Phasing Out the antics troubadors and Ushering in the New Toulousain Poetics
So far this book has shown quotation from the troubadours to be an engine of cultural change that works in two interconnected ways. It can draw Occitan poetry into the orbit of the school teaching of grammatica, which in the Middle Ages denotes both a discipline (grammar) and the language (Latin) to which it was addressed; and it can privilege this poetry as a source of social, moral, and even redemptive insight, and as a test of those of its readers. Many of the works that quote the troubadours have analogues in the Latin schoolroom, and this is particularly true of the most tenacious and prolific genre to contain troubadour quotations, those treatises of Occitan language and poetics that illustrate linguistic and poetic practice with examples from the classical troubadours (see Chapters 1 and 9). Successive redactions of the Leys d’amors (Laws of love), an ensemble of texts that are relative latecomers to this genre, reorient quotation away from this grammatical model and explore new ways of envisaging the substantive value of poetry. In so doing, they phase out reference to the classical troubadours in favor of more contemporary lyric production. This chapter, then, registers one way of drawing the culture of troubadour quotation to a close and marking the beginning of another; the poetry of Petrarch considered in the final chapter marks another, ultimately more successful bid to achieve the same two goals.
The Leys d’amors were compiled on behalf of the Consistori de gai saber at Toulouse, an institution founded in the first third of the fourteenth century, which continues in existence into the present day.1 Their author is known as Guilhem Molinier, although he probably headed a team of collaborators rather than writing solo. The love that this treatise aspires to regulate will ultimately be revealed as philosophy, the love of wisdom. The laws concerned are the Consistori’s poetics and the guidelines for its annual poetry competitions, which are rather like those of the northern French poetic confraternities, or puys, except that the Consistori modeled itself on a university and awarded, in addition to poetry prizes, bachelor’s and doctoral degrees for which the Leys define the syllabus.2 Longer, fuller, and much more learned than any of the preceding handbooks, the Leys were recast at least three times. This chapter is about the first and second prose redactions; the first, probably composed 1328–37, was certainly in existence by 1341 while the second, which introduces important innovations, dates from 1355–56.3 The so-called Toulouse school of poetry whose aims are formulated in these manuals had links with Catalonia, and a fellow consistory was founded in Barcelona in the late fourteenth century. Their impressive level of poetic activity has been documented by François Zufferey.4
Like earlier treatises, the first redaction places the study of Occitan in the domain of grammatica. After an introduction it devotes a book to phonetics and thence versification, one to grammar, the next to tropes, and the final unfinished one to composition. Its treatment of the tropes anchors them in the grammatical tradition since it situates them alongside linguistic vices and licenses, drawing on Donatus’s discussions of barbarism and solecism in his Ars grammatica.5 And the practice of earlier vernacular grammars of using quotations to illustrate poetic and linguistic forms and figures of speech continues in this redaction too (see Appendix 14). Molinier quotes old standbys like Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and Peire Vidal; some less familiar poets like Rigaut de Berbezilh and the more recently in vogue Arnaut Daniel; and a few unfamiliar references like the anonymous “Flor de paradis” (461.123) and the otherwise unknown P[eire] Arquier.6 The way examples are introduced is fairly standard, for instance:
E per que entendatz que vol dire quaysh engaltatz de sillabas. am bela cazensa podetz ayssi penre per ysshemple la canso que fo Arnaud Daniel can dish.
Le ferms volers quel cor mintra
Nom pot ges quey, escoysshendre ni ongla.
Et aytals rimas apelam comunalmen estrampas. (Gatien-Arnoult ed., 3:330)
And in order that you should understand what is meant by an approximate equality of syllables with a fine cadence you may take as example that song which Arnaut Daniel made when he said: “The firm desire that enters my heart . . .” And such rhymes are commonly called estrampas.
