Conception of Love

WHILE the part of the troubadours in the development of European literatures has failed in general to be appraised at its due measure, their contribution to morals has afforded occasion for much edification. A view, in truth very ancient, credits them with having initiated a “new conception of love.” Passion, known to pagan antiquity in its sensual aspect only, is supposed to have been raised by the poets of Provence to the level of an ennobling sentiment detached from the flesh, and the ideal of woman, deified by their poetic worship, is said to have inspired them with a cult which blended with that of the Holy Virgin. This theme has been developed at large with all the enthusiasm and eloquence it is calculated to inspire. A certain Emil Lucka of Vienna has devoted to those lofty conceptions and their elucidation with the aid of metaphysical theories on the “development of the Ego,” a number of works, one of which appeared in English under the title, The Evolution of Love. “The first expression of true love,” writes this author, “makes its appearance through spontaneous inspiration, and without the aid of philosophical concepts, in the works of the troubadours. To the greatest of them, Bernard of Ventadorn, is due the honor of having been the first to celebrate chaste love. If ever a champion of civilization deserved a monument, it is this poet”¹. As one example among a large number of similar declarations, I cite the remarks of M. Louis Gillet on the subject in his admirable study of Dante:

They [the troubadours] had done something extraordinary, While addressing an audience of women, they had invented the cult of women. It was an immensely far-reaching revolution. Those archaic poets, whom no one now reads, . . . wrote their works for a posterity of centuries and carved deep in our souls the fundamental feature of our civilisation . . . By modeling the forms of love on those of knightly service and homage and by giving it a special ritual and language . . . they brought about a change so unprecedented that its effects have been incalculable. It was a genuine act of moral creation, the most original in the Middle Ages, a kind of love entirely detached from all idea of generation and the reproduction of species. Woman became a religion.²

M. Gillet cannot, of course, be reproached for according credence to an opinion universally current in regard to those poets “whom no one now reads.”

Strange as it may appear in the light of those confident assurances, there does not exist in the whole of troubadour poetry, from its inception down to its sudden extinction in the cataclysm which overtook the country of its birth, a trace of that “new conception of love” so freely ascribed to the troubadours. In the opinion of several authorities, the impression derived from a perusal of that literature is anything but edifying from a moral point of view. Dr. Weinhold writes: “This literature is completely lacking in delicacy and modesty of any sort. There is not a feeling of respect and deference towards women which it does not brutally trample under foot.”³ M. Pierre Andraud admits that troubadour poetry is inspired only by “a moral unconcern which is not without grace and elegance, but can scarcely be accounted noble.”⁴ Severe as are those judgments, there can be no question, throughout the period when the poetry of the troubadours flourished, of the idealization commonly attributed to them. After the annihilation, in 1209, of the society which brought about the development of that literature, the activity of a few poets of Languedoc continued for a while on a much reduced scale, and in a form almost unrecognizable under the aspects of disintegration and decay. Prior to that date, nothing is to be found in the poetry of the troubadours that suggests a platonic idealization of passion.

It assuredly is not with reference to Count Guilhem of Poitiers that we may speak of chastity and spiritualization. William of Malmesbury calls him fatuus et lubricus.⁵ The author of the life of Bernard de Tiron declares that Count Guilhem was notorious as “the enemy of all chastity and female virtue.”⁶ A gay dog if ever there was one, a deuce of a fellow, the worthy Count flaunts in his lucubrations an impudicity which embarrasses his editors. He sings, as do all his successors, the praises of love; but his paean has not a touch of the ethereal. Far from it. The pleasure which, to the merry Count’s way of thinking, passes all others is wholly and undisguisedly carnal.

“Not only is love not represented as platonic, but the expression of sensual desire assumes extremely crude, sometimes almost brutal forms.”⁸ That is the least that can be said. Let the reader judge for himself.

One of these canticles in praise of chivalrous love ends with the following stanza:

Klept am I ‘Master infallible’; never had leman mine my company one night, but fain would have it on the morrow. In that trade am I so much well-approved that I could thereby dorst trow earn my bread on any mart.

