Language, Desire, and Knowledge in Matfre Ermengau’s Breviari d’amor
Like Raimon Vidal counseling the young joglar in Abril issia, a text he certainly knew since he quotes from it,1 Matfre Ermengau presents himself as writing at the request of his fellow troubadours in Béziers. But Matfre’s response when asked to explain the true nature of love is on a different scale from Raimon’s on court performance. His misleadingly named Breviari d’amor (Concise compendium of love) is one of the most ambitious vernacular texts of the Middle Ages, a vast verse encyclopedia about God, creation, and the nature of humankind, which remains unfinished at around 35,000 lines. Its unifying theme is the doctrine that God is love and that there is no being (essencia) other than his; God’s creatures exist only by virtue of participating in divine love and manifest, however palely, aspects of their divine origin. All being can thus be represented as a great interconnecting tree of love.
Early in the text Matfre describes this tree, which is both a means of mapping the various species of being and the plan of his book. Most manuscripts at this point provide a magnificent whole-page illustration of the tree. One of its two branches consists of all animate creatures, defined by the form of love that is common to them all: that between male and female. From this branch forks the other, that of humankind who, as well as loving sexually, are also capable of loving and serving God. As long as God’s creatures are true to their divine nature they are virtuous and fruitful. To represent this potential for virtue, Matfre posits two additional growths grafted on each of the two branches of the tree of love. On the side of human love sprouts the tree of life, one of the trees in Eden according to Genesis 2:9. Its leaves are the theological and cardinal virtues and its fruit is eternal life. A second, smaller tree represents the virtues arising from a proper concern for temporal goods and its fruit, enjoyment, is likewise proper to humanity. The branch constituted by all animate creatures supports a small graft bearing, as its fruits and leaves, the qualities arising from parenthood, but the major growth grafted into it is the other tree named in Genesis 2:9, the albre de saber, or tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
After treating God, the angels, and the creation of the physical world, Matfre expounds the doctrinal and moral topics that constitute the branch of specifically human love. His treatment of the second branch, that of the love of all animate beings, begins at line 27255 with the rubric “Of the love of male with female” (D’amor de mascl’ ab feme). After a short introduction this branch has three main parts. First, the perilous treatise (perilhos tractat, 27791–31933) addresses the dangers of sexual love in a series of lawsuits (plags) against love brought by its opponents, and in advice (conselhs) given to ladies and their lovers.2 Second, the tree of knowledge of good and evil (albre de saber, 31934–33881), although still identified as the biblical tree that brought about original sin, is now represented as a source of secular, life-enhancing virtues and their opposing faults; its fruit is offspring conceived in matrimony. And third, the remedies against love’s madness (remedis, 33882–34539) advise on avoiding love’s excess. A final section, which would have dealt with the other graft on this branch, love for one’s offspring, peters out after only fifty-five lines.
A remarkable feature of Matfre’s exposition throughout the perilhos tractat, the albre de saber, and the remedis is his quotation and discussion of troubadour lyrics. With impressive scholarly expertise, 267 passages are quoted from sixty-five named troubadours, many anonymous ones, and some French trouvères, making this part of the Breviari the single largest contributor to Appendix 1.3 Appendix 10 summarizes its structure and indicates the distribution within it of quotations using the numbering in Ricketts’s edition, which is explained in Appendix II (I use the same numbering to identify Breviari quotations in this chapter). But while the quotations index the extent of Matfre’s knowledge and serve as a repository of a savoir of their own, they are quoted primarily to enable the reader to change—to escape eternal damnation, no less. In no other work examined in this book are supposed subjects of knowledge appealed to more with more therapeutic intent than in the Breviari.
The knowledge Matfre and the troubadours are supposed to possess is a knowledge of love: both of desire as it is experienced in human sexual love, and of love’s essence as God himself. Matfre’s complex knotting of knowledge with desire is very like Lacan’s, except that the psychoanalyst eschews theology in favor of a secular perspective. Similarly to Matfre, Lacan postulates a knowledge that is irretrievably lost, though in Lacan’s case this is because it is unconscious as a result of repression, because, as Lacan puts it, this knowledge is “the price of renouncing enjoyment” (le prix de la renonciation à la jouissance).4
By this formulation, Lacan means that forfeiting knowledge is the condition of subjectivation. The subject is by definition a being deprived of jouissance (an immediate, prelinguistic intimacy with sexuality and the body), and in order to become a subject he must surrender all knowledge of this bliss. However, this same payment, by making him a subject in the symbolic order, also enables him to acquire knowledge in the sense we understand the term. Thus the “price of renunciation” refers to knowledge not only as the price we pay, but also as the price we get. This abyss at the heart of knowledge between the sold and the purchased is one cause of the confusions surrounding supposed subjects of knowledge. In the clinical transference, discerning these confusions is therapeutic because it can draw attention to the split in the knowledge of supposed subjects and help the patient to acknowledge the truth of his own contingent relation to the symbolic.
