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- [00:02]
A
From long lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarninger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life. Only on History Hit with your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.
- [00:43]
B
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- [01:11]
C
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A
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval From History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the Crusades, we cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here, find out who we really were with Gone Medieval. Let me start the way every good story should start with a duke, a warrior, a scandal maker, and the first known troubadour, who all happen to be the very same person. This is the great Lord William IX of Aquitaine. And he didn't merely patronize poets or listen to songs. He was himself the singer, the very first troubadour. In 1086, William became the master of lands so vast they eclipsed the holdings of the French king. He was everything you might expect from a medieval prince. Rich, feared, mobile, militarily formidable. His excellence in warfare was praised by chroniclers, and his life took him across Aquitaine, into Iberian campaigns and eastward on Crusade. But what makes him especially significant is that he also forged a new poetic voice in Occitan. A voice that could be comic, erotic, insolent, elegant and moving. In 1101, marching toward Jerusalem, William's forces were shattered in Anatolia. Most of his army was destroyed, and he escaped with only a handful of men. Yet he turned the catastrophe into performance, recounting it in rhythmic verse in front of kings and nobles, the first to make poetry from his lived experience, transforming history into song. In his private life, William was impossible to contain. He quarrelled with the Church, defended rulers accused of adultery, and was himself excommunicated for refusing to abandon a notorious affair. Yet he also patronized religious institutions and supported learning in Poitiers. Later, troubadour poetry would often refine desires into idealized courtliness. But William's lyrics are more proud, sensual, irreverent and politically dangerous, his poems help define the range the troubadours would inherit. Some are playful and shocking, full of sexual bravado and outrageous humor. But he could also be unexpectedly grave. This is William IX's real importance. He's not just the earliest name on the list. He establishes the troubadour as a poet of individuality, of performance and contradiction. Later, troubadours would refine the art, deepen it, and spread it across Europe. But William is where it all begins. My guest today is Professor Linda Patterson, whose recent book, the Troubadours, tells the story of the lives and art of these remarkable poet musicians, who, she argues weren't just performers, but also craftsmen, courtiers, satirists, politicians, travelers, and in some cases, women or merchants or clerics, working in a culture where song carried social prestige, emotional force, and real political consequence. A very warm welcome to gone medieval. Linda, it's great to have you with us.
- [07:17]
D
It's good to be here.
- [07:19]
A
I'm looking forward to digging into the whole culture that surrounds troubadours. It's such a fascinating period and fascinating topic. So to start us off with, can you just give us the kind of the. The basics here? When we talk about troubadours, what do we mean? Where are we, when are we, and who are we talking about?
- [07:36]
D
So troubadours were poet, musicians, and the earliest troubadour we know about is William the 9th of Aquitaine, who was composing around about 1100. The troubadours were composing in a language which we now call Occitane, but people may know more about it and think of it in terms of Provencal. It's a language of the south of France, as opposed to the langue d' oeil in the north of France. And they were active mainly in the 12th and 13th centuries. A few trickle on into the beginning of the 14th. And the important thing is that they were composers who composed the tunes and the words to their songs, mostly.
- [08:18]
A
So, as you mentioned there, we tend to start talking about troubadours with William ix, the Duke of Aquitaine. Do we know how and why he begins to turn his exploits into these lyrics to be performed? Where does this all come from?
- [08:33]
D
There are various chroniclers, talk about him coming back from his crusade in 1101 and singing songs, some of which they complain about because they think that they were very bawdy and raucous and others praised for their wit. But we don't know where it comes from, really. That's all we know.
- [08:52]
A
Yeah. And why was the 1101 crusade, kind of such a disaster that Guillaume has so much to say about it. William has so much to say about it.
- [09:00]
D
It was a disaster because he went on crusade. He went to Jerusalem, prayed there, and then when he was coming back, his army just got ambushed in the Anatolian marshes and were pretty much. They were pretty much wiped out. There's nothing in his songs that actually talks about this crusade. However, some people interpret one of his songs as possibly emerging from that crusade. In this, he tells a story and says that he was wandering about as a pilgrim through the Auvergne. And some people think, oh, well, pilgrim, that means crusader. And the Auvergne, maybe he was coming back. But it's actually just a kind of funny, rude story. As a pilgrim, he's wondering about. He comes across a couple of women and he pretends that he's dumb. And these women get very excited and they think, we found exactly what we're looking for because he won't be able to tell whatever we do with him. So they invite him in, they give him a nice dinner with a capon with lots of thick pepper, they prepare a bath and to have a good time. But then they think, well, maybe this man is tricking us, so let's put him to the test. And they get out an absolutely huge ginger cat. They have him naked, and they scratch him through this cat from top to toe. And he manages to keep himself silent. So they say, okay, this is fine. And then the song ends in a big bawdy romp with words which I probably shouldn't repeat here.
