again in the dolce stil nuovo of Dante and his friends; in Germany among the
Minnesinger; in Portugal and England. The troubadours were not the first poets who
wrote in a medieval vernacular: Mozarabic poets in Spain had composed kharjas
(vernacular strophes in Romance dialect concluding songs in Arabic) for more than a
century; there survives an extensive body of poetry in Old English and Old High German;
and love poetry had long been written in Latin and continued to be. Indeed, it has been
argued that courtly love is a universal tendency of the human heart that has appeared
independently in widely scattered cultures from ancient Egypt to medieval Georgia. But
the poetic tradition launched by the troubadours represents a high point of medieval
secular culture and provided impetus for the transition into the Renaissance.
The Occitan word trobador is a compound of the root trobar ‘to compose’ with the
suffix expressing agent, and thus means “one who composes,” presumably a man. The
feminine suffix produces trobairitz ‘a woman who composes.’ The origin of the verb
trobar has been sought in classical Latin, medieval Latin, and Arabic, but no consensus
has emerged, just as agreement on the origin of fin’amor has not been reached. There
were contacts with the Mozarabic culture of Spain, but no literary influence has been
established; closer yet were the Latin clerical poets of the “Loire school,” such as Baudri
of Bourgueil and Marbode of Rennes. It is not certain whether the earliest preserved
troubadour texts followed a large body of songs that have been lost, or whether the first
troubadour we know was one of the first poets to use the vernacular in the Midi. In any
case, we know that Eble, viscount of Ventadorn, wrote songs contemporary with the
earliest ones preserved, although none of his work has survived.
The earliest troubadour whose works we have is Guilhem IX, duke of Aquitaine and
count of Poitiers (1071–1126), who left a small number of love songs, some courtly,
others bawdy, and a song of departure from the world. In the following generation,
Marcabru, a joglar, or performer, of Gascon origin, excoriated the decadence of courtly
society in satirical songs but also created the prototypical pastorela, in which a witty and
sensible shepherdess fends off the advances of the narrator. Around the middle of the
12th century, Peire d’Alvernhe and Raimbaut d’Aurenga developed the concept of trobar
clus, or “closed composition,” in contrast to trobar leu, the “easy style.” Trouba-dour
love song reached a peak in the poetry of Bernart de Ventadorn, who continued the
“school” of Eble de Ventadorn with intensely personal lyrics depicting the joy and
torment of the lover buffeted by desire and frustration. Toward the end of the century,
Bertran de Born sang of his delight in combat, developed the satirical tradition stemming
from Marcabru, and took a skeptical or mocking attitude toward fin’amor.
The 13th century witnessed the crusade against the Albigensians (1209–29, with
sporadic continuations to 1244), carried out by a French army at the instigation of Pope
Innocent III in an effort to extirpate heretical tendencies that had taken root in
Languedoc. Peire Cardenal wrote songs critical of unworthy clergy and defended the
interests of Count Raymond of Toulouse, whose lands were invaded and eventually
subjected to the king of France; but Peire professed an orthodox Catholic faith himself
and did not defend the Albigensian creed. Scholars have explained the decline of
troubadour poetry as the effect of destruction of courtly society during the crusade, but
the explanation is unsatisfactory: the crusade ravaged Langue-doc but not Provence to the
east or the Limousin to the north, and troubadours continued to compose until the end of
the century. Among those who did were some of the most prolific, including Peire
The Encyclopedia 1761