Matfre posits a similar split in the field of knowledge. The Fall caused Adam and Eve to be cut off forever from their Edenic intimacy with God, and cost them their knowledge of this particular form of enjoyment; but in return they received the savoir paid to them—the knowledge of good and evil conveyed by the tree of that name, together with awareness of sexual love and desire. By depicting the biblical tree of knowledge as grafted into the branch of sexual love of the albre d’amor, Matfre insists on the intricate connection, as well as the abysmal distance, between human sexual desire and divine love. Are we to see the requirement to lead sexual lives as the result of Adam and Eve eating the fruit, or was sexuality the reason for their fall? Is moral knowledge achieved through desire, or is it something that desire causes us to lose?5 In either case, the dual nature of knowledge is echoed in human desire, which can restore human beings to harmony with their lost, divine origin, but which is unfortunately much more likely to ensnare and corrupt them.
Matfre does not share Lacan’s view of the human subject as purely contingent and hypothetical, but this does prevent him from using quotations in a way that can be characterized as transferential. Quotation exposes the moral divide in his readers’ knowledge of desire, between whether it returns them to God’s law or hurtles them onward to damnation. And it has the capacity to reform radically their relationship to this knowledge, reawakening them to a love that is free from guilt, retroactively transforming the lethal fruits of the tree into life-giving virtues, and “pointing the way to salvation” (34534; mostran la via de salut). The stakes of quotation have never been so high.6 This chapter considers the different ways quotation is used in the successive parts of Matfre’s argument.
In setting up this section of his encyclopedia, Matfre outlines the problematic relations between desire, language, and knowledge. His motive for discussing sexual desire is to instill its rightful use (27291–384): one that is free of vice and that promotes virtue, in particular the fruits of marriage and children. Matfre candidly concedes the contradiction whereby the albre de saber is both the biblical death-bearing tree and a source of secular life-enhancing virtues (27540–48). In an astonishing move, he orders people not to read the text that follows since, like the forbidden fruit in Eden, it will put their immortal souls at risk (27611–50). Devils will seize unwary readers (27631–40), a warning rendered graphically in the illustrations of some manuscripts (Figure 3). However, if readers can realign their desire in accordance with God’s love, the food that formerly brought them death will make them flourish (27655–70).
Since intent determines sin, and the impulse to sin is inflamed by language (27609–10), it is necessary to shape intent with a language of pure desire. This is where the troubadours come in: misread, their poetry puts the soul in peril, but if it is interpreted as preserving traces of of divine love, it can yield “good doctrine, sound reason, good judgment, and virtuous qualities and behavior” (“bonas doctrinas, . . . /e bonas razos e bos sens, / bos aibs e bells captenemens,” 27786–90). Matfre therefore aims to retrieve from the troubadours meanings the poets themselves had lost before they even knew they had them; they are subjects supposed to possess a knowledge that is truly beyond their recall. Thanks to Matfre’s mediation, quotations from their poems arouse in the Breviari’s readers knowledge of a desire necessary for their salvation, one that will make good the knowledge of God’s love that they had in Eden, now irrecoverably lost.7
Figure 3. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Hs 2583 (Breviari manuscript G), fo. 196v. Unlike some Breviari manuscripts, G does not here have a full-page painting of the dev ils that lurk in courtly activities, only this miniature occupying the foot of column B, just before line 27507, and headed “Li diable fan los aimadors e las aimatritz cosenti [sic] en peccat e seguir los deliegz carnals” (Dev ils cause lovers and ladies to consent to sin and follow carnal pleasures). In the upper register: a man and woman talking, demons whisper in their ears on either side. In the lower register: a man puts on new clothes, flanked by demons on either side. Note the face on the backside of the one on the left, who resembles the demons appearing in the margins next to quotations in the perilhos tractat.
One technique whereby Matfre “regenerates” (to use Valérie Fasseur’s term)8 these lost meanings is to preface a quotation with his own summary, thereby preempting the reader’s understanding of it.9 Formally, his insertion of extracts resembles Raimon Vidal’s in his novas (see Chapter 2), since Matfre similarly integrates the troubadours’ words metrically and discursively into their new context and stresses the wisdom of those he quotes. But he also shares extracts with the florilegia, and proceeds on a comparable scale; the way Matfre shapes interpretation is especially reminiscent of the compiler of the anthology in H, even though their intentions are utterly dissimilar (see Chapter 4).
Matfre also insists, however, that it is pointless to accumulate a discourse of knowledge around quotations. His opening quotation from Aimeric de Belenoi declares:
Qui vol apenre d’amor
amar li cove,
que ja per esenhador
no.n apenra re.
(Breviari, 27821–24)
Whoever wants to learn from love must love: he will never learn anything from a teacher.
