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The Courts of Love held by ladies of high rank were originally courts in which the rules of minstrelsy were laid down, they pronounced on the qualifications of a candidate, they polished and cherished the Langue d'oc in its purity, dictated the subjects upon which the troubadours were to compose their lays, judged their pretensions, settled their controversies, recompensed their merits, and punished by disgrace or exclusion those who violated the laws.
"One of my objects," he says, "was to pay a literary visit to a very remarkable man Jasmin, the peasant-poet of Provence and Languedoc the 'Last of the Troubadours, as, with more truth than is generally to be found in ad captandum designations, he terms himself, and is termed by the wide circle of his admirers; for Jasmin's songs and rural epics are written in the patois of the people, and that patois is the still almost unaltered Langue d'Oc the tongue of the chivalric minstrelsy of yore.
But the sentence is pronounced; even our Henry IV. could not change it. Under his reign the Langue d'Oil became for ever the French language, and the Langue d'Oc remained but a patois. "Popular poet as you are, you sing to posterity in the language of the past.
If he tries to talk to the natives he will perhaps make them understand his Langue d'oil; but he will find that his Parisian grammar and dictionary will go but a very little way towards making him understand their Lingua d'oc.
We may find the Troubadours definitely established there in the early part of the twelfth century. The language of their songs is the beautiful "Langue d'oc," so called from the use of the word "oc" to mean yes, and thus distinguished from the "Langue d'oil" of Northern France and the "Lingua di si" of Italy.
This fact enables us to comprehend how it was possible for princes and knights, who were often unable to read, to be yet ranked among the most ingenious troubadours. Several public events, however, materially contributed to enlarge the sphere of intellect of the knights of the Langue d'oc.
The Provencal was called the Langue d'oc, and the Wallon the Langue d'oui, from the affirmative word in each language, as the Italian was then called the Langue de si, and the German the Langue de ya. The invasion of the Normans, in the tenth century, supplied new elements to the Romance Wallon. They adopted it as their language, and stamped upon it the impress of their own genius.
The common dialect is not quite the same throughout Guyenne and Languedoc; but the local variations are much less marked than one would expect, considering that the langue d'oc has been virtually abandoned as a literary vehicle for centuries. The c in the word is not pronounced perhaps it never was and the o is usually joined to bè, which has the same meaning as bien in the French language.
The conception of representative assembly, monastic in origin, fruitfully transferred to civilian soil, appears in the institutions of Christendom. The vernacular languages appear, and with them the beginnings of our literature: the Tuscan, the Castilian, the Langue d'Oc, the Northern French, somewhat later the English.
One fact is at the outset to be remarked upon; it at the first blush appears singular, but it admits of easy explanation. In the first nineteen years of his reign, from 1423 to 1442, Charles VII. very frequently convoked the states-general, at one time of Northern France, or Langue d'oil, at another of Southern France, or Langue d'oc.
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