- [10:33]
A
I'll do that when we're not recording. You can tell me all about it.
- [10:36]
D
And he does.
- [10:36]
A
So he's well known for these kind of bawdy songs that you say get him into a little bit of trouble. He's frequently very, very rude, but there is range to what he does. It's not all just rude poetry, is he. Does he have a variety of styles and subjects that he covers?
- [10:53]
D
He certainly does. I mean, he actually composed some very lovely, delicate love songs. The rood songs are actually very clever. So there's one which interweaves various levels of meaning. And he's talking about dice playing and he's talking about words, but then underneath all that, there's a lot of sexual shenanigans going on. And then he also wrote a very moving farewell to the world, where he asks the Count of Anjou and the King of France to protect his son.
- [11:26]
A
Yeah. So there's quite a personal element to that sort of last poem that Farewell isn't there, And a real concern about what's gonna happen to his son when he's gone.
- [11:34]
D
There is. There is indeed. Yes. Yeah.
- [11:36]
A
Yeah. And so as. As this becomes more popular and moves on, we get other names that appear in your book as well. So I wanted to talk a little bit about Geoffrey Rudel, who I think is kind of this legendary troubadour figure. What do we know about him?
- [11:52]
D
Well, we know that he composed here the six songs which have been preserved. We know that he was from the family of Blaye. The lords of Blaye were vassals of the dukes of Aquitaine. So he was essentially. He was a vassal of Duke William the. The 10th of Aquitaine, but he was exiled from Blaye for a long time. And so he's known sometimes to modern readers as a prince without a country. And that apart from that, we know that he went on the Second Crusade with the French, along with Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine. And that's it.
- [12:28]
E
During May when the days are long I admire the song of the birds from far away and when I have gone away from there I remember a love far away I go scowling with my head down so much that songs and hawthorn flowers Aren't better to me than the frozen winter. I trust the Lord's fairness in having formed this faraway love. But for each consolation I achieve, I get two ills because I am so far away. Ah, why didn't I go there as a pilgrim so that my staff and hooded cloak would be beheld by her beautiful eyes?
- [13:12]
A
And how different is his style to William ix? So if he's growing up in that same kind of area, in that same kind of atmosphere, is he covering similar things, or is he different?
- [13:22]
D
He's extremely different. William is very physical about love. And there's one poem which is attributed to him. It's a little bit unsure, but he says he can't wait to get his hands under his lady's cloak, for instance. And there's no nonsense about any kind of distance with Geoffrey Rudel. He's a poet of amour de logne, which is love at a distance, distant love. It's all about desire, but for something really unspecific. And it's so unspecific that people have come up with all sorts of theories about what it is that he's actually desiring. Is it a real woman? Is it a woman of hid imagination? Is it love for the Holy Land? Is it love for Jesus? Is it love for the Virgin Mary? And you're just Left to make your own mind up. The language is different too. It's known as throbarplan, or the smooth style. So it's very smooth and apparently uncomplicated.
- [14:22]
A
Yeah. And is this. Are we seeing here the emergence of what will become known as courtly love that's sort of wrapped up in chivalry? Are the troubadours driving that, or are they plugging into something that already existed?
- [14:34]
D
That's a good question. Well, first of all, I think chivalry is a difficult word, and I don't think chivalry really comes into being until about 70 years later. But if you replace that term, perhaps with a knightly ethos, then maybe that's okay. It has been said, and I would go along with it, that the troubadours really invented courtly love. And this is a love which is a man's love for woman, mainly. Although women troubadours do come in later. The man is in a position of his lady's vassal, and he refers to her as his domda, which is a kind of female equivalent of dominus, in other words, lord. And he serves her and he worships her, allegedly, and he promises all kinds of things in his love, such as constancy and discretion, and he claims to be very timid in her presence and so on and so forth. It's all about longing for something that hasn't happened yet. So it's true that the troubadours, later, when they're echoing some of these ideas, they do talk about what they call the sor plus the rest. But basically it's about love before anything really happens, very much.