Aimeric’s authority as a subject supposed to know derives from a knowledge of love that can never be communicated to those who don’t already share it (27833–38). So although language shapes our knowledge of desire, desire also determines the capacity of our use of language to achieve knowledge. Matfre does not explain how he thinks this circularity can be changed, but his practice suggests that quotation operates by modeling different examples of its cycle so as to enable readers to make the leap from whatever pattern they are enmeshed in to a more salvific one.
The four plags that open the perilhos tractat are ordered so as to work first from the side of language (the slanders of love’s detractors, the complaints of poets), and then from that of sentiment (the laments of lovers and their complaints against women). Only after this does Matfre intervene in the lives of lovers (giving them advice in the conselhs). The perilhos tractat is a complex purifying plant in which the corruptions—linguistic, mental, affective—of human desire can, as far as possible, be addressed, preparing readers for the moral clarity of the albre de saber and thence, for a final refining round, to the remedis. Matfre’s first move, then, is to lead readers into the position of defending pure love.
In each of the plags Matfre has the last word. The quotations in his final defense of each suit are selected to nail his argument. In his closing address to love’s detractors he quotes passages that criticize those who slander love. His concluding words against the troubadours quote other troubadours who stigmatize the folly of attacking love. As regards lovers’ grievances, Matfre quotes songs that do exactly what he is doing: complain against lovers who complain against love. And when finally dismissing lovers’ attacks against ladies, he quotes from songs in which women are lavishly praised. These suits appear increasingly challenging for him, and perilous for the reader, as Matfre resorts to progressively larger numbers of quotations from more and more troubadours in his final defense of each. One poet—Aimeric de Peguilhan—appears especially frequently. Of the twenty-four extracts from thirteen of his songs that appear in the Breviari, twenty occur in the perilhos tractat, eleven of them in the speeches concluding individual plags; his support is particularly crucial in the two middle plags.10
Francesca M. Nicholson sees evidence for a bond between Aimeric de Peguilhan and Matfre from as early as the first Aimeric quotation, an extract from “Per razo natural” (10.40, #10, 28034–39), because it is immediately preceded by Matfre’s first excerpt from a lyric of his own (297.5a, #9, 28020–27).11 Matfre’s song says that the virtuous are inevitably vilified but should not on that account cease their good work. Aimeric’s stanza confirms the need to resist slanderers, for they are confined in their own malice:12
Ges no falh quan s’ave
qui ditz so que.ilh cove,
que fals failh ver dizen
e.l leials failh menten,
qu’atressi failh fals leialtat menan
cum le leials quan la vai desvian.
(Breviari, 28034–39, #10)
A man does not err when it comes about that he says what is fitting. For the false man errs when he speaks the truth and the man of his word errs when he lies. For the false man errs just as much when he acts with uprightness as the man of his word does when he goes astray.
The tortuous adnominatio of this stanza seals its circularity. Effectively Aimeric places the upright in a different symbolic universe from the false, each group knowing only its own truth. The stanza bolsters Matfre’s affirmations that language, desire, and knowledge are all mutually determining; confronting this circularity might be the best way to enable the reader to change from a negative to a positive form of it. Aimeric’s editors praise his poems for their decorum and high-mindedness,13 qualities that provide Matfre with a perfect screen both in the sense that they shut out anything even faintly lecherous or sensual (hence perilous), and because they provide a surface receptive to his defensive (salvific) arguments.
Matfre is especially likely to anticipate the contents and phraseology of the quotations he takes from Aimeric. In the concluding section of the second plag he creates the impression of a solid front against backsliding troubadours by prequoting all of his witnesses.14 Where Aimeric is concerned, such prequoting precedes the announcement of the following quotation, enabling Matfre always to present the troubadour as being in agreement with himself. The closing sequence Aimeric (249.1 #42)15–Matfre (297.5, #43)–Aimeric (10.15, #44)16consolidates their unison. Together Matfre and Aimeric declare that people are wrong to blame love when it is individuals who behave reprehensively, their consensus epitomizing the preceding discussion and indeed the plag in general:
Que per sso no fasso clamor
ni cumplancha lunha d’amor,
quar cell qu’ab amor guereja
majormen a tort foleja.
Et enaichi o digs tot pla
.l bos Aymericz de Pegulha,
don digs, reprenden la error:
Cell qui s‘irais ni guerej’ ab amor
ges que savis no fai, al mieu semblan.
(Breviari, 28779–87, #44)
that they should not lodge any claim or complaint against love, for the person who wars on love is committing a major and unjustifiable act of folly, and the good Aimeric de Peguilhan said just this openly when he said, reproving the error, “The person who wars on love is not acting wisely in the least, it seems to me.”
When Matfre begins his conclusion to the next plag he quotes the same phrases again (29080–86), this time to preface a song by Folquet de Marselha (i55.2i, #6o, 29o87–94) in which, however, the parallels are only rather general. It is hardly surprising that Folquet does not more precisely echo Matfre anticipating Aimeric; but the way Folquet’s stanza is introduced nevertheless maximizes the impression of unison.
