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Updated: May 11, 2025
The Monk of Montandon refers to him as a merchant in his sirventes upon other troubadours. He is placed in Paradise by Dante and is the only troubadour who there appears, no doubt because of his services to the Church. His poems are ingenious dissertations upon love and we catch little trace of real feeling in them.
The Monk of Montaudon in his satirical sirventes says of Arnaut: "He has sung nothing all his life, except a few foolish verses which no one understands"; and we may reasonably suppose that Arnaut's poetry was as obscure to many of his contemporaries as it is to us.
There remain also political poems written against John and Henry III. which may be fairly called sirventes, Latin disputes, such as those Inter Aquam et Vinum, Inter Cor et Oculum, De Phillide et Flora, are constructed upon the principles of the tenso or partimen. The use of equivocal and "derivative" rimes as they are called in the Leys d'Amors is seen in the following Anglo-Norman stanzas.
These circumstances are sufficient to account for the warlike nature of Bertran de Born's poetry. The first sirventes which can be dated with certainty belongs to 1181, and is a call to the allies of Raimon V, Count of Toulouse, to aid their master against the King of Aragon. What Bertran's personal share in the campaign was, we do not know.
The society offered an annual prize of a golden violet for the best chanso; other prizes were added at a later date for the best dance song and the best sirventes. Competitors found that songs to the Virgin were given the preference and she eventually became the one subject of these prize competitions.
The other poem is a sirventes which is of interest as being the first attempt at literary satire among the troubadours; the satire is often rather of a personal than of a literary character; the following quotations referring to troubadours already named will show Peire's ideas of literary criticism.
Reference has already been made to the chanso. A poetical form of much importance was the sirventes, which outwardly was indistinguishable from the chanso.
Bernart de Ventadour is even smaller than Guiraut de Bornelh by a thumb's length; but he had a servant for his father who shot well with the long bow while his mother tended the furnace." The satiric sirventes soon found imitators: the Monk of Montaudon produced a similar composition. Like many other troubadours, Peire ended his life in a monastery.
His political sirventes show an insight into the affairs of his age, which is in strong contrast to the whimsicality which seems to have misguided his own life. He belonged to the Roussillon district, on the borders of Catalonia and fell in love with the wife of his overlord, Raimon of Roussillon.
The realm of France, it is well known, was divided betwixt the Norman and Teutonic race, who spoke the language in which the word Yes is pronounced as "oui", and the inhabitants of the southern regions, whose speech bearing some affinity to the Italian, pronounced the same word "oc". The poets of the former race were called "Minstrels", and their poems "Lays": those of the latter were termed "Troubadours", and their compositions called "sirventes", and other names.
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