One of the pieces of the noble troubadour furnished Boccaccio with the motif of one of his broadest tales.¹⁰ It concludes with the following verse:

I tupped them as ye shall rate; one hundred fourscore times and eight, so girth and gear did wellnigh burst; nor can I tell you the languor great that got me erst.

Cercamon and his pupil Marcabru, likewise accounted “archaic” in the succession of troubadour poets, composed their works, it is thought, between 1136 and 1145. “Their style,” observes Jeanroy, “has not yet attained the stage of refinement which was soon to permit the veiling of the most ardent sensuality under the cloak of vague phrases.”¹² In contrast with Count Guilhem, Cercamon sings of love’s sorrows and melancholy moods; but he is none the more ethereal on that account.

What time the whole world waxeth dark, a light shines there as she abodes; lief God I had dipped her in love’s toils! Or but espied when as for bed she dights her and despoils!

Here I cannot dwell, ne from thence endure, without I strain her fast and kiss, naked to my side, in curtained rowme.

Send God the saviour I may hoste there as my gentle lady wones; and may she lap me in her fold, and yield the thing she hath fore gaged; apert let her forth uncoyed, eft shot the bolt, and ill betide her jealous dolt.

Marcabru (or Marcabrun, or Marc Brun), who is very unlike the elegiac Cercamon, is in many respects an interesting poet. He has been pronounced a misogynist. Five centuries before King Francis I, he proclaimed that woman oft does change and “ben es fols qui si fia”—who so trusts her a mighty fool is he.¹⁶ But his challenge is of wider range; he hits with scourge all forms of egoism, deceit, and insincerity, whether in women, or in great lords or commoners, and his revolt imparts to this archaic poet a modern flavor. Unlike the greater number of his colleagues, Marcabru delights in railing upon love: “Famine, plague nor war do more wreck in this world than doeth love.”

We shall have occasion to return to Marcabru; suffice it here to establish that his language and sentiments savor of anything but idealization.

Three wend afore me down the vestibule; a fourth is at his fling; I say not any word, whenas a fifth hyes running in hot haste; I remit her brothelness, so she liggen moot, her length to my behof, flat on her toute.

The love-songs of Bernard of Ventadorn (1148-1195) are declared by some to be the best of the kind in Provençal literature, and even in the whole of medieval poetry, an opinion which may be debatable but is not extravagant. Other troubadours exhibit a more brilliant virtuosity, but the songs of Bernard of Ventadorn are distinguished by a sincerity and simplicity, which are, at any rate, nicely calculated. They are as tender and gentle as a song by Robert Burns. They do not contain, however, the least allusion to the chaste form of love which Herr Lucka chooses to ascribe to Bernard’s invention. “The love that Bernard of Ventadorn proclaimed as the most precious thing in the world,” writes his principal editor, “rests quite frankly on sensual desire. The language with which he clothes his feelings is more or less delicate; often he is rather coarse, though his manner has nothing of the crudity of diction employed by Guilhem de Poitou.”¹⁹ Let the following serve as examples:

Sweet heart, what shall I make? Am I then never to have hap of thee? Of my desire unto my Lady lief, me thinks I’m like to die; but if she leed me to her bower, whereas I may cull and kiss, and compass her white, and sleek, and silk-smooth form.

That expression of love’s ideal aim, which becomes a set formula of the troubadour repertory, is repeated with but slight variation in the songs of Bernard de Ventadorn:

Please God, who the world ruleth, I mote of her have joy.

Troth hath she all things good, saving that her lacks the sprite to bring me to meet ite anight; and sans bedeck, set the sweet halter of her arms about my neck.

No panegryric of spiritualized love is complete without a reference to Jaufré Rudel, Prince of Baia (1140-1170) and his long-range passion for the Countess of Tripoli, the “Distant Princess.” She was, be it noted, the daughter of his good neighbor and patron, Count Raimon IV of Toulouse, to whom doubtless this celebrated conceit, intended as a compliment in the taste of the time, was addressed. One of the lays in which it is set forth contains the following lines:

Please God, who all things did create, and framed my Lady-far-away, I sight my Lady-far-away with wordly eyes, as lists my heart, in flesh and deed, and stead parted steed. Sooth redeth he who entwighteth me with lecherie, nor deems me sate with distant druerie, for that on lustihead none am faster bent than joy to have of my Lady-far-away. Alack a-me! that I list may never be!