Despite Aimeric’s generally bland high-mindedness, even his songs can benefit from regenerating as is shown by the knot of quotations ##74, 75, and 77 in the conclusion to this third plag. All are stanzas from Aimeric’s “Anc mais de joy ni de chan” (10.8),17 quoted by Matfre against the lovers’ charge that love is overwhelmingly painful. Matfre counters that lovers have no one to blame but themselves if their hearts are inflamed: the motif of the eyes exciting the heart simply illustrates what the Bible reproves as “the lust of the eye.”18 Unfortunately for his argument, Aimeric’s song quite specifically celebrates the eyes as the means to love and “interpreters of the heart” (drogoman / del cor).19 In order to extract from it a condemnation of how the eyes incite dangerous passions, Matfre quotes the song selectively, modifies its argument by changing the stanza order, and surrounds quotations with commentary that inflects the way they are read.
As transmitted in the chansonniers,20 “Anc mais de joy” starts with Aimeric extolling in general terms the need to be responsive to love’s preeminence; he then submits to its power and hails the birth of true love from harmony between eyes and heart; in conclusion, Aimeric gratefully commends both eyes and heart to his lady. Matfre omits these final stanzas and works backward from the eyes’ collusion in desire (III and IV) through to praise of love (II). He frames the first quotation (#74, stanza III) as an instance of Aimeric “gravely reproving lovers” (29374; reprenden mout los aimadors). As this is part of a passage (29368–402) conceding the importance of the eyes, it gives the impression that Aimeric is criticizing rather than welcoming the eyes’ mediation. Quotation #75 (stanza IV) is capped by an endorsement that ostensibly reinforces Aimeric’s words:
Ben es vers senes falhensa,
segon quez a dig N’Aimerics
que fo tengutz entre.ls antics
trobadors per un dels melhors,
que, per obra d’ueilhs, est’ amors,
maintas vegadas, s’escompren
(Breviari, 29403–8)
It is true without the least mistake as Sir Aimeric said, who was regarded as one of the best of the troubadours of old, that this love often catches fire through the eyes.
Yet by omitting from this summary Aimeric’s eulogy of love born of the gaze—“then true love acquires its power” (29339; adoncas pren verai’ amors valensa)21—Matfre makes the song appear neutral rather than approving toward desirous looks. Finally, the way Matfre quotes Aimeric’s stanza II reinforces his point that lovers who complain at love should first examine their own conduct. Repositioned in this way, Aimeric appears to counter the lover’s submission to the erotic gaze by enjoining him to assume love as a moral calling:
Qu’amors no fai mal ni desconoichensa,
per que lunhs hom s’en deia rancurar,
ni ges amors no pot apoderar
neguna re, ses grat d’autra valensa.
(Breviari, 29440–44, #77)
For love does nothing wrong or undiscerning that could give anyone grounds for complaint, nor indeed can love overpower any creature without benefiting from some other force.
By making Aimeric’s starting point his own conclusion, Matfre has repeated his text while transforming its meaning. Or rather, from his own perspective, he has recuperated its lost meaning as a celebration of the love by which we all ought to be (to have been) inspired. Temporarily suspending the subject as courtly lover, he repositions it as lover of God.
The plags are a ground-clearing operation in which Matfre defends fin’ amor against its critics by disclosing its occluded connection to divine love and sidelining anything that might weaken that connection. Aimeric de Peguilhan assists Matfre’s cause, but even Aimeric needs Matfre’s assistance in order to enter into the circle of language, desire, and knowledge that Aimeric himself knew to exist.
