THE CULTURE OF THE COURTS
Great lords needed money to support their courtiers. When they traveled, they did so
with a whole retinue of relatives, vassals, officials, priests, knights, probably a doctor,
and very likely an entertainer. In the south of France a considerable number of men
and women made their way as court troubadours (or, in the case of women,
trobairitz). They were both poets and musicians, singing in Old Occitan, the
vernacular of the region. Duke William IX of Aquitaine (1071–1126) is usually
considered the first of the troubadours. But there were certainly people singing his
kind of poetry in both Arabic and Hebrew in al-Andalus, which, as we have seen,
was just at this time regularly coming into contact (mainly violently, to be sure) with
the cultures of the north. By the twelfth century there were many troubadours; they
were welcomed at major courts as essential personnel.
Bernart de Ventadorn (fl. c.1147–1170) was among them. Here is one of his
verses:
Qan vei la lauzeta mover When I see the lark beat his wings
de joi sas alas contra·l rai, With joy in the rays of the sun
que s’oblid’e·is laissa cazer and forget himself and fall
per la doussor c’al cor li vai, In the warmth that fills his heart,
ai! Tant grans enveia m’en ve Oh, I feel so great an envy
de cui que veia jauzion, Of one I see who’s merry
meravillas ai car desse I wonder that my heart
lo cors de desirier no·m fon. Does not melt with desire.^10
The rhyme scheme seems simple: mover goes with cazer, rai with vai. Then comes
a new pattern: ve rhymes with desse and jauzion with fon. But consider that all seven
verses that come after this one have that same -er, -ai, -e, -on pattern. Enormous
ingenuity is required for such a feat. In fact the poem is extremely complex and
subtle, not only in rhyme and meter but also in word puns and allusions, essential
skills for a poet whose goal was to dazzle his audience with brilliant originality.
In rhyme and meter, troubadour songs resembled Latin liturgical chants of the
same region and period. Clearly, lay and religious cultures overlapped. They
overlapped in musical terms as well, in the use, for example, of plucking and
percussive instruments. Above all, they overlapped in themes: they spoke of love.