Elsewhere, rehearsing a less mystical interlude, his tone is even more sensual:

Of this my love are bred my grame and woe! Such fondness mine, and not a whit recks she! But full soon shall I wot an my long durance win to hap of her . . . Desire doth vex me or I wake or sleep; lulled then in dreams, oft am I wondrous fain, for I have joy of her passing great, receiving and rendering love’s delice . . . But of her goodly self small comfort have I gotten . . . Friend, quoth she, the jealous churls such pother raise that hard’t will be to quell them so we may desport.

Bertram de Born, Lord of Hauteford (1180-1205), was better known as a singer of battles—Bertramun de Bornio arma poetasse, as Dante says²⁵—than as a composer of love-songs. Sir Bertram, who was closely involved in the intrigues and struggles which preluded the Hundred Years’ War, resided for a considerable time at the English Court of Normandy. He thought it shabby and intolerably dull: “We of Limoges,” he says, “prefer folly before wisdom and are of our disposition gay and fond of lavish living and laughter.”²⁶ Accordingly, disgusted with the stinginess and the glum temper of the men of the North, he sought compensation in addressing his attentions to the Duchess Matilda, daughter of King Henry II and wife of Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony. Bertram calls her “Saïssa,” the Saxon, and celebrates her charms in the following terms:

Best-of-best I ply with love’s request, her lithe body enfolding. To rede from what sees eye, good’t were, ween I, naked to hold her and behold.

Or again :

Nought unto her fair form in loveliness is peer; nor is this fancy mere; who so disparts her dress, belied is not his guess; show forth bedazzling fruits of youthsomeness; and the more raiment’s doffed, the more flames lust aloft; shene of her bosom’s turns to noonday night; and somewhat downward to enquire the universal world setteth afire.

Guilhem de Cabestanh (1162-1197) is, if one may risk the syncretism, the classic troubadour. Rightly does Stendahl choose the gallant knight for the paradigm of his kind. Cabestanh celebrates with deferential delicacy his tender devotion to his lady, reiterating the hackneyed formulae of courtly love. The details of his life are overshadowed by the poetic legend with which his name is associated; an incensed husband killed him, it is said, and gave his wife her lover’s heart to eat. The story, common in folklore, provides an appropriate frame for the romantic figure of the troubadour-knight. Yet, however delicate and chivalrous the expression of his sentiments, no doubt may be attached to the nature of the felicity after which he so tenderly sighs. Thus sings the gallant bard:

Fair Lady, alderbest, gracious of form and mien, love doth me thrall detain in his sweet jail. Mine were, I ween, great meed and vaunt, an God thy folded arms for girth did grant; nought list I more while the world dures.

The dear smart where with love full fills my sprite to pleasant discant doth me oft incite. I look in fancy upon thy body’s snow and burn with more desire than I list show.

Peire Vidal (1175-1215) is, on account of his originality, animation and variety, the most accessible among the troubadours to the modern reader. Leading a life of adventure in various countries, he shared with lively interest in the political passions of his time, and he was gifted with a feeling for the aspects of nature rare at that period. Peire Vidal is ingenious and versatile, and the matter and manner of his verse form a picturesque blend. In the treatment of amatory themes, he is equally free from excessive affectation and from coarseness; he is tender without being sugary, and scrupulous without falling into pedantry. Vidal is fond of dwelling on the merits of patience and restraint in the love relation, and discourages precipitate haste. His descants thus abound in expressions which, torn from their context, might pass as evidence of reserve. But this does not in the least signify that the happiness he seeks is other than normally sensual, and that he has any other view.

She hath me cast from light into the dusk, she whom I go desiring; and sith that love breeds all my grame, I have no wonder that she does me woe. But wot ye well a sooth I can assure for that I shall thereto endure on till I feed upon her body’s meed.

Ah! Lady mine, may the submission and humble behaviors I use move thy dear ruth thereto that it shall bring me to thy arms.