Alongside these quotations are examples originating within the Consistori or made up by Molinier himself;7 this too is consistent with earlier practice, except that confected illustrations are far more dominant in the Leys than in any of the earlier treatises. The presence of a preferred poet who connects the author to the earlier troubadours, thus holding them together in a single tradition, is another traditional feature that Guilhem both adopts and amplifies in the fondness he shows for At de Mons. At (or Nath, that is, N’At, “Sir At,” as Molinier consistently calls him, the honorific underlining his respect) is a late thirteenth-century troubadour from Mons, near Toulouse; he is the author of five long didactic poems in rhyming, mainly hexasyllabic couplets, which are all transmitted in the same section of chansonnier R as the novas discussed in Chapters 2 and 6.8 At is elsewhere quoted only in the Breviari, which, like the Leys, preserves some passages by him that are not known elsewhere.9 Thanks to At, in the 1341 redaction of the Leys Molinier appears as a late contemporary of the classical troubadours, much as do Matfre Ermengau in the Breviari and Dante in De vulgari eloquentia.10
The sense that there is a general community of approach between earlier treatises and those of the Consistori up to this first recension is confirmed by the fact that several texts closely associated with the Leys—Molinier’s own verse abridgment the Flors de gai saber and two prose works by fellow Consistori member Joan de Castellnou, his Glosari and his Compendi—are found in the same Catalan manuscript H (Barcelona 239) as earlier grammars: the Razos de trobar, the Regles de trobar, the Doctrina de compondre dictats, and the Mirall de trobar (see Appendix 3).
In the second prose redaction the Leys are completely overhauled. Whereas the first was in five books, the second is in three. It dispenses with the entire book on the tropes, which was book 4 of the earlier redaction, and it also discards the unfinished book 5, on composition. It creates a completely new first book. Books 1 and 2 of the 1341 version are then shortened and fused together to become the new book 2. Book 3 of the earlier redaction is retained, but is now the concluding book. In addition to reordering and reframing his materials, Molinier also extensively revises his earlier text, adding, deleting, and altering.
The use of troubadour quotations is transformed in the process (see Appendix 14). All the excerpts from twelfth and early thirteenth-century poets are either dropped (due to the suppression of the earlier book 4) or rendered anonymous by eliminating their attributions (in the revision of book 2). Consequently the only troubadours referred to by name in this new redaction are At de Mons and Molinier himself, since the compiler of the Leys finds various means of inscribing his own name. As a result of the addition of the new book 1, the number and length of the extracts quoted from At de Mons is increased and so is the amount of verse that can be attributed to Molinier. Unlike all the earlier treatises, including its own earlier incarnation, this new version of the Leys is not about continuing the troubadour tradition. Instead, it erases their names and begins again, in Toulouse, in the late thirteenth century.
Even more strikingly, the role played by quotation shifts. Although the excerpts that are retained from the earlier version continue to serve as illustrations of points of language and verse form, all the newly introduced ones are quoted for their content. In the new book 1 the opinions of At de Mons are quoted frequently and at length.11 The middle book of the second redaction, which contains the examples of poetic forms of various kinds, almost all by Molinier, is further ornamented by a long religious poem, which is likewise by him and which is also included for its substantive content (Leys, ed. Anglade, 2:72–91. Thus, if there is to be an Occitan canon, its seminal elements are now At de Mons and Molinier. More than just linguistically sound, these seeds promise to bear fruit in an Occitan poetry endowed with wisdom, learning, and exemplary piety.
The approach of the new first book explains this new privilege attaching to poetic content. Turning its back on a century and a half of associating the troubadours with the teaching of grammar, book i of the 1356 redaction firmly inscribes poetry within the overall framework of philosophy, in the discipline of rhetoric, which in turn is based on ethics.
Aras es a vezer sobre qual partida de philozophia es fondada la nostra prezens sciensa de las Leys d’Amors. E dizem que aquesta sciensa, en quant que toca bel ornat e bo de parlar, se fonda sobre rethorica. E quar en aytal parlar, coma en verses, chansos et en autres dictatz hom pauza e ditz bos essenhamens e doctrinas bonas e vertuozas per esquivar vicis e peccatz e per essenhar bos costums e vertutz, per so la prezens sciensa se pot fondar sobre ethica de laqual havem lassus parlat assatz, mas non ges de rethorica, per que d’aquela parlam per esta maniera. (Leys, ed. Anglade, 1:82)
Now it must be seen on what branch of philosophy our discipline in the Laws of Love is based. And we say that our discipline, insofar as it involves fair ornament and good speaking, is based on rhetoric. And since in such speech—verses, songs, and other compositions—good teachings and sound and virtuous doctrines are placed and articulated, for this reason our present discipline is based on ethics, of which we have spoken sufficiently above; but we have not yet spoken at all of rhetoric, which is why we speak of it in this manner.
“Philosophy” here is to be understood as in those medieval encyclopedias that ultimately refer all knowledge to God.12 Like Matfre Ermengau and Dante, Molinier situates his “law of love” within the overall framework of salvation; but unlike them, he shows little interest in poetry as a vehicle of individual spiritual change, concentrating instead on its furtherance of moral and civic values, and on the continuum between judging poetry (as the officers of the Consistori were bound to do) and the Last Judgment.13 Poetry’s value is as crucial for Molinier as for these other authors, but it is directed more toward the public domain.
