Chapter 7

THE TROUBADOURS IN ITALY

To study the development of troubadour literature only in the country of its origin would be to gain a very incomplete idea of its influence. The movement, as we have already said, crossed the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Rhine, and Italy at least owed the very existence of its lyric poetry to the impulse first given by the troubadours. Close relations between Southern France and Northern Italy had existed from an early period: commercial intercourse between the towns on the Mediterranean was in some cases strengthened by treaties; the local nobles were connected by feudal ties resulting from the suzerainty of the Holy Roman Empire. Hence it was natural for troubadours and _joglars_ to visit the Italian towns. Their own language was not so remote from the Italian dialects as to raise any great obstacle to the circulation of their poetry and the petty princes of Northern Italy lent as ready an ear to troubadour songs as the local lords in the South of France. Peire Vidal was at the court of the Marquis of Montferrat so early as 1195; the Marquis of Este, the Count of San Bonifacio at Verona, the Count of [96] Savoy at Turin, the Emperor Frederick II. and other lords of less importance offered a welcome to Provençal poets. More than twenty troubadours are thus known to have visited Italy and in some cases to have made a stay of considerable length. The result was that their poetry soon attracted Italian disciples and imitators. Provençal became the literary language of the noble classes and an Italian school of troubadours arose, of whom Sordello is the most remarkable figure.

Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, who spent a considerable part of his career (1180-1207) with the Marquis of Montferrat, belongs as a troubadour quite as much to Italy as to Southern France. He was the son of a poor noble of Orange and became a troubadour at the court of William IV. of Orange; he exchanged _tensos_ with his patron with whom he seems to have been on very friendly terms and to whom he refers by the pseudonym Engles (English), the reason for which is as yet unknown. Some time later than 1189, he left the court of Orange, apparently in consequence of a dispute with his patron and made his way to Italy, where he led a wandering life until he was admitted to the court of the Marquis of Montferrat. To this period of his career belongs the well-known poem in which he pays his addresses to a Genoese lady.

"Lady, I have prayed you long to love me of your kindliness... my heart [97] is more drawn to you than to any lady of Genoa. I shall be well rewarded if you will love me and shall be better recompensed for my trouble than if Genoa belonged to me with all the wealth that is there heaped up." The lady then replies in her own Genoese dialect: she knows nothing of the conventions of courtly love, and informs the troubadour that her husband is a better man than he and that she will have nothing to do with him. The poem is nothing but a _jeu d'esprit_ based upon the contrast between troubadour sentiments and the honest but unpoetical views of the middle class; it is interesting to philologists as containing one of the earliest known specimens of Italian dialect. An example of the Tuscan dialect is also found in the _descort_ by Raimbaut. This is a poem in irregular metre, intended to show the perturbation of the poet's mind. Raimbaut increased this effect by writing in five different languages. He found a ready welcome from Bonifacio II. at the court of Montferrat which Peire Vidal also visited. The marquis dubbed him knight and made him his brother in arms. Raimbaut fell in love with Beatrice, the sister of the marquis, an intimacy which proceeded upon the regular lines of courtly love. He soon found an opportunity of showing his devotion to the marquis. In 1194 Henry VI. [98] made an expedition to Sicily to secure the claims of his wife, Constance, to that kingdom: the Marquis Boniface as a vassal of the imperial house followed the Emperor and Raimbaut accompanied his contingent. He refers to his share in the campaign in a later letter to the marquis.[30]

Et ai per vos estat en greu preyzo Per vostra guerra e n'ai a vostro pro Fag maynt assaut et ars maynta maiso Et a Messina vos cobri del blizo; En la batalha vos vinc en tal sazo Que·us ferion pel pietz e pel mento Dartz e cairels, sagetas e trenso.

"For your sake I have been in hard captivity in your war, and to do you service I have made many an assault and burned many a house. At Messina I covered you with the shield; I came to you in the battle at the moment when they hurled at your breast and chin darts and quarrels, arrows and lance-shafts." The captivity was endured in the course of the marquis's wars in Italy, and the troubadour refers to a seafight between the forces of Genoa and Pisa in the Sicilian campaign. In 1202 he followed his master upon the crusade which practically ended at Constantinople. He had composed a vigorous _sirventes_ urging Christian men to join the movement, but he does not himself show any great enthusiasm to take the [99] cross. "I would rather, if it please you, die in that land than live and remain here. For us God was raised upon the cross, received death, suffered the passion, was scourged and loaded with chains and crowned with thorns upon the cross.... Fair Cavalier (i.e. Beatrice) I know not whether I shall stay for your sake or take the cross; I know not whether I shall go or remain, for I die with grief if I see you and I am like to die if I am far from you." So also in the letter quoted above.

E cant anetz per crozar a Saysso, Ieu non avia cor--Dieus m'o perdo-- Que passes mar, mas per vostre resso Levey la crotz e pris confessio.

"And when you went to Soissons to take the cross, I did not intend--may God forgive me--to cross the sea, but to increase your fame I took the cross and made confession." The count lost his life, as Villehardouin relates, in a skirmish with the Bulgarians in 1207. Raimbaut de Vaqueiras probably fell at the same time.