After the adversarial structure of the plags, the perilhos tractat enters a phase in which Matfre volunteers advice to ladies and lovers and so engages more openly with their desire. No longer primarily in defensive mode, the text advances onto perilous terrain that the poet struggles to control. A large variety of troubadours are quoted, and an important role is assigned to two anonymous verses as the the defensive cycle threatens to turn into a diabolical one.22
The first conselh, aimed at women, is longer but the second, addressed to men, is riskier—or so it seems, from the appearance of devils at various points in the margins of Breviari manuscripts G, M, and N.23 The struggle for men’s souls is harder to fight, or maybe is given greater priority, than that for the souls of women (which features just one demon, in G). The location of these marginal demons is as follows:
Line |
Position in text |
Preceding rubric |
Manuscript, folio |
ca. 30262 |
Matfre advises women, fourteen lines after rubric and fifteen lines before quotation #116 (Garin lo Brun, ensenhamen) |
Matfre replies, giving advice to the ladies |
G, 214v |
ca. 31140 |
Matfre advises men, twelve lines after rubric and twenty-two lines before quotation #144 (Monge de Montaudo, 305.14, “Mos sens e ma conoissensa,” stanza 3) |
Matfre replies, giving advice to the lovers |
G, 220r M, 241r |
31266 ff. |
Immediately beside quotation #149 (Anon., 461.134, unknown elsewhere) |
As above |
G, 221r M, 242r N, 230v |
ca. 31449 |
Immediately after quotation #155 (Anon., 461.149, “Luocs es qu’om chan”) |
As above |
G, 222r M, 243r |
That these diabolical figures are an early feature of the tradition is suggested by the manuscripts’ agreement on where to place them, and the fact that all the copies concerned belong in what scholars agree is the “better transmission” of the Breviari.24 The demons graphically represent the perils of the perilhos tractat forewarned of by Matfre in his introduction (27425–30), when he evokes them as “counseling” (coselhar) both men and women to succumb to sexual temptation and so replay the originary drama of the Fall. They also hark back to the paintings of devils haunting courtly scenarios found in these and other illuminated manuscripts at the start of the introductory section (27385) (see Figure 3).25 No longer confined within the frame of such a picture, the demons’ presence in the margins of the text is menacing and rather disgusting, particularly in G, where they are most numerous, depicted with the most grotesque and bestial features, and also appear oversized in comparison with the other images in the manuscript.26
The two initial devils, positioned shortly after an introductory rubric, cast a premonitory shadow over the whole of each conselh that follows. The first, in G only, is a half-erased figure in the bottom margin of folio 214v, its outstretched paw gesturing at the lines
Quar mout hai avut gran dezir
tostems de las donas servir.
A donas, doncs, en general
do per cosseilh bon e lial . . .
(Breviari, 30260–63)
For I have had a very great desire always to serve ladies. I therefore give ladies in general this good and honorable advice . . .
The next ensuing recommendation is to women to dress and behave decorously; it is supported by extracts from Garin lo Brun’s ensenhamen recommending women to exercise, in their hospitality, discernment and restraint in their favor to guests. The second demon, found in both M (fo. 241r) and G (fo. 220r), is placed beside a very similar passage to the first one, but in the second conselh :
A totz los verais aimadors
que volon amar per amors
domnas, do per lial cosseilh
que quascus d’amar s’apareilh . . .
(Breviari, 31140–43)
To all true lovers who wish to love ladies with love, I give this honorable advice that each should prepare himself for loving . . .
In M, the diabolical figure has wings and a tail and points to line 31140. In G, where it is also gesturing to line 31140, it is an upright, lionlike grotesque with great paws, head, and tail, and two additional emergent heads, one on its shoulder, the other on its behind (Figure 4). Lovers, Matfre continues, should choose ladies of character who will inspire lasting regard and who will be slow to grant “that through which love is destroyed” (31153; sso per que l’amors si desfa), since to love such women is better than to find pleasure quickly with others. This advice is quickly supported by an extract from the Monge (monk) of Montaudo (305.14, #144) recommending honorable dedication to a noble lady over the disappointments (!) of satisfaction else where.
Figure 4. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Hs 2583 (Breviari manuscript G), folio 220r. Demon with bestial features and three faces, placed opposite line 31140, where Matfre off ers advice “a totz los verais aimadors” (to all true lovers).
The gross intrusion of these demons in the margins of both conselhs in G and the second conselh in M suggests that the very attempt to rein in sexual passion exposes its strength. Matfre urges decorum and control, but the topic alone excites our inner demons. The devil is the counselor’s inevitable sinister twin.
The situation is only made worse by troubadours who bat for the other side, fanning the flames of desire when they ought to subdue them. Such is the case with #149 (anonymous, 461.134), an explicit declaration of sexual desire. Matfre has accumulated advice to lovers to choose a worthy lady and love her honorably; but times are perverted, he warns:
31255
sa dona et ab lieis jazer;
et als fan pietz, al meu semblan,
que quascus se vai avantan
e dizen per gran nescies
que gran dezieg ha cum pogues
31260 esser ab sidons en logual
per far aquell fag deslial;
d’aquells nescis baratadors
que desiron aitals folors,
fon us, lo qual no.us nomnarai
31265
per sso quar ges so nom no sai,
ques digs mostran so foll voler:
Gran dezir hai de ben jazer [#149]
en lieg de cossera d’amor,
que fezes de me cobertor
31270
la bela que.m ten en poder,
e dels pels saurs fos le coichis
e.il lensol de gaug e de ris,
e l’aurelhers fos de blanc bratz
e.l matalatz vergiers o pratz.
31275
Ai! quans d’aitals trichadors son . . .
(Breviari, 31254–75)
and everyone is thinking about how to have his lady and sleep with her; and in other respects I think they behave worse, since everyone, in his great ignorance, goes vaunting and claiming that he has a great desire to contrive to be with his lady in a place where they can commit this unrighteous act. Among such ignorant schemers desiring such folly was one I shall not name to you, because I do not know his name, who declared, revealing his foolish intent: “I have a great desire to sleep in the featherbed of love and that the lovely one who has me in her power should make me her blanket, and that the cushion should be of golden hair and the sheets of joy and laughter and the pillow of white arms and the mattress a garden or meadow.” Ah! How many such deceivers there are . . .