- [15:49]
A
Yeah. And Joffrey Rudel kind of gives us a really good example of that around the story of the Countess of Tripoli. How much do we know about that story? What happens there?
- [15:58]
D
The story about the Countess of Tripoli is an invention of the 13th century. So this is 100 years later, and it appears in something called the vidas these, the life stories. In the 13th and the 14th centuries, there were people, mainly in Italy, who were going around collecting. Well, they were anthologizing the songs that they could find, sometimes with music, sometimes not. And then they were thinking in terms of presenting these to a public, a 13th century public, who were curious about who these troubadours were, just like today. And so sometimes they were able to draw on information that people had been able to collect, but more often than not, they were inventing stuff. Now, the story about the Countess of Tripoli, we don't really know where it came From. But we only know it had emerged in the 13th century. And the story is that Joffre went on Crusade, which he did, and then when he was on board ship, he fell ill. And he also heard stories about the Countess of Tripoli, and he fell in love with her without seeing her. So it's. If you like, it's an attempt to explain the amor de la, the distant love. And the story has it that when he arrived, he'd lost his powers of sight and hearing, but he could still speak and feel. She took him in his arms and he died in her arms. All very lovely. And it's illustrated in some of the songbooks by very pretty illuminations.
- [17:31]
A
Yeah. So it's interesting that sort of a century or so later, people are wanting to build these stories and myths and legends around the troubadours. They're kind of interested in who they were and what dreams drove them to write this music, as much as they're interested in the music.
- [17:47]
D
Yes, that's right, yeah. So curious about it. It's partly because by this time the courts in Italy were imitating the courts in the south of France, which we refer to as Occitania, but just to be difficult. So we're talking about Leria, from the mouth of the Gironde, going up through Auvergne and coming down to the north of Italy. So it's mainly Italians, but also this also happened. There were some collectors in the south of France as well. And as I said, the courts in Italy were actually imitating the values and traditions and behavior of the courts in France.
- [18:30]
A
And another troubadour that you cover in your book is macabre. And I wonder if you could talk us through a bit, kind of. What does he bring to the genre? How is he different?
- [18:38]
D
Well, he's very different because he's a moralist and a satirist. He talks about love in the abstract, but he doesn't think much of it in reality. And he's actually a very strong misogynist. So quite a lot of his songs are about saying what a dreadful lot women are, and they're always trying to entice men and lure them to do bad things.
- [18:58]
A
It feels like almost the opposite of what we've been talking about so far, isn't it? It's almost the opposite of that. Love at a distance and this devotion to a woman.
- [19:04]
D
He's. Oh, absolutely. And I think. Well, I argued this, although not totally proven, but I think he's actually. Well, he's engaged in discussions with other troubadours. He Talks about other troubadours who are completely mindless. And he actually tries to define love. And what he says about it is actually important for the way that later troubadours come to incorporate this into their idea of courtly love, or what they call philomors. But basically Martha Brue's idea of love is rooted in marriage. It's the Church's line. But he's countering a very powerful current actually, which is really anti church. The Church is going to want to be supporting the ideals of love, which is for somebody who's not your wife, girl.
- [19:54]
F
I said sweet pious child, I have detoured from my way to keep you company this time day. I reckon it a thing ill styled that in this place, remote and wild, you tend so big a flock as this. All alone companionless, my lord, she said, whatever I be folly and sense I can discern your company, good sir, I spurn and leave it to your lady. She has more right to the thing than me. Your luckless lady who believed she had it but is quite deceived.
- [20:39]
A
Yeah. So he's almost like a. Like a small C Conservative troubadour, which is sort of the opposite of what we. We associate with the. The genre really.
- [20:47]
D
That's true in terms of ideas. And yet he's very innovative as well because he cribes all the different qualities which ought to go along with love and the kind of courtly way of life. Mainly it has to be said to do with the generosity of the leaders of the court. And he, as somebody who depends totally on that, is completely self interested in that respect. But as far as innovation goes, I mean, he's extremely innovative in language. He's got the most amazing power with words.
- [21:18]
A
Yeah. And do we get a sense in some of his lyrics? It feels like sometimes he comes across as quite angry. Does that come out in his lyrics?