This is enough to show that troubadours who came to Italy could make the country a second home, and find as much occupation in love, war and politics as they had ever found in Southern France. Aimeric de Pegulhan, Gaucelm Faidit, Uc de Saint-Circ,[31] the author of some troubadour [100] biographies, were among the best known of those who visited Italy. The last named is known to have visited Pisa and another troubadour of minor importance, Guillem de la Tor, was in Florence. Thus the visits of the troubadours were by no means confined to the north.

It was, therefore, natural that Italians should imitate the troubadours whose art proved so successful at Italian courts and some thirty Italian troubadours are known to us. Count Manfred II. and Albert, the Marquis of Malaspina, engaged in _tensos_ with Peire Vidal and Raimbaut de Vaqueiras respectively and are the first Italians known to have written in Provençal. Genoa produced a number of Italian troubadours of whom the best were Lanfranc Cigala and Bonifacio Calvo. The latter was a wanderer and spent some time in Castile at the court of Alfonso X. Lanfranc Cigala was a judge in his native town: from him survive a _sirventes_ against Bonifacio III. of Montferrat who had abandoned the cause of Frederick II., crusade poems and a _sirventes_ against the obscure style. The Venetian Bartolomeo Zorzi was a prisoner at Genoa from 1266 to 1273, having been captured by the Genoese. The troubadour of Genoa, Bonifacio Calvo, had written a vigorous invective against Venice, to which the captive troubadour composed an equally strong reply addressed [101] to Bonifacio Calvo; the latter sought him out and the two troubadours became friends. The most famous, however, of the Italian troubadours is certainly Sordello.

There is much uncertainty concerning the facts of Sordello's life; he was born at Goito, near Mantua, and was of noble family. His name is not to be derived from _sordidus_, but from _Surdus_, a not uncommon patronymic in North Italy during the thirteenth century. Of his early years nothing is known: at some period of his youth he entered the court of Count Ricciardo di san Bonifazio, the lord of Verona, where he fell in love with his master's wife, Cunizza da Romano (Dante, _Par._ ix. 32), and eloped with her. The details of this affair are entirely obscure; according to some commentators, it was the final outcome of a family feud, while others assert that the elopement took place with the connivance of Cunizza's brother, the notorious Ezzelino III. (_Inf_. xii. 110): the date is approximately 1225. At any rate, Sordello and Cunizza betook themselves to Ezzelino's court. Then, according to the Provençal biography, follows his secret marriage with Otta, and his flight from Treviso, to escape the vengeance of her angry relatives. He thus left Italy about the year 1229, and retired to the South of France, where he visited the courts of Provence, Toulouse, Roussillon, [102] penetrating also into Castile. A chief authority for these wanderings is the troubadour Peire Bremen Ricas Novas, whose _sirventes_ speaks of him as being in Spain at the court of the king of Leon: this was Alfonso IX., who died in the year 1230. He also visited Portugal, but for this no date can be assigned. Allusions in his poems show that he was in Provence before 1235: about ten years later we find him at the court of the Countess Beatrice (_Par._ vi. 133), daughter of Raimon Berengar, Count of Provence, and wife of Charles I. of Anjou. Beatrice may have been the subject of several of his love poems: but the "senhal" Restaur and Agradiva, which conceal the names possibly of more than one lady cannot be identified. From 1252-1265 his name appears in several Angevin treaties and records, coupled with the names of other well-known nobles, and he would appear to have held a high place in Charles' esteem. It is uncertain whether he took part in the first crusade of St Louis, in 1248-1251, at which Charles was present: but he followed Charles on his Italian expedition against Manfred in 1265, and seems to have been captured by the Ghibellines before reaching Naples. At any rate, he was a prisoner at Novara in September 1266; Pope Clement IV. induced Charles to ransom him, and in 1269, as a recompense for his services, he received five castles in the Abruzzi, near the river Pescara: shortly [103] afterwards he died. The circumstances of his death are unknown, but from the fact that he is placed by Dante among those who were cut off before they could repent it has been conjectured that he came to a violent end.

Sordello's restless life and his intrigues could be exemplified from the history of many another troubadour and neither his career nor his poetry, which with two exceptions, is of no special originality, seems to justify the portrait drawn of him by Dante; while Browning's famous poem has nothing in common with the troubadour except the name. These exceptions, however, are notable. The first is a _sirventes_ composed by Sordello on the death of his patron Blacatz in 1237. He invites to the funeral feast the Roman emperor, Frederick II., the kings of France, England and Aragon, the counts of Champagne, Toulouse and Provence. They are urged to eat of the dead man's heart, that they may gain some tincture of his courage and nobility. Each is invited in a separate stanza in which the poet reprehends the failings of the several potentates.

Del rey engles me platz, quar es paue coratjos, Que manje pro del cor, pueys er valens e bos, E cobrara la terra, per que viu de pretz blos, Que·l tol lo reys de Fransa, quar lo sap nualhos; E lo reys castelas tanh qu'en manje per dos, [104] Quar dos regismes ten, e per l'un non es pros; Mas, s'elh en vol manjar, tanh qu'en manj'a rescos, Que, si·l mair'o sabra, batria·l ab bastos.