Matfre’s elaborate disclaimers to knowing the author’s identity (31264–65) are extraordinary in a text otherwise so keen to exhibit knowledge of the troubadours. This stanza is one of very few in the Breviari to be unattested elsewhere; one cannot fault Matfre’s resourcefulness in unearthing a cobla so fit for condemnation; it is tempting to suspect him of having composed it himself in order to pillory it. In his preamble he whips up a storm of disapproval (“worse,” 31256; “unrighteous,” 31261; “ignorant schemers,” 31262; “folly,” 31263). But at the same time as castigating the coblas saucy opening line, he also reiterates and amplifies its phraseology (see italics): the circular relation between desire, language, and knowledge is here a vicious one in which Matfre too appears to be caught.
The stanza’s inflammatory nature is signaled in three manuscripts. In N (fo. 23ov) its initial G is borne in a flag by a devil with wings and horns, as if the very forces of hell fought under the banner of such wicked desire. Placed in the bottom left-hand corner of the folio, the devil’s left foot rests against the paraph marking the end of the quotation, demarcating the whole of the offending passage. In M (fo. 242r), a demon in the left-hand margin points to the same initial; lacking wings, horns or tail, this is a simpler figure than the one in N, but like it his body extends alongside the cobla to the closing paraph. In G (fo. 221r) the extract is again identified as alarming by a demon painted exactly alongside it, this time in the space between the two columns (Figure 5). This grotesque and bestial figure has a fully formed face on its backside, as if to suggest that the cobla is not merely diabolical but fit to issue from a devil’s anus. All these marginalia graphically remind readers that lyric poetry and the sentiments it expresses expose us more to mortal sin than to redemption.
A consequence of the demon in G being drawn between the two columns is that, while its upper mouth is turned toward quotation #149 in column a, the one on its backside is actually pointing toward the material in the facing column b. The impression is thereby given, perhaps involuntarily, that there is also a demonic menace lurking within the lines in question:
Enquaras es majers l’errors
d’aquestz deslials trichadors
que quascus ditz qu’ell es lials,
quan que sia trichaire e fals.
(Breviari, 31311–14)
Figure 5a. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Hs 2583 (Breviari manuscript G), folio 221r.
Figure 5. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Hs 2583 (Breviari manuscript G), folio 22ir. In the middle of this folio, a demon points to the inflammatory quotation (#i49) that starts “Gran dezir hai de ben jazer” (I have a great desire to lie at ease; 461.134) at line 31:267 in column a. Since its backside is a face, too, it also seems to address the “unprincipled deceivers” (or heretics?) stigmatized in lines 3i3ii—i2, immediately after quotation #i5o, in column b. Figure 5a (overleaf) shows the scale and position of the demon on the page; Figure 5b (above) shows the demon and texts close up.
The error of those unprincipled deceivers is greater still, each one of whom says he is upright, however deceiving and false he is.
Is the devil also implicated in the “error of the unprincipled deceivers”? Should error be understood here to include heresy? The lines in question are Matfre’s conclusion to quotation 150 (225.10) in which Guillem de Montanhagol berates dishonorable lovers, and his introduction to 151 (167.15) in which Gaucelm Faidit likewise stigmatizes deceivers, so that in G no fewer than three quotations become corrupted by this particul ar demon’s hellish taint.
The last marginal devil occurs in G and M immediately after quotation 155, another anonymous piece (461.149, also found in the florilegium in chansonnier J):
31440
Quar en totas res deu guardar
luoc e sazo, qui be.u vol far,
autramen pot hom leu falhir;
d’aquest bon cosseilh, ses mentir,
us trobaires enaichi.ns pais:
31445
Luocs es qu’om chan e que s’en lais [#155]
e luocs de rir’ e de plorar,
e de tot deu hom luoc guardar
qui es savis, cortes ni guais.
Doncs quan ve ira l’aimans verais
31450
sa dona en bon estamen . . .
(Breviari, 31440–50)
For if one wants to behave well one should have regard for place and season in all matters; otherwise one easily goes astray. A troubadour sustained us quite truthfully with this advice in this way: “There is a place to sing and a place to desist, a place to laugh and a place to weep, and a man who is wise, courtly, or lighthearted ought always to have regard for place” Thus, when a true lover is to see his lady in a good situation . . .