Wot you wherefore my heart is possessed with my love to her alone? ‘T is that never was, I wont, lady so fair, so noble and so sweet, Her friend to be is most wealth to own. Beeth she and I rise bedight to meet the amorous rite, more hap I’d deem my part than I were Sir Richard of the Lion Heart.

On her mouth and chin I’ve laid a kiss. More have I not had of her, and shall die iwiss or I reach the rest.

She stirs and fans me to a brenning coal.

Peire Vidal also utters his sensuality under the light disguise of a topographical double entendre, a procedure not uncommon at that period:

Fresh of hue and fair of hair is she; nor brush to gaud herself withal. But fainly would she hold reserved Mount Pleasant and Well Adorned; nor does she barter or pledge Fair Sport. Yet doth she consent me Fort Beloved and Fair Repose for my softer recline and barters Goodly Mansions for my love.

Guiraut de Bornelh (1175-1220) was held in such high account by his contemporaries that he was named the “master troubadour.” Dante is doubtless right in considering that reputation excessive, although at first he appeared to endorse the high estimate. But Guiraut has a fine lyric lilt. One may imagine that the music and its lively movement went for a good deal in placing his reputation so high.

“His conception of love is the same as that of all other troubadours of his time,”³⁸ and he can be “as classic in his vocabulary as Guilhem de Poitiers.”³⁹

Arnaud Daniel (flor. 1180-1200), the best artificer of his mother tongue—miglior fabbro del parlar materno—in Dante’s phrase,⁴⁰ uses no disguised language in declaring the tenor of his emotions:

Please God! . . . . We twain shall bed, my lady and I. In pointed stead, whereto rich tryst convenes to banquet of her body, catered by wanton hands to hungry eens, that laugh with glee, Heigh ho! feeding on what they see by lamp’s glow.

Joy of her surmounts all that another has to give. She who hath smitten me, may she make good the smart she bred by fill of my desire! Desire itself doth the while pleasure bring; what time I think upon her, I delight in the desiring. But ah! God of Mercy! that I nathless had joy of her in other wise!

Dante makes him atone in Purgatory the “hermaphroditic sin,” and that of indulging his appetites “like the beasts.”⁴³ Arnaud, in fact, does not shrink from using language that goes beyond any Latin:

There follow eight stanzas of erotic scatology. Dante’s tribute to him as an unrivalled craftsman in the handling of language and metres, “whom we have followed”—et nos eum secuti sumus⁴⁵—is nevertheless fully merited. His quality stands brilliantly apart.

Arnaud Daniel likes to pose as a blundering flutterpate.

In other words, “I am Arnaud, who reapeth the wind; and waste my time and swim against the stream.” But something more than a glossary is required to apprehend the verbal fireworks with which he loves to ply his audience.

Arnaud Daniel swears eternal devotion to one woman after another.

Gold will be sold at the price of iron ere Arnaud unloves her whom to his heart is vowed.

But his promises are given with a smile:

He scorns the poor-spirited creature who holds that a lover is bound to pine and give himself up to anguish, and that every woman should be a belle dame sans merci. Arnaud Daniel’s song is tuned to another key:

Raimon Jordain prefers a night in the arms of his mistress to his chance of Paradise,⁵⁰ and Gaucelm Faidit (1190-1240) is even more lascivious.⁵¹ Others go even farther, and we have to hark back to Martial for parallels of their “conception of love.”⁵² Of that conception, Arnaud de Mareulh (1170-1200) gives us a precise definition: it is “voluntatz qu’ai del vostre cors gen”—the desire I feel for your graceful body.⁵³ And lest any doubt should linger, Arnaud Daniel himself puts even more precision into the statement; he informs us that he wishes “to be united with her in body, not in soul.”

