most sincere and beautiful works in Provençal literature. The poet was immediately afterwards besieged in his castle of Hautefort by Richard Cœur de Lion, to whom he became reconciled and whom he accompanied to Palestine. He grew devout in his old age, and died about 1205. As a soldier and a condottiere, as the friend and enemy of kings, and as an active factor in the European politics of his time, Bertran de Born occupies an exceptional position among the troubadours.
There were poetesses in the highly refined society of Provence, and of these by far the most eminent was Beatrix, countess of Die, whose career was inextricably interwoven with that of another eminent and noble troubadour, Rambaut III., count of Orange, who held his court at Courthézon, a few miles south of Orange. Rambaut said that since Adam ate the apple no poet had been born who could compete in skill with himself, but his existing lyrics have neither the tenderness nor the ingenuity of those of his illustrious lady-love. The poems of Beatrix are remarkable for a simplicity of form rare among the poets of her age. One of the earliest troubadours, Cercamon, was at the court of Guilhem IX. of Poitiers, and was the master of perhaps the most original of all the school, namely the illustrious Marcabrun (c. 1120-1195), from whose pen some forty poems survive. He was a foundling, left on the door-step of a rich man in Gascony, and no one knew anything about his descent. Marcabrun was an innovator and a reformer; to him the severity of classical Provençal style is mainly due, and he was one of the first to make use of that complexity and obscurity of form which was known as the trobar clus. He was also original in his attitude to love; he posed as a violent misogynist — “I never loved and I was never loved” — and he expressed, in the accents of amorous poetry, an aversion to women. “Famine, pestilence and war do less evil upon earth than the love of woman” is one of his aphorisms. He was in the service of Richard Cœur de Lion, and after 1167 in that of Alfonso II. of Aragon. Marcabrun was the object of much dislike and attack, and it is said that he was murdered by Castellane of Guian, whom he had satirized. This, however, is improbable, and it is rather believed that Marcabrun survived to a great age. For one of his contemporaries he mitigated the severities of his satiric pen; he expresses great affection for “that sweet poet,” Jaufre Rudel, prince of Blaye, whose heart turned, like the disk of a sunflower, towards the Lady of Tripoli. Little else than that famous adventure is known about the career of this ultra-romantic troubadour, except that he went as a crusader to the Holy Land, and that his surviving poems, which are few in number, have so mystical a tone that Jaufre Rudel has been suspected of being a religious writer who used the amorous language of his age for sanctified purposes, and whose “Princess Far-away” was really the Church of Christ. If so, the statement that he died in the arms of the Lady of Tripoli would merely mean that he passed away, perhaps at Antioch, in the odour of sanctity. Peire d'Alveona (Peter of Auvergne), like Marcabrun, was of mean birth, son of a tradesman in Clermont-Ferrand, but he was handsome and engaging, and being the first troubadour who had appeared in the mountain district, “he was greatly honoured and fêted by the valiant barons and noble ladies of Auvergne.” . . . “He was very proud and despised the other troubadours.” It is believed that Peire's poems were produced between 1158 and 1180. He flourished at the court of Sancho III., king of Castile, and afterwards at that of Ermengarde, viscountess of Narbonne.
It is doubtless owing to the vehement and repeated praise which was given by Dante, in the Inferno and elsewhere, to Arnaut Daniel that this name remains the most famous among those of the troubadours. Yet not very much is known of the personal history of this poet. He was a knight of Riberac, in Perigord, and he attached himself as a troubadour to the court of Richard Cœur de Lion. Dante had been made acquainted with the highly complicated and obscure verse of Arnaut Daniel by Guido Guinicelli, and thus to the historian of literature a most valuable link is provided between medieval and modern poetry. Dante calls Daniel the “smith,” the