In a desperate bid to get the genie of desire back into the bottle of human restraint, the passage continues with recommendations for self-control. In M (fo. 243r) there is a devil in the right-hand margin immediately below the quotation, pointing to line 31449 as if to underline the mortal peril in which the exemplary lover finds himself with his lady. In G (fo. 222r), a demon is stretching out to the same line, which, as in M, is further highlighted by a paraph; but now the infernal figure is located in such a way that it could be interpreted as speaking the cobla (Figure 6). Is this because its emphasis on propriety of place, which reads like an attempt to erase the impropriety of quotation 149, backfires, exciting the reader with thoughts of bedroom pleasures? Even its bland recommendations seem to pose a threat to the lover. Devilish contamination predominates over regeneration.
A final point to note about this demon in G is that its position in the inner corner of a recto places it next to the foot of the facing verso (fo. 221v). Indeed a grim black face growing out of its shoulder is actually directed to the text at the bottom of that folio, which ends at line 31412. The passage thus falling within the demon’s purview includes Matfre’s account of his brother’s courtly ways:
Aichi dreg fai sos afaires
Raimons Ermengau mos fraires,
Figure 6. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Hs 2583 (Breviari manuscript G), folio 222r. A demon in the bottom left-hand corner of the page points to the paraph on line 31449, which concludes quotation #155 (461.149; “Luocs es qu’om chan e que s’en lais”) and draws the attention of lovers to the advice to draw from it: “So when a true lover is to see / his lady in a good situation . . .” (31449–50; Doncs quan veira l’aimans verais / sa dona en bon estamen). A grim black face growing out of its shoulder is directed to the foot of column b on folio 221v where Matfre’s brother Raimon is described as being like a nightingale and a parrot.
q’us rocinhols non es plus guais
ni plus coenhdes us papaguais
de lui, quar ja non sera las
ni de cantar ni de solas,
e plazo.lh sobre totas res
belas raubas e bels arnes.
(Breviari, 31403–10)
My brother Raimon Ermengau lives just like this [viz., as recommended by Ovid, 31400], for a nightingale is not merrier nor a parrot smarter than he, for he will never be weary of singing and enjoyment, and more than anything he loves fine clothes and equipment.
The demon casts an ironic shadow on Matfre’s praise, and perhaps even beyond it. Raimon is both nightingale and parrot; but a paraph cupping line 31406 in G separates the parrot from the nightingale and draws attention to it, provoking the reflection that Raimon is really much more like the parrot. Reference to his addiction to finery in 31409–10 recalls the courtly scenes with lurking devils from just before the perilhos tractat, one of which in N is inscribed “lo diables li fay desirer trop belas raubas e arnes” (the devil makes him desire fine clothes and equipment). The demon’s fortuitous proximity to the two birds is made especially intriguing by the fact that it is depicted with huge bird’s feet. The mise en page of G folios 221v—222r reminds readers that demons lurk not just in the conselhs but in all courtly activities, including singing and repeating other people’s songs—the parrots’ way of Raimon and of Matfre himself.
Quotations in the albre de saber are embedded in a simpler framework than in the perilhos tractat, since they illustrate lists of virtues and their opposing vices; Matfre’s commentaries primarily reiterate the words within each extract that relate to the quality in question. For example, between quotations 180 and 18127 in the section on generosity he repeats the words larc, donar, and dar (generous, give); instances of cortes (courtly) and cortezia proliferate around quotations 189–194, which illustrate the virtue of courtliness;28 and there is particularly dense repetition of umilitat and related forms around quotations 197–98 in the section on humility.29
Despite its simpler format, this section of the Breviari requires ingenuity in order to achieve such mutual reinforcement between quotation and commentary. Some virtues are hard to illustrate from the troubadour corpus. Even more than in the conselhs Matfre has recourse to anonymous stanzas; two-thirds of the Breviari’s anonymous or otherwise unknown examples occur in this section.30 In discussing discernment, Matfre modifies the last line of Guiraut Riquier’s song (248.18, #222), substituting conoichensa (discernment, knowledge) for gran temensa (great fear) in 33197 to make it conform better to his topic.31 He quotes only a single line promoting the virtue of matrimony, Peire Cardenal’s proverbial “You can recognize a tree by its fruit” (335.5, #219, line 32685; Qu’al frug conois hom lo fruchier), which accords strikingly with Matfre’s structuring metaphor of a grafted tree. For children, the all-important fruit of the albre de saber, he cannot adduce a single quotation.
Some of the poets chosen here are unexpected. First, it is strange that more songs by Peire Vidal should appear illustrating the moral properties of the tree than are found in any other section of the Breviari, and particularly that four stanzas of a single, satirical, boasting song, “Quant hom es en autrui poder” (364.39), should be quoted to model three different virtues: patience (##220, 221), discernment (# 223), and courage (bon coratge, #239).32 Could Matfre have known Bertolome Zorzi’s recuperation of this piece for his own purposes (see Chapter 7)? When Matfre, in the same words as Bertolome, attributes to Peire “great natural judgment” (33166; gran sen natural), could he be hailing Peire as a “holy fool,” his apparent worldly folly an expression of divine wisdom and thus of the capacity for many virtues?