To sum up, there exists in the poetic output of any troubadour of the twelfth century no shadow of ambiguity as to the frankly sensual character of the erotic passion which inspires it. Not one can be suspected of entertaining any other conception of love. However affected and pedantic the conventions of courtly intrigue, however obscure the diction of the trobar clus, our poets—far from casting a veil, even diaphanous, of mystery over the nature of the felicity, the “joy,” after which they sigh—express themselves on this head with a crudeness unparalleled in any other literature. All prudery aside, the directness they display in this respect is disconcerting by its artlessness. The constant recurrence of terms and phrases such as despolhar, jazer, estrenher, tener nuda, sos cor gras et le, produces by its monotonous iteration the effect of an incredible penury of imagination and vocabulary, and by depriving the bald expression of sensual desire of any element of invention or surprise, reduces those colorless formulae to the level of the indecencies of naughty schoolboys.⁵⁵ Of “sublimation” or “platonic love” no trace soever is to be found throughout the range of this literature.

As noted above, the troubadours love to dwell upon the distinctions, at once captious and obscure, which they draw between courtly love, or “druerie,” and the coarse feelings of vulgar minds. Those distinctions lie at the very root of the apologetics of courtly love. No clown, no person whose sensibilities are uncultivated, is able to apprehend the refined emotions that inspire aristocratic gallantry. Arnaud Daniel, frankly sensual as he is, girds at “those lovers whose commerce brings shame upon a woman and degradation to a man.” “I have myself renounced the love of a wealthy lady of high estate,” he tells us, “that I might not incur the stain of shameful pleasures, whose vulgar grossness is unredeemed by any delicacy or honour. To such pursuers of women, the love I seek is a closed book; despite their claims to elegance and refinement, such lovers destroy all courtesy.”⁵⁶

Wherein consist in fine, then, those sacrosanct distinctions, so insistently referred to, yet for the most part wrapped in the obscurities of the gai saper and of the trobar clus? It happens from time to time, though on but rare occasions, that the poets allow a clear idea of what they mean to pierce through the conventional jargon.

Marcabru is particularly garrulous on that point. Violent as are his invectives against love, his song sometimes mingles with the paeans of Eros intoned by his colleagues and is in no way inferior to them in poetic quality:

O subtile love, fount of all good, that lightest the world, I crave of thee mercy!

Or again:

Love virtue hath of smaragdyne and sardonyx: of all joy is he root and crest; sooth is he most lord of all, who wieldeth sovereign might over all creatures quick, and all-kind wight.

What then is the love against which Marcabru rails in such scathing terms? He defines it in unmistakable language: It is mercenary and interested love. It is the love which those women practice who flout the rules of druerie, and deserve the name with which he rates them in good round Provençal—putanas. The mercenary motive is in fact the corpus delicti of offenses against love. The corollary of the principle that love justifies all things is that conduct which is motivated by interest, since it is not the effect of love, is for that reason unjustifiable.

Hence the insistence upon the rule that a woman should never take a lover of a higher estate than her own:

A dame commiteth great folly and disgrace when so a friend she takes in high place.

“A woman,” says a poetess, “should give herself to a lover as to a friend and not as to a master.”⁶⁰ Accordingly a noble lady of manorial rank does not demean herself in taking a lover of low birth to the extent that she would by yielding to a man of more exalted social station than her own. “A woman who takes a great lord as her lover should be regarded as dead,” declares an ancient commentator.⁶¹ Raimon de Miraval cries shame upon a lady who has been guilty of an impropriety of this kind. “He who pays the highest price has first claim to the goods,” he exclaims, “but it was an ill wage the lady drew, for she hath thereby lost her good name.”⁶²

Furthermore, refined love demands “loyalty.” The term must not be understood as having reference to fidelity, for we are expressly told that there is nothing against a woman having several lovers or a man several mistresses.⁶³ A lover has no more right to be jealous than has a husband, for jealousy is one of the most inexcusable crimes against the spirit of courtesy. Courtly loyalty has reference in particular to the scrupulous observance of secrecy. It is one of the most strictly observed rules of courtly love that a lover shall not disclose the name of his lady, unless it be to some trusted friend who offers to assist him in his intrigue. Thus saith Bernard de Ventadorn:

Upon one point never did sense forsake me: none ever sought from me the name of her who grants me joy, but I of set purpose lied to him. ‘T is contrary to good doctrine, and folly ‘tis one’s heart to ope when it lucks me well with one—saving only to such a one as is couth of affording help and service.