- [21:25]
D
Sometimes, yes. Yes, I was thinking about this. I think it comes out in his misogyny. But I think the other aspect is that he calls himself a soudadie. It's a word that gives us the word soldier. He did actually go to Spain and fight in the Reconquest. But whether it was a soldier or not, or simply a hired man, which is what the origin of the word means, that he identifies with a group of basically servants at a court and he's angry about the meanness and stinginess of the lords who have it in their power to make their life a lot better. And he's also very resentful of the favoritism given to Other servants, such as stewards, who have more powers than they do and who get all the perks. So I think that's where some of his anger comes from.
- [22:20]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting mix given all of the different types of subjects that are being covered, sort of so far. Do we get any sense of how these things were performed? Is there, like, dramatic staging going on? Is it almost like watching a play rather than a piece of music?
- [22:37]
D
I think, to be truthful, we don't know about that. What we do know is that any performer is putting on a performance. And I think there are a couple of things I might say about Markelbrough in this respect. One is that he himself puts on a lot of different personae. The most common one is that of a preacher, and there's a song called Paxin Nomini Domini where he actually starts in Latin, and you can imagine him coming on stage and perhaps performing the sign of the cross as he does it. And then he gives what is a kind of a sermon, but in verse. Other personae are very different. Sometimes he kind of pretends to be a philandering knight. You could imagine gestures, but you simply have to imagine them. But there's one exchange where I perhaps a bit fancifully imagine that they could possibly have done some theatrical staging and maybe even used costumes. It's a debate between the troubadour, as in markerbrew. So that is troubadour Persona with a minor lord called Audrey. And the troubadour complains to Audrey that he's too stingy. And Audrey comes back and says, well, you're a totally rubbish troubadour. And I can just imagine this being done as a kind of skit, but there's no evidence for this.
- [23:55]
A
Yeah. So you're a rubbish lord. Well, you're a rubbish troubadour where you smell worse than me. You stink as well.
- [24:00]
D
Exactly. Yes, exactly. Yeah.
- [24:03]
A
One of the next people you cover in your book is Bernard de Ventadorn. And do you think, is it fair to say that he really gives us this crystallized idea of courtly love that we perhaps most associate with this genre?
- [24:16]
D
Yes, I think so. I think that's true. So it's physical love, but with spiritual aspects. But what the spiritual aspects are matter for debate. And it goes along with various qualities in the person, such as generosity and obedience to the lady and discretion to the lady, because obviously her reputation is at stake and joy and youth and many other things. So, yes, I think it's fair to say that he crystallizes these ideas. I suppose the other important thing is that he sees love as a source of not only inspiration for poetry, but but also for moral worth. That's an important aspect of courtly love, as it's come to be called.
- [25:21]
B
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- [25:40]
C
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- [26:43]
D
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- [27:13]
G
Hey, sweetie. Your mother showed me this Carvana thing for selling the car. I'm gonna give it a try. Wish me luck. Me again. I put in the license plate. It gave me an offer. Unbelievable. Okay, I accepted the offer. They're picking it up Tuesday from the driveway. I haven't even left my chair. It's done. The car is gone. I'm holding a check anyway. Carvana give it a whirl. Love ya.
- [27:36]
C
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- [27:38]
D
Sell your car today on Carvana.
- [27:41]
C
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- [27:59]
A
And is it fair to say that that you suggest that his lyrics can appear quite simple but that we ought to Think of much more going on beneath the surface, that they're actually a bit more sophisticated than we often allow.
- [28:12]
D
I think that's right. I think they are very sophisticated. But he composes in what we call Montrov a Leu, the light style, or the accessible style, as opposed to Marc Abreu, who composes in the closed, or some people have even said obscure style, the difficult style. So he's very accessible. So much so that the 19th century romantics really loved him. And he's still very popular today. Recorded, much recorded. What he prizes above all is sincerity. And he says that love and poetry need to spring from the heart. But there's a great deal of craft in the way that he gives this impression, musicality, of the words to go with it. Lots of echoes and lots of interesting images, but it doesn't make life difficult for the listener.
- [29:07]
A
Yeah, yeah. And one of his most famous pieces is the Lark Song.
