Post by Pathfinder on Mar 14, 2022 11:37:02 GMT
Raimon de Miraval employed two jongleurs who would travel to welcoming
courts to perform his works. Their names were Bayona and Forniers. They
would often receive Miraval’s new compositions while on their travels, for this
was a traveling movement, its exponents journeying all over the known world.
While Bayona and Forniers headed for the court of Alfonso II of Castile,
Miraval was on his way to his friend and patron Raimon VI, count of Toulouse.
While Peire Vidal, the greatest voice of them all, took Fine Love to Tripoli in
Syria, Raimon de Miraval offered five years of love service to the famous “shewolf” of the Cabardès, Loba de Pennautier. This great dame was also courted by
Peire Vidal, the furrier’s son from Toulouse.
11 At some marvelous moment, it
must have seemed that the stars were everywhere and the Fin’ Amors always in
season.
By the many references to “false lovers,” it can be inferred that there was
something of a bandwagon going on, but reputations were hard to win. The
troubadours’ principal song genre, le canso, was, according to Dante (Occitan
poetry’s greatest enthusiast), “worthy of the highest honours to those who
practise it with success”—and a source of acute embarrassment to those who
could not.
12
The word troubadour may derive from the Occitan verb “to find” or “to
invent.” Certainly the works were original—unlike those of the ecclesiastical
world of the time. The literary life of the Church depended to a very great degree
on endless copying and the ubiquitous voice of past authority; originality was
dangerous. Troubadours vied with one another both for originality and for
perfection; their works boast of their superiority to other troubadours—always
ready to try out new verse forms, new twists of subject matter, fresh allusions
and insights; they seem to have lived in a world of their own. We do know that
troubadours would meet and compare works at towns such as Fanjeaux (at one
time populated by as many as fifty lords) and at the castle of Cabaretz, down the
path some five miles from Miraval, some eight centuries ago.
MIRAVAL
Because everything here is corrupt and returns to nothingness, Miraval never wanted to believe in the
God of the Roman Catholics. Because the beauty of women, ephemeral as it is, exalts the man and
makes him better, he never wanted to admit that this world was the work of the Demon [as the Cathar
Church believed]. He only put his confidence in the supreme love, which is neither of God nor of the
devil, but remains the image of the only eternity which nature permitted to men to experience for the
duration of an instant.
13
Miraval is a tiny village in the Cabardès, some twenty miles north of the walled
city of Carcassonne. It is an astonishingly beautiful place, set in an intimate
valley and bounded by oceans of bright green bushes and trees, full of fragrance
and birdsong. Above a small waterfall in the River Orbiel, which has carved out
this place, but still in the depth of the valley, is a stone parapet, largely
overgrown, part of three surviving walls of the tower of Miraval’s ancient castle.
It is not the kind of impregnable stronghold associated with kings; it does not
need to be. Nature has provided the best defenses for this region. A small plaque
in the language of the region, Occitan (hence La Langue d’Oc), placed at the
base of the mound on which the castle was built, informs us that here was born
Raimon de Miraval, poet of love and honor. He was born between 1160 and
1165 and died sometime between 1216 and 1229.
According to his Provençal vida, Raimon de Miraval was “a poor knight of
the Carcassès, who owned a fourth part of the castle of Miraval.” The castle was
taken by Frankish crusaders against the Cathars in either 1211 or two years
earlier, when Béziers was taken and the entire population of the city massacred.
This loss was certainly the coup de grâce for a family whose fortunes had
declined consistently over the previous centuries. Deeds show that the family
had had to renounce possessions around Castres and cede possessions in
Rouergue and feudal rights in the Larzac throughout the twelfth century. Goods
situated in the environs of Castres went to the viscount of Béziers and
Carcassonne, Rogier II, in 1174, when Miraval was a boy. This demand was
made on Guilhem de Miraval as punishment for warlike activity and brigandage.
In stanza 4 of his sirventès “Pos Peire d’Alvergn’a chantat” (Since Peire
d’Auvergne Sang), the troubadour known as the Monk of Montaudon scoffs at
Raimon’s poverty. He refers to Miraval’s failure to produce the customary fairs
at the beginning of each month due to his attending the courts of the Midi and
Spain as troubadour and courtier. Thanks to his castle, Miraval was able to play
the role in the courtly love process of vassal-possessor of a fief. He did this by
offering his castle to his lady, and this frequently. This symbolic gesture was
terribly important to Miraval. Miraval itself was for him more than a place, more
even than a home. In a wonderful canso addressed specifically to the lady
Azalaïs de Boissézon, he sang:
It is a new love which invites me
to serve her in such a manner
that at Miraval let there be firmly established
all the goodness of love and of sincere accord.
At Miraval his pen would catch fire:
At the bottom of my heart is born the flame
which leaves my lips when I sing,
and with it I set ablaze the ladies and lovers.
And my melodies are gentle and grave,
lovable, gracious and courteous;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and that is why one can learn them gladly.
So the one who is slow to love
on hearing my beautiful words
will hurry towards love.
14
Holding the castle also enabled him to affirm his quality as knight and author.
Compared to the great seigneurs of the region, he was indeed a poor chevalier
unable to equal their obligatory largesse. He still gave much nonetheless, and
Miraval, who had a spiritual outlook, might have considered his thoughts the
more noble because they were unrelated to material possessions.
Miraval enjoyed the favor of Raimon VI’s magnificent court of Toulouse and
was, with his few possessions, able to avoid extreme poverty. With the exception
of Audiart (his name for the count of Toulouse) and Pastoret (quite possibly
Raimon Rogier