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Updated: May 28, 2025
It is a rare thing for an Italian lady to be without her cavaliere servente, or lover, who spends much of his time at her house, attends her to all public places, and appears to live upon her smiles. The old maxim of the Provençal troubadours, that matrimony ought to be no hindrance to such liaisons, seems to be generally and practically believed in Italy.
He had no small idea of his own powers: "Peire d'Auvergne," he says in his satire upon other troubadours "has such a voice that he can sing in all tones and his melodies are sweet and pleasant: he is master of his art, if he would but put a little clarity into his poems, which are difficult to understand." The last observation is entirely correct: his poems are often very obscure.
"And better than thou thinkest," replied Don Quixote, "as thou shalt see when thou carriest a letter written in verse from beginning to end to my lady Dulcinea del Toboso, for I would have thee know, Sancho, that all or most of the knights-errant in days of yore were great troubadours and great musicians, for both of these accomplishments, or more properly speaking gifts, are the peculiar property of lovers-errant: true it is that the verses of the knights of old have more spirit than neatness in them."
Many years before, one of the Provençal troubadours, writing to his friend in verse, had said, "Friend Gaucelm, if you go to Tuscany, seek a shelter in the noble city of the Florentines, which is named Florence. There all true valor is found; there joy and song and love are perfect and adorned."
Equally significant is the growth of the service des dames which, although invested by troubadours and minnesingers with a halo of religious allegory, was disliked by the Church, not merely from a dread of possible abuses, but as inherently idolatrous. The cult of the Virgin, while doing honour to the new conception of womanhood, was also a protest against a secular romanticism.
To the southeast, the counts of Toulouse had begun to consolidate a little state which was to be the seat of the extraordinary literature of the troubadours. The county of Champagne has already been considered in the discussion of feudalism. This completes the survey of the countries over which Hugh Capet and his immediate successors strove to rule.
Richard himself was greatly interested in these arts, especially in the songs of the Troubadours, whose performances always formed a very important part of the entertainment at the feasts and tournaments, and other great public celebrations of those days. When Richard came to see Berengaria, he fell deeply in love with her.
To my thinking, neither Carcassonne, Semur nor Guerande surpass Hegesippe Moreau's little birthplace in beauty and picturesqueness. The acropolis of Brie also possesses a long and poetic history, being the seat of an art-loving prince, and the haunt of troubadours. A word to the epicure as well as the archaeologist.
The history of literature can show poetic dictions special vocabularies and forms for poetry that have these qualities; the diction, for instance, of the Greek choruses, or of the Scottish poets who followed Chaucer, or of the troubadours. That of the classic writers of an Augustan age was not of such a kind.
At the close of the twelfth century, a great change began to take place in German song, partly through the influence of foreign troubadours, but far more owing to changes in social conditions. The reviving interest in letters is indicated by the founding of universities in Italy and France, by the publication of cyclopedias and other educational treatises.
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