- [29:13]
E
When I see the lark display his wings with joy against the day forgetting fold then fall away as sweetness to his heart makes way such great envy Then invades my mind I see the rest take fire and marvel at it for no way can my heart turn from its desire Ah, I so dearly wished to know of love yet so little learn For I cannot keep from loving her who will not have me though I burn she stole my heart and all of me and she herself and worlds apart lacking herself now nothing's left but longing and the willing heart.
- [30:01]
D
It was very much loved. It's really moving. And he starts off with this beautiful image of the lark which is flying up to the sky, which is hope for the sublime of some kind. And then it's so full of joy that it forgets to fly. And then it plummets down to earth. And it's an image that he elaborates in the song, where he veers between the poles of joy and suffering, and he ends up with a sense of exile from his own identity, from the lady, from his roots in society. And he goes off into exile. It's a lovely song.
- [30:41]
A
Yeah, yeah. And is Bernard someone else who kind of develops this sort of legendary backstory as well? They seem keen to give him these really humble origins, from which he is. How much do we know about the truth behind his story?
- [30:56]
D
We don't really know anything about that. I think this is just invented. I'm not sure that it's trying to explain the lark, but I think it's just trying to say, who was he? And it just picks up one or two comments in his songs. And spins stories about them. I mean, we do know that he was attached to the so called school of Eble. Eblis Ventadorn was a rival friend and rival to William ix. And they have various kind of friendly competitions where they try and outdo each other in their courtly extravagance. Belknap says that he's so full of sorrow that he no longer will belong to the school of Lord Ebley. And so I think they try and kind of attach him to that court and maybe he was at that court. But yeah, basically it's just people spinning stories.
- [31:50]
A
Yeah. But it's fascinating. You almost get this fan fiction around troubadours and who they really were. So people are latching onto it and maybe if you can't write the same kind of music and poetry that they could, you can still expand the world by kind of crafting these backstories for them. It's fascinating that people want to do that, isn't it?
- [32:07]
D
It is. And you've expressed it very well. Yeah.
- [32:10]
A
And you also mentioned in the book that there are, you know, you probably around about 20 named women Troubadours as well. What do we know about them and how does their role in the troubadour tradition differ from men's? Is it the same or is it different?
- [32:24]
D
What do we know about them? Well, we know a certain amount about them because they're pretty well all aristocratic women who feature in other records, such as Maria Aventadorn, you know, she's a well known figure. It's clear that such women are important in courtly life. Someone in the poet in the 13th century makes it quite clear that women were involved particularly in dialogue poems, songs. And what he says is, well, if you are going to engage in these, just make sure they're not rude. They write in different genres, so they do write love songs. They're also very much involved in dialogues for which is part of courtly entertainment, basically. And they also write serventes, which were moralizing and or political songs. So it's a big mixture. But the difficulty for them in writing love songs is that typically, well, the conventions say that in the poetry the lady is the one on top, as it were. She's the dominant figure and the male lover is the one who is pleading for love. And this gets reversed in the women's love song because she's in this position where she's not really supposed to be pleading, but that's what she is doing. So it's awkward for her. And there is also the problem of how is it that a woman can be talking about love in physical terms? Which they do.
- [33:56]
A
Yeah. Which feels like, you know, during this period, and we talked about the misogyny of some of the male troubadours and the work that they were engaged in and the, you know, the Church was increasingly misogynistic during this period. Is there something dangerous in what these women are doing if, particularly if they're aristocratic, does this rebound on their reputations at all?
- [34:15]
D
Well, you'd think it could, and yet it doesn't seem to stop them. I thought, if it's all right with you, I thought I'd just quote a little bit from a couple of women troubadours, so I'm just going to do it in translation, obviously. But one of them, called Azeris de pot caeragwes, evokes an erotic situation which led Rene Nelly to elaborate a whole theory around the assacc or trial or test for a woman. And she says, fair love, I have pledged always to be well disposed towards you, courtly and welcoming, provided that you do not ask me to go too far. We shall soon come to the test of this, for I shall put myself at your mercy. You have promised faithfully that you will not ask me to do anything wrong. And the Countess of Diya says, I would like to hold my knight naked in my arms one evening, for he would be overjoyed if I only served him as a pillow. Da di da de da when shall I hold you in my power? If only I could lie with you one evening and give you a loving kiss. Know that I should dearly love you to hold you in the place of husband, Provided that you promised me to do everything that I wish. So it doesn't seem to have stopped them.