Accordingly, the lady of the songs is invariably shadowed under the disguise of a pseudonym, senhal. A “loyal” lover neglects no precaution to keep her secret, even should he, in order to do so, have to pretend to love another woman, who plays the part of “screen.” “No one suffers greater unease than I,” exclaims Guilhem de Cabestanh, “for I must needs feign to unlove you, whom I desire beyond any other in the world, and to disavow my love to you.”

There is much reference in Provençal poetry to lauzengiers, a term which has unnecessarily perplexed critics, for although etymologically it contains the idea of flattery, its use in Provençal is identical with its current use in Italian, where lusinga, lusingiero simply means “deception,” “deceiver.” Deceivers are they who do not respect a lady’s secret. The love relationship extracts from both lovers a loyalty that is proof against such deception and that of slanderers who charge lovers with being guilty of the breach of faith.⁶⁶

“Had not my beloved lent ear to false deceivers, I should have been her own, nor ever used guile or unsooth,” says Marcabru:

He fulminates, as do all the poets, against the churls who neglect or fail to apprehend the principles of courtly love, and who suppose they are being romantic when abandoning themselves to indiscriminate amours. “An they call that druerie, they speak unsooth,” says he, “for perfect love is joy, but likewise is it unease and measure.”

“Measure,” mezura, that is, “holding back” (“religion held even thieves in measure”—Spenser), is one of the consecrated terms of erotic scholasticism. It is not merely to promiscuous debauchery that “measure,” the antonym of which is leujairia, is opposed. The term has reference in particular to patience in the pursuit of love’s meed. The lover should not be precipitate, he should know how to wait and travel by easy stages to his goal. Peire Vidal is fond of dwelling upon such persevering and measured waiting. He engages in a tenson with Blacatz on this “question of love.” Blacatz accounts the delaying endurance of Peire Vidal excessive. “As for me,” says he, “after that I have done service to my lady for days early and late, I like her to quit my promised guerdon. Willingly do I leave to you your long joyless wait; for my part it is the joy I desire.”

Peire Vidal replies:

Blacatz, I am not framed after your sort, who take no pains in love’s pursuit. I like to make a long day’s travel before I reach a good hostel, and the longer the delay, the more delightful is the meed.

Garin le Brun, a later troubadour, wrote a poem in the form of an internal dialogue, a style much in favor in the Middle Ages, and in Moorish poetry, between Mezura and Leujairia.⁷⁰

Mezura bids me not be hasty nor lack in patience. “Do not play thy counters all at once, for if thou doeth so, what shall be left then to proffer”; Leujairia says: “What avails long bidding? If thou makest not haste, thou wilt lose thy hap of winning to the goal.” Mezura tells me: “Go cunningly to thy work if thou wishest to make sure of thy meed.” Leujairia tweaks me by the nose and says: “When thou holdest the goblet in thy hand, what availeth longer tarrying?” Forsomuch am I torn between Mezura and Leujairia.

There is nothing in all this that bears any relation to platonic love or chastity. When the subtleties of courtly dialectic are sifted to their meaning, the refined love which the poets defend against coarseness and vulgarity remains no less frankly carnal. Marcabru inveighs, and his tongue is a sharp one, against those men and women whose behavior degrades love, and who heed not lofty sentiments and emotions. After which diatribe, he makes himself snug with his bon amia, who, for her part, is never guilty of such unworthy conduct, and therefore merits the refined devotion of an entendedor, and he caresses her “while he puts off his clothes.”⁷¹

It may readily be conceived that the expressions used in troubadour poetry to establish the distinctions between “refined” love and gross “villainy” lend themselves to confusion. Editors and commentators have not always been at pains, in their interpretations and translations, to guard against such misunderstandings. The word fin, for instance, is sometimes translated by “pure” or even “chaste,” and the terms referring to “villainy” are rendered by “sensual love.”

