——. “Un manuale de geomanzia presentato da Bernardo Silvestre de Tours (XII secolo):
l’Experimentarius” ed. M. Brini Savorelli. Rivista critica di storia della filosofia 14
(1959):283–341.
——. The Cosmographia, trans. Winthrop P.Wetherbee. New York: Columbia University Press,
1973.
Stock, Brian. Myth and Science in the Twelfth Century: A Study of Bernard Silvester. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1972.
BERNART DE VENTADORN
(fl. ca. 1145–1180). With Jaufre Rudel, Bernart de Ventadorn was one of the most
popular and most imitated of the 12th-century troubadours. His romanticized biography,
or vida, says that he was of humble origins but rose to sing his love for the wife of the
lord of Ventadorn. Aside from links to the Ventadorn castle and school, which are clear
from his name and style, Bernart sang at the court of Count Raymond V of Toulouse and
probably also visited England, perhaps in the entourage of Eleanor of Aquitaine. The vida
further tells us that he retired to the Cistercian abbey of Dalon, but this, like the reports of
his early years, has not been documented.
Of his lyric production, some forty-one songs survive, all but three of which are love
songs, or cansos. (Two of the three tensos, or debate poems, are of less than certain
attribution.) Eighteen of Bernart’s songs are preserved with their music. Bernart sang in
the clear style called trobar leu. His cansos are characterized by the melodious language,
nostalgic tone, vivid imagery, and musical virtuosity that won him imitators among
medieval poets. But it is their lyrical intensity and emotional span that have especially
earned him admirers in our own time.
Roy S.Rosenstein
[See also: TROUBADOUR POETRY]
The Encyclopedia 215