- [35:31]
A
Yeah, it's pretty racy stuff, isn't it?
- [35:33]
D
Yeah. But there's no evidence that it did rebound on them. It was considered completely acceptable to preserve their songs in these expensive songbooks, and the illustrations in the songbooks actually show them as courtly ladies. It doesn't. Just noble women, it doesn't suggest there was anything bad about them. But then in the 19th century, there were people who thought that they were actually scandalized and, you know, thought of the Countess of D as a scarlet woman, but they didn't respond that way, as far as we know, in Middle Ages, not at all.
- [36:08]
A
Yeah, very interesting. That's a 19th century reaction rather than anything contemporary. And does that almost freedom and that acceptance of that work by women troubadours reflect a slightly different attitude in the Occitanian world, to perhaps the rest of the European world. I mean, we famously. I think we think of it as being a much more kind of liberal and light atmosphere. When we think of people like Eleanor of Aquitaine coming out of that world, does it reflect a different attitude to women in particular in that region at that time?
- [36:42]
D
Well, it does seem to, doesn't it? I mean, there are something, I think you mentioned about 20 named women troubadours. You have to look very hard to find any women writers in. Or women composers of lyric. At any rate, in the north, they're one or two. I think they were actually very important in courtly life. You know, they were. They were people who presided over courtly entertainment. And also in the South, I think we're being. It's a difficult subject, but there were some quite powerful women in the south of France. Eleanor, obviously, is one example, But I think the social situation was, you could say it's somewhat different in the South.
- [37:27]
A
Yeah. Now, unfortunately, we're going to move back to men because
- [37:33]
D
we have more of
- [37:33]
A
them named, don't we? One troubadour kind of stands out in particular. There's a man named Arno Daniel who is kind of. He's praised by people like Dante and Petrarch and famous names that people will know. They sort of seem to appreciate and like his poetry. What do we know about him and why is his work so outstanding?
- [37:57]
D
What do we know about him? Well, we're told in the Vida that he started off his career learning letras, which means Latin. And it looks as though he was maybe aiming for some sort of career as a cleric or in the clergy. And then he just abandoned that and he became Joglard and he went around singing and composing and he became a troubledore and he was much, much appreciated. The reason he was so much appreciated then and later is by Dante and Petrarch is that he's an incredible wordsmith. His craft is just unbelievable, particularly for his searching out of rare words and complicated versification and rare rhymes and yeah, it's. I mean, it's all. Apart from one extremely rude poem. It's all love poetry, but it's the craft for which he's known.
- [39:09]
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- [39:29]
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- [40:11]
A
Is he innovating with the form? Is it. Is he progressing it? Is he taking it further than it's gone before, sort of finding new ways to use language to deliver these messages?
- [40:19]
D
Yes, he is. I mean, it's partly through this search for rare vocabulary. But perhaps I could just give you an example of a form that he invented, which is picked up later by Italian poets. They called it a sestina. He didn't call it that, but that's what it is. And it involves six stanzas and a couple of lines at the end, picking up the last bit. And in each stanza he ends each line with a word, a rhyme word. So there are six different rhyme words. And then in the next stanza he picks them up again, but in a different order and so on in six stanzas. So it's. My husband actually looked into this because he was trying to get a sort of mathematical explanation for what was going on, and he kind of compared it with bell ringing and the. I can't remember what it's called. It's the. The round bob or something. But anyway, it means that you come back to the same pattern. You would come back to the same pattern at the end if you started again after the end of the sixth stanza. And in the final two lines, he just incorporates those six rhyme words. So it's tulle de force.
- [41:35]
A
And I wonder if we could talk a little bit as well, and maybe we can bring in Bertrand de Born as our example to talk about this. But to what extent does the politics of the day affect what troubadours are writing and singing about? And as an extension of that kind of. How reasonable is it to use someone like Bertrand de Bourne as almost historical source material for what's going on and attitudes to politics of the day?
- [42:01]
D
Well, to a vast extent, there's a whole genre called the sirentes, which is hardly preserved in the north among the Trouvaires speaking in French as opposed to Occitane. But yes, there are vast numbers of political poems. And yes, I think it's obviously with any source, you're going to have to take account of all sorts of things. I think it's with the troubadours, there are details which can emerge which you wouldn't otherwise know about, particularly in Bertrand de Borg. Historians have had recourse to this. There are names that he mentioned who can be identified through other sources, and you can form a bigger picture of what their role was, what they were doing, who they were associated with. Particularly, though, I think you can use the troubadours, if that's not the wrong word, to get an idea of a public response to events such as the Crusades.