The import of words undergoes an evolution in correspondence with the varying conditions and conceptions of successive periods. Many of the terms of the courtly vocabulary originally serving the purpose of idealization, elevation, and refinement have come to acquire the exactly opposite connotation. Thus the word “mistress,” having been used relatively to the assimilation of the love bond to the feudal, has come to acquire a pejorative meaning. A similar transformation has changed the intention of the words “leman”—lief-man, dear man (or woman); and “paramour”—par amour. The term druerie, in fourteenth-century English, “drury” or “love drury,” was at first a synonym for courtly love. A knight called himself the “dru” (in Provençal, druz; in Italian, drudo; in Celtic druth) of his lady. The word is etymologically related to “droit,” “droiture,” and to the English “truth,” “troth.” In the Roman de Renard, the loyal vassals of the king are called his drutz.⁷² The word is even at times employed with reference to divine love.⁷³ In the Tristan of Thomas, the virelay of the song to Iseult runs :

Dante gives the word a pejorative connotation, using it in the masculine as the correlative of the coarsest word for “prostitute”:

In an old Celtic lexicon the word druth is translated “whore.” The latter word itself was originally a term of endearment, cognate with the Latin carus, dear, beloved.

The vocabulary of the troubadours underwent, over a period of years, modifications in the direction of delicacy. The blunt and ribald aspect of the language becomes mitigated at the same time and it grows richer and more flexible, while the ideas and sentiments denoted continue unchanged. The crudity of the classical word for the carnal act gives place to the term jauzir (to enjoy), which is none the less employed in the same definite sense.⁷⁶ Later, after the ruin of Provençal civilization, the meaning of almost all the words formerly employed by the troubadours to distinguish courtly from vulgar love came to be used to indicate entirely different distinctions.

But no trace of that ambiguity and amphibology exists in the works of the troubadours prior to the cataclysm which overwhelmed their art under the ruin of their country. The changes which had already taken place in their social position nevertheless might easily have brought about related modifications in ideas and language before that time. The position of the poet had considerably altered at the end of the twelfth century from what it had been at the beginning. His vocation had become more specialized and professional. The pretense that he must be an armed knight had been completely dropped. The noble bard, who had left at first to his jongleurs the care of singing his poems, had come to entrust to them the task of composition as well. The courtly fiction had indeed lost much of its dogmatism before the growing power of the mercantile class. Talent was freely recognized irrespectively of the social level from which it came. The lords of the old school voice their protest against the elevation of persons of low birth to the dignity of the poet’s calling. Peire de Mala in a sirvente takes exception to those wretched parasites.⁷⁷ The situation is intelligible enough, for “the perpetual complaints made by the troubadours from the end of the twelfth century against the niggardly treatment meted out to them at the hands of great lords prove in what measure their art had become dependent on the latter.”⁷⁸

It might at times happen that the troubadour, presuming upon the privileges of poetic talent, usurped the claims of the poet knight, and took seriously the literary passion which the discharge of his calling required him to display. In a society whose morals are not very strict, literary talent confers a certain license where women are concerned. But in many cases it would have been an absurdity and an inexcusable impertinence on the part of the provider of poetic pastimes to lay claim to the favors of the noble Dame who condescended to grant him her protection. The lady, the drue, originally celebrated in song by the noble bard, became the gracious patroness of literature, and the most precious favor she could bestow upon the esurient poet would be to feed him.

Nothing would have been more natural under those conditions than a change in the character and expression of the feelings which formed the theme of troubadour poetry. If the love sung by the poets, being anything but platonic to begin with, had become so by the force of circumstances, there would be nothing surprising in the evolution. The remarkable fact is that nothing of the kind occurred. At a time when the social position of the poets had undergone a profound alteration, towards the close of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, not even a pretense of spiritual interpretation of passion is to be found in their productions. On the very eve of the disaster which cast the lands of Provençal poetry into an abyss of annihilation, out of which they were never to rise again, that poetry stood at the pinnacle of its fame and brilliance. There was no gradual decay. It was mowed down in full bloom. The last days of its efflorescence were the age of Arnaud Daniel, Peire Vidal, Giraut de Bornelh. It showed no signs of exhaustion or gradual deterioration in its quality. The conception of love upon which it was based remained, too, frankly sensual. The blemishes of decadence do not appear before the year 1209, the date of the proclamation of the crusade against the Albigenses, and then they appeared indeed suddenly. It was after that date, when the poetry of the troubadours had lost every literary quality, that it became moral. The change took place in the corruption and dissolution of the grave.