Molinier’s main guides as to the meaning of rhetoric and its place among the sciences are Brunetto Latini, whose encyclopedia Le livre dou tresor was composed in Montpellier in the 1260s, and another Italian, Albertano da Brescia, who wrote a number of educational and polemical tracts in Latin in the 1240s and 1250s. For both Brunetto and Albertano, rhetoric is seen not as an extension of grammar but as a tool of government. In Brunetto’s mapping of fields of knowledge in the Tresor, rhetoric is placed under politics; Albertano looks to rhetoric to subdue the factionalism of the Italian city-states and create a society based on recognition of the general good; a jurist and politician, he is especially mindful of the public responsibilities of lawyers.14 This civic conception of rhetoric is ultimately Aristotelian, but the principal sources on which both Brunetto and Albertano draw are Roman, especially Cicero and Seneca; and their address to medieval politics is pertinent to their own circumstances, since both Brunetto and Albertano underwent exile from their respective cities.
Such a conception must have appealed to the Consistori, which was a city institution made up of lay civic dignitaries, most of them professional men (including lawyers),15 and which seems to have seen itself as mounting the defense of Occitan poetry against the University of Toulouse, center of the Inquisition, thus entering into contention with the church in a way similar to the factions that ripped apart the Italian city-states.16 Toulouse was the city most strongly identified with resistance to the Albigensian Crusade, and the difficulties of life there in the mid-thirteenth century seem to have been responsible for driving away some of its poets, perhaps including At de Mons, another reason why reflections of the Italian experience will have seemed relevant to the Consistori.17 Molinier’s turn to Italian sources to reinvent Occitan poetry also parallels the gradual eclipse of the troubadours in fourteenth-century Italy (see Chapters 9 and 11), while his deafening silence as regards anything French suggests refusal to concede the obvious similarities between the Consistori and the northern puys.18
The new book 1 of the Leys introduces a series of alternatives to the traditional practice of quoting the classical troubadours, a practice that, as we have seen, this redaction is phasing out. A full half of the book is adapted and translated from works by Albertano, his Liber de doctrina dicendi et tacendi (Instruction in when to speak and when to be silent), Liber consolationis et consilii (Book of consolation and counsel), and his sermons.19 In order to illustrate the wholesale character of these borrowings, Appendix 15 juxtaposes examples from each of the two Latin treatises to the corresponding section of the Leys; the sentences in both texts are numbered to facilitate comparison between them. An educator and compiler, Albertano proceeds by means of a skeleton framework of points (in bold typeface in Appendix i5): Should one address a foolish or a wise person? (A[1]); Should one address the scornful? (A[6]); Eradicate anger from yourself and from the one with whom you wish to take counsel (B[1]); Angry speakers risk being put outside the law (B[4]); and between these points he accumulates auctoritates to provide them with weight and substance, quoting from Seneca, Tully (Cicero), Solomon, Jesus ben Sira (Ecclesiasticus), and the Gospels. Albertano highlights the rational and civic obligations of language, very different from the courtly concerns of the troubadours; the supporting authorities model a prestigious speech community regulated by an exalted combination of Roman wisdom and Christian revelation. It is easy to see how such a community, subject to such a transcendent law, would appeal to the regulatory ambitions of the Leys.
In what sense is Molinier quoting Albertano? Comparison between Albertano’s text and that of the Leys shows that Molinier is content mainly to copy, add the occasional gloss, and of course translate his model (translation being a dimension of quotation we have not met with previously). Discursively, Molinier appears rather to be quoting the authorities whom Albertano had quoted—indeed, some of whom Albertano had already found quoted in his source (e.g., Alcuin).20 These indefinitely reiterable sayings of Seneca, Cicero, and the like, surrounded as they are by the apparatus of citation in both Albertano and the Leys, are the regular stock-in-trade of medieval compilers.21 Although for the most part Molinier merely copies them in translation, he does sometimes re-mark them in light of the poetic concerns of the Consistori, a process mediated by At de Mons (see below).