- [42:58]
A
Yeah, interesting. So it's almost like watching a satirical news program today. We might watch something that comments on the news and makes a bit of fun of it, make light of it or makes obscure references to it. That's kind of what the troubadours are doing.
- [43:11]
D
That's a very good way of putting it, although sometimes it's extremely serious. And when Berkhad Lebon is criticizing leaders of the Crusade for not getting on with it and just delaying and delaying when, you know, when we've heard that Jerusalem has fallen, or. I hope I've got my dates right there. But, yeah, in response to dreadful events that are going on in the Holy Land, he's goading them, he's prompting them, and it's quite serious. So, yeah, satire, but also serious. Other sorts of events that come into this might be the conflict between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope, for instance, in the 13th century. There's a lot of troubadour responses to that, and a lot of it is propaganda. Partly, you can see that Frederick iii, Hohenstaufen is actually. He has a whole propaganda machine going, and troubadours can be part of that.
- [44:03]
A
Yeah, yeah. And kind of unlike Arno that we talked about earlier, Bertrand attracts attention from. From Dante, who kind of complains about him and says, you know, he's. He's out there sowing discord with the work that he's doing. Is. Is that a fair assessment by Dante or. Or is he being a bit mean?
- [44:21]
D
He's not being mean. He's being quite truthful. Beltran was a sower of discord. He said he likes it when war is happening because. Well, first of all. I mean, first of all, he foments discord because he's actually trying to get people on his side in local wars that he's involved in, and he's trying to protect his own castle. But more than that, he loves people being at war because it makes the top people a lot friendlier. It means he can hobnob with People like Richard the Lionheart and the young King Henry of England. And there are lots of courts and lots of free spending and drinking and feasts and celebrating the courtly way of life. And so, yeah, he thinks discord is great.
- [45:06]
A
It's good for business. We also have a word that cropped up a little bit earlier is a jongleur. And I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about how a jongleur is different from a troubadour and whether people sort of moved between the two spheres.
- [45:21]
D
I mean, it's an arguable area, but makes sense to see a Jean Gleur as somebody who performs and a troubadour as somebody who composes. And certainly you can be the same person, but you could primarily start off your life going around singing other people's songs, and then you could start composing yourself. And that is the story that's told about our art, Daniel. So, yes, you could certainly go from one to the other.
- [45:48]
A
Yeah, yeah. Interesting.
- [45:50]
D
And maybe to give a rather different kind of example, well, this is a different change of status, and that is Reinbarth de Vaqueras, who started as a troubadour, a very fine troubadour, but he became the troubadour and friend of Boniface I of Montferrat, who was a leader at the Fourth Crusade. And Boniface. This was a very rare thing. I mean, troubadours really hoped that the rich would promote them in some way or give them lots of vice gifts. But what Boniface did was he made. He made Kleinbarter knight. He knighted him.
- [46:25]
A
Yeah, yeah, Fascinating.
- [46:27]
D
So that's certainly a change of status. Yeah. And how does.
- [46:32]
A
Or how did troubadour culture kind of change with the status of the singer? And I'm thinking mostly here in the book of Folque de Marcelat, in particular.
- [46:43]
D
Folquet de Marcel. Yeah. Well, you could say that Folquet started off being a troubadour as well as being the son of a merchant and so on, and he ended up as a bishop. And when he became a bishop, he felt very embarrassed about having dallied around with these silly troubadour love songs. But as far as troubadour culture went, Folket sided with the French and the Church in their invasion of the south during the Albigensian Crusade, which was started to allegedly to extirpate the Cathar heresy and other heresies. But basically it ended up being a war of conquest. And Fouquet was bishop of Toulouse, and he played a really pretty despicable role, actually, from Trouveraud's point of view and the locals point of view, in tricking the citizens to accept the rule of the French, claiming that they would all keep their lands and they'd all, you know, life would just carry on as before. And as soon as he'd got them in his power, they were all sent off into exile. I mean, he was certainly important for a change in troubadour culture, because apart from anything else, a lot of the troubadours started lambasting the Church and the French and the Crusaders.