Second, it is noteworthy that Arnaut Daniel appears in the Breviari solely to represent virtues of the tree: humility (#196, 29.6) and worth (proeza; #214, 29.9). I have commented elsewhere on the second instance, where Arnaut’s text has been modified from that of the chansonniers apparently in order to celebrate proeza as a part of a grafted tree that is reminiscent of the Breviari as a whole.33 Matfre’s recognition of Arnaut Daniel’s aid in helping regenerate fallen humanity oddly anticipates Dante’s placing him on the pilgrim’s pathway immediately before Paradise in the Commedia (see Chapter 9).
Despite its seemingly recursive format, then, quotations in this section of the Breviari provoke strikingly revisionist interpretations of certain troubadours, interpretations that resonate with developments in troubadour quotation in Italy. Add to these the overlap with florilegia (JG) and the strategic similarities with H, and quotations in the Breviari appear much more enmeshed in northern Mediterranean practice than is implied by Matfre’s apparently local audience and the purely Occitan manuscript tradition of this part of the Breviari.34 Perhaps Matfre’s transformation of quotation belongs in a broader cultural context than previously thought.
Matfre has sketched out several circular discourses of love: defensive, potentially hellish, but also salvific. And so, where many medieval authors seek remedies for love, at the end of his treatise Matfre need only quash its more foolish aspects: enslavement to pleasure, blindness to women’s deceits, and so forth. (Praise of love does not mitigate antifeminism; if anything it increases it, since love is too important to men to risk its being spoiled by women!) To assist him, Matfre calls on Peire Cardenal for his last sequence of quotations (##262–66). This well-known satirist of northern French oppression during the Albigensian Crusade becomes, in this section of the Breviari, the spokesman of responsible fin’ amor as part of a virtuous life, occupying in the remedis the equivalent position to Aimeric in the plags.35 Matfre’s final quotation from Peire (335.48, #266) warns readers that the final judgment will overtake them when least expected (34528–32):
Don digs En Peires Cardenal,
mostran la via de salut:
Que Dieus te son arc tendut
e trai aqui on vol traire
e fai lo colp que deu faire
a quec si quo ha mergut,
segon vizi e vertut.
(Breviari, 34533–39, #267)
As Sir Peire Cardenal said, pointing the way to salvation: “For God holds his bow drawn and fires where he wishes to fire and shoots whom he has to shoot, each as he has deserved, according to his vice or virtue.”
Cupid’s bow is affirmed in the very image that displaces it with that of the true and only God of Love, who fires with the same terrifying unpredictability and far more devastating results.
Perhaps this quotation also advances a defense of specifically Occitan culture. According to Cardenal’s editor, René Lavaud, the image here of God striking down the wicked recalls the description in the Canso de la Crotzada (Song of the Albigensian Crusade) of how a stone thrown by one of the town’s defenders felled Simon de Montfort during the siege of Toulouse in 1218.36 Peire’s denunciation of treachery and wrongdoing in earlier stanzas may also allude to events in the Albigensian campaign.37 Concluding his discussion of sexual love, Matfre seems to remind fellow poets in Béziers, the site of the Crusade’s worst atrocity, that troubadour poetry is their poetry. Others may suspect it of heresy. Devils can make it as perilous as heresy. But by means of quotation, Matfre shows how it is also a uniquely privileged source of spiritual regeneration. In so doing, he transforms the meaning of troubadour poetry. He innovates even more, perhaps, in expanding theological discourse, which no one before him had found in secular love songs.38 And, in the face of a mounting tradition of Occitan quotation elsewhere, he seeks to regenerate Occitan culture in Occitania.
This chapter has argued that quotation in the Breviari operates regeneratively according to a Lacanian view of knowledge as split. Quotation can serve to retrieve knowledge that was lost in the Fall of our essential connection with divine love and to identify the moral knowledge we thereby gained, and so help us arrest our precipitous descent into damnation. Defensive in the plags, exposing menace in the conselhs, tautological in the albre, the work of quotation is surprisingly historical in the remedis. By identifying different forms of circularity between desire and language, Matfre solicits different supposed subjects and the knowledge they may be supposed to possess. The intelligibility of his difficult poem depends on maintaining the value of the knowledge it purports to contain by imputing it—somewhere, somehow—to a series of subjects supposed to know. Readers are invited to acknowledge various troubadours as auctoritates; to recognize themselves as knowing the poems and troubadours that are quoted; to accept Matfre’s own authority; and in the last resort to posit God’s knowledge as the condition of all sound knowledge.
Such suppositions entangle readers in transferential play. They also expose the gaps between supposed savoirs, pointing the possibility for the subject to occupy a new, different position in the circle of language, desire, and knowledge. By thus addressing its transferential role, the Breviari both assimilates and transforms the preexisting culture of quotation. Matfre proposes quotations from the troubadours as offering an opportunity for salvation, but who knows what transformation his readers actually embraced.