"As concerns the English King (Henry III.) it pleases me, for he is little courageous, that he should eat well of the heart; then he will be valiant and good and will recover the land (for loss of which he lives bereft of worth), which the King of France took from him, for he knows him to be of no account. And the King of Castile (Ferdinand III. of Castile and Leon), it is fitting that he eat of it for two, for he holds two realms and he is not sufficient for one; but if he will eat of it, 'twere well that he eat in secret: for if his mother were to know it, she would beat him with staves."

This idea, which is a commonplace in the folklore of many countries, attracted attention. Two contemporary troubadours attempted to improve upon it. Bertran d'Alamanon said that the heart should not be divided among the cowards, enumerated by Sordello, but given to the noble ladies of the age: Peire Bremen proposed a division of the body. The point is that Dante in the Purgatorio represents Sordello as showing to Virgil the souls of those who, while singing _Salve Regina_, ask to be pardoned for their neglect of duty and among them appear the rulers whom Sordello had satirised in his _sirventes_. Hence it seems that it was this [105] composition which attracted Dante's attention to Sordello. The other important poem is the _Ensenhamen_, a didactic work of instruction upon the manner and conduct proper to a courtier and a lover. Here, and also in some of his lyric poems, Sordello represents the transition to a new idea of love which was more fully developed by the school of Guido Guinicelli and found its highest expression in Dante's lyrics and Vita Nuova. Love is now rather a mystical idea than a direct affection for a particular lady: the lover is swayed by a spiritual and intellectual ideal, and the motive of physical attraction recedes to the background. The cause of love, however, remains unchanged: love enters through the eyes; sight is delight.

We must now turn southwards. A school of poetry had grown up in Sicily at the court of Frederick II. No doubt he favoured those troubadours whose animosity to the papacy had been aroused by the Albigeois crusade: such invective as that which Guillem Figueira could pour forth would be useful to him in his struggle against the popes. But the emperor was himself a man of unusual culture, with a keen interest in literary and scientific pursuits: he founded a university at Naples, collected manuscripts and did much to make Arabic learning known to the West. He was a poet and the importance of the Sicilian school consists in the [106] fact that while the subject matter of their songs was lifted from troubadour poetry, the language which they used belonged to the Italian peninsula. The dialect of these _provenzaleggianti_ was not pure Sicilian but was probably a literary language containing elements drawn from other dialects, as happened long before in the case of the troubadours themselves. The best known representatives of this school, Pier delle Vigne, Jacopo da Lentini and Guido delle Colonne are familiar to students of Dante. After their time no one questioned the fact that lyric poetry written in Italian was a possible achievement. The influence of the Sicilian school extended to Central Italy and Tuscany; Dante tells us that all Italian poetry preceding his own age was known as Sicilian. The early Tuscan poets were, mediately or immediately, strongly influenced by Provençal. The first examples of the sonnet, by Dante da Majano, were written in that language. But such poetry was little more than a rhetorical exercise. It was the revival of learning and the Universities, in particular that of Bologna, which inspired the _dolce stil nuovo_, of which the first exponent was Guido Giunicelli. Love was now treated from a philosophical point of view: hitherto, the Provençal school had maintained the thesis that "sight is delight," that love originated from seeing and pleasing, penetrated to the heart and [107] occupied the thoughts, after passing through the eyes. So Aimeric de Pegulhan.

Perque tuit li fin aman Sapchan qu'amors es fina bevolenza Que nais del cor e dels huelh, ses duptar.

"Wherefore let all pure lovers know that love is pure unselfishness which is born undoubtedly from the heart and from the eyes," a sentiment thus repeated by Guido delle Colonne of the Sicilian school.

Dal cor si move un spirito in vedere D'in ochi'n ochi, di femina e d'omo Per lo quel si concria uno piacere.

The philosophical school entirely transformed this conception. Love seeks the noble heart by affinity, as the bird seeks the tree: the noble heart cannot but love, and love inflames and purifies its nobility, as the power of the Deity is transmitted to the heavenly beings. When this idea had been once evolved, Provençal poetry could no longer be a moving force; it was studied but was not imitated. Its influence had lasted some 150 years, and as far as Italy is concerned it was Arabic learning, Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas who slew the troubadours more certainly than Simon de Montfort and his crusaders. The day of superficial [108] prettiness and of the cult of form had passed; love conjoined with learning, a desire to pierce to the roots of things, a greater depth of thought and earnestness were the characteristics of the new school.

Dante's debt to the troubadours, with whose literature he was well acquainted, is therefore the debt of Italian literature as a whole. Had not the troubadours developed their theory of courtly love, with its influence upon human nature, we cannot say what course early Italian literature might have run. Moreover, the troubadours provided Italy and other countries also with perfect models of poetical form. The sonnet, the terza rima and any other form used by Dante are of Provençal origin. And what is true of Dante and his Beatrice is no less true of Petrarch and his Laura and of many another who may be sought in histories specially devoted to this subject.