- [48:03]
A
Yeah. It's an interesting case, isn't it? Because he's a troubadour who, being a troubadour sort of opens the doors to social progression for him. He ends up as a bishop who, as you say, is almost embarrassed of his origins, despite the fact that that's how he got there. But then he also turns into someone who is effectively attacking Occitan culture and the Occitan way of living and trying to see that subsumed into a more northern French way of doing things. He's almost. He's poacher turned gamekeeper almost, isn't he?
- [48:34]
D
Well, he is. I wouldn't say that having. I don't think there's a direct link between him getting an introduction to powerful people in the south through his songs. I don't think there's a link between that and becoming a bishop. I think those two things are quite separate, actually. But he certainly becomes. Yes, you could say he becomes. He's a poeter and gamekeeper. I'm afraid he's not a very attractive figure. But then I'm kind of on the side of the troubadours, aren't I?
- [49:04]
A
Yeah, absolutely. We'll leave him behind. He can be the bad guy of our story.
- [49:08]
D
Yeah.
- [49:08]
A
And to what extent do we see an end to the troubadour tradition? Does it finish or does it sort of subside a little bit? Does it go quietly or slowly?
- [49:20]
D
We don't have any troubadour songs in Occital after the very beginning of the 14th century, so you could say that it subsides in that sense. I mean, it gains new life by it being absorbed into Italian in the dolce sti nuovo and Dante's. Dante's lyrics and in the whole courtly lyric tradition. In that sense, it doesn't die, but it gets transformed.
- [49:47]
A
Yeah, yeah. Are we able to see a kind of a direct influence on people like Dante from the troubadour tradition and their interest in It.
- [49:55]
D
Oh, well, certainly, yes, yes. Dante in his youth, he wrote. Well, when he was comparatively young, he wrote a treatise in Latin called the De Vulgari Eloquentia on vernacular Eloquence. And he's arguing for the status of the vernacular as a vehicle for the highest form of poetry. And he talks about there being three traditions here. There's the language of Oc, the language of Oe, and the language of Si. The language of Oc is Occitan, because it's the way that people said yes in Oxtan. The language of Olia is Old French and the language of C is Italian. And then he cites various authorities, authoritative figures, including people like Arnold Dunien and so on. So, I mean, he's very clearly deeply influenced by the troubadours. And you can see this in his Divine Comedy, for instance, as well as his lyrics.
- [50:54]
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, this has been absolutely fascinating and I really feel like I'm gonna go away and have to read some of the ruder versions of poetry that we can't talk about on air.
- [51:02]
D
Yeah.
- [51:03]
A
But I wonder before we finish, whether you. Whether you think there is a real lasting legacy to the troubadour movement. What is its legacy?
- [51:14]
D
That's such a difficult question. I think it brought ways of talking about love, which have persisted. And there were people in the 19th century who had complained about this. They complained about simple minded women who had internalized thoughts about love, adventure, which didn't do society much good at all.
- [51:37]
A
I feel like most of the troubadours would be quite happy to feel like they were a bad influence seven or 800 years later, I think.
- [51:42]
D
So I think troubadours are a good influence in their values. I think there were many positive values which belonged there. There are lots of people nowadays who like to think of themselves as troubadours, and there are a lot of people who record the troubadours. And, you know, there are lots of CDs and so on with different ways of performing them. Of course, that's a whole other question. How do you perform the music that you find written down in the manuscripts? But that's a different issue.
- [52:11]
A
Yeah, yeah. But it's fascinating to think of an art form sort of launched by a duke of Aquitaine 900 years ago that is still around today. That is still influenced popular culture today.
- [52:23]
D
Yeah, I hope so. Yes, of course, I wouldn't call troubadours necessarily popular culture, but I think they've become more that.
- [52:31]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Well, thank you so much for. For joining us to talk about this, Linda, people can go and find your book and learn far more about the troubadours than we've been able to cover. This has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you very much.
- [52:44]
D
Well, thank you, Matt.
- [52:47]
A
If you've enjoyed this episode, you can find plenty about Eleanor of Aquitaine in our back catalogue, as well as an episode on the Albigensian Crusade that we mentioned, and one on Welsh female poets. There are new installments of comedievil every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Elena and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week@historyhit.com subscribe anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history.
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G
Foreign.
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B
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