Quotations from At constitute copying of a different kind again. Whereas Molinier integrates Albertano, he promotes his fellow Toulousain. Since there is virtually no precedent for quoting At, Molinier’s reliance on him is a personal, indeed idiosyncratic, decision. By copying verbatim several hundred lines of At’s poetry, he makes the Leys (especially the second redaction) almost an At de Mons chansonnier. This spirit of quotation is markedly unlike the practice that obtained earlier, in which a premium was placed on the range and variety of sources. Nor are there any lyrics among the passages selected, which are all from didactic, nonstrophic verse. Earlier writers who quote the troubadours try to absorb them into a scholastic framework, but this is unnecessary in At’s case; he is already thoroughly Aristotelian in inspiration and scholastic in his thought processes. Concomitantly, the question of sacrificing music to textual quotation no longer presents itself, since At’s nonstrophic works were never intended to be sung. Molinier’s selections from At are also a great deal longer than traditional troubadour quotations and than the authorities lifted from Albertano, running in one case to nearly eighty lines, though admittedly this passage is broken up into three sections by interpositions from Molinier.22 Although Molinier appropriates close to sixty pages from Albertano, At’s textual presence is much more apparent, partly because his authorship is standardly cited and also because his verse stands out in the predominantly prose environment of the Leys (though in the manuscript only the first verse quotation from At is set out line by line, the others being run on to blend with the prose; see Figure 7).
As both poet and fellow citizen, At lends himself to Molinier’s construction of a poetic community; his role in its ideology is vital. He is first quoted in the course of a passage where Molinier invokes the rational powers of the soul, thereby opening an eschatalogical frame around book 1, which concludes with the soul going before the Last Judgment. The lines in question show how razo, a term with a long history in Occitan poetics referring to the “subject matter” or “substance” of a song, is linked both to rationality and to all the virtues, theological and courtly. The passage helps to formulate the poetic and substantive ambitions of the Consistori:
Don N’Ath de Mons, que fo garnitz
de gran saber, enayssi ditz:
razos d’arma adutz
en home bona fe,
esperansa merce
pietat caritat
vergonha honestat,
mezura abstenensa,
patiensa suffrensa,
cortezia largueza,
leyaltat savieza.
(Leys, ed. Anglade, 1:68; 309.V, 471–79)
Of which At de Mons, a man equipped with great knowledge, said in this manner “The rational soul [literally: the soul’s reason/substance/subject matter] conduces, in man, to sound faith, hope to mercy, piety to charity, shame to decorum, moderation to abstinence, patience to endurance, courtliness to generosity, and uprightness to wisdom.”
A subsequent cluster of quotations (the eighty-line series) serves to resolve a problem raised by Plato and Cicero over the extent to which rhetoric, as use of speech, is natural or also requires art. At’s pronouncement in favor of art is used to set up the discussion of the bases of rhetoric into which the extracts from Albertano are then slotted (Leys, ed. Anglade, 1:84–87; At 309.V, 488563). At is more intellectually dominant in book 1 of this version of the Leys than any other troubadour quoted in any of the other works I have studied. Gone is the play with recognizing and knowing that was the hallmark of troubadour quotation up to this point. Not so much a litmus of Molinier’s knowledge as his guru, At is quoted in the sense that he is compiled and enshrined for posterity.
He is also the means whereby Brunetto, Albertano, and then also Seneca, Cato, Cicero, and the like, can be turned into Christian, civic, Occitan poetry. For at times Molinier varies his usual method of simply translating Albertano’s quotations as though they were his own. In B[3] of Appendix 15, Molinier first repeats the Latin lines together with their attribution to Seneca, and then recasts them in Occitan verse:
Qui de far mays a cura
que no ha per natura
per cug son poder passa
don cove que mens fassa.
(Leys, ed. Anglade, 1:147–48)
He who strives to do more than lies in his nature outstrips his capacities in imagination and therefore is bound to do less.
The hexasyllabic rhyming couplets and the learned content are altogether typical of At;23 thanks to the model provided by the troubadour from Mons, Seneca has become a late thirteenth-century Toulousain poet. In Appendix 15 B[5], Cato is similarly quoted twice, the second time in verse:24
La tersa razo pauza Cato enayssi: “Can seras iratz, no cotendaz de cauza no certa, quar ira enpacha lo coratge d’ome et tant qu’l tot a vezer la vertat.” L’Actors:
Iratz que de no cert conten
la vertat no ve claramen
quar ira fa la pessa trista
(Leys, ed. Anglade, 1:148)
Cato expressed the third reason thus: “If you are angry, do not argue about a matter that is not certain, for anger impedes a man’s mind and prevents him from seeing the truth.” The Author: “An angry man who argues about what is not certain does not see the truth clearly because anger makes thought sad and deprives the mind of vision.”
I take l’Actors to refer to Molinier as author of the Leys. These verses implement recommendations Molinier himself had drafted in book 5 of the 1341 redaction on how to incorporate Latin by translating it into Occitan couplets.25 The term actor is commonly used to denote the author figure of late medieval didactic or narrative works, carrying the meanings of both witness to their contents and creator of their exposition,26 and its first occurrence in the Leys infers as much, when l’Actors announces that he will compose mainly in prose, except when verse will redound more to the glory of God (Leys, ed. Anglade, 1:69). This rubric comes immediately after the initial quotation from At (1:68), thereby forging a connection between At and Molinier much as Matfre creates a bond with Aimeric de Peguilhan in the Breviari by juxtaposing his own words to the troubadour’s.27
The exalted mission of versifying in God’s honor is fulfilled when the author of the Leys transforms learning of all kinds into Occitan poetry for the benefit of the Consistori’s future students. In some cases, the rubric l’Actors is used to preface verses that draw an argument together rather than translating it; for example:
No solamen deu gardar am cuy parla, ans ho fa en prezencia de cuy parla. Sobre ausso ditz enayssi l’Actors:
Qui secret vol parlar
entorn se deu gardar
per que cel que s’amaga
so qu’om ditz no retraga.
(Leys, ed. Anglade, 1:93)
Not only should he take care with whom he speaks, but also in whose presence he speaks. On which point the Author says: “Who-ever wishes to talk in secret should look around him so that anyone who might come along should not repeat what is being said.”
Figure 7. Toulouse, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS 2883 (Leys d’amors), folio 31v. Book 1 of the second (1356) redaction. In the first four lines of the first column on the left, verse by the “Author” is set out line by line. It is followed by a cluster of prose quotations translated from Seneca, and then by fifty lines of hexasyllables by At de Mons that continue down the second column, followed by further prose sayings attributed to Saint Gregory. The three paraphs visible on this page mark the point where each of these three is introduced. At’s verses are run on so as to be difficult to distinguish from the surrounding prose; although each ends with a punctus, the excerpts from Seneca are similarly punctuated; only the “Author’s” lines are set out as verse. This passage corresponds with Anglade’s edition of the Leys, 1:105–6. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque Municipale de Toulouse.
In other cases, l’Actors recasts the opinion of an authority who is cited but not quoted, the Author’s own verse taking the place of the expected quotation:28
E jaciaysso que totas las sciensas e las auctoritatz no solamen dels sans mas dels anticz et aproatz philozophes hajan en mespretz riqueza et essenho cobezessa et avaricia esquivar, pero aysso non contrastan a penas pot hom trobar home que en riqueza no trobe plazer e no la vuelha am si; per so ditz l’Actors segon lo dig del Versifiayre:29
O bona paubriera, dura
foras a tota natura
si dieus no t’agues volguda
e per amor sostenguda.
(Leys, ed. Anglade, 1:99)
And although all learned writings and authorities, not only those of the saints but also those of antiquity and the confirmed phi los ophers hold wealth in contempt and teach the avoidance of cupidity and avarice, nevertheless and notwithstanding, it is difficult to find anyone who does not take pleasure in wealth or desire to have it with him; for which reason the Author says, according to the Versifier’s words: “O goodly poverty, you would have been harsh to every nature if God had not wanted you and supported you with love.”
By these means, Molinier re-marks others’ teaching with his own pedagogy, helping his students to become lovers of wisdom and steering them toward success in their poetry degrees. Deploying the same form as At de Mons, but in snappier, more memorable gobbets, he becomes the author of future quotations—verses short and pithy enough to be remembered and quoted by students of poetry, whose value as poetry is underlined by the fact that they are the only verse passages to be copied line by line in the main body of book i of the treatise (see Figure 7). Similarly, in book 2, almost the only verse passages to be set out as such are Molinier’s own verse examples; quotations from others are merged with his prose. More even than an At de Mons chansonnier, then, the Leys are a compilation of works by its Author.
Whereas previous authors of Occitan treatises see themselves as grammar teachers who quote the earlier troubadours and continue their compositions, Molinier presents himself as an encyclopedist and philosopher-poet who will be quoted by posterity, now that the days of the antics troubadors are finally over. His investment in the position of a subject supposed to know left little room for maneuver for his readers, but it did mark an important new beginning, even if the change did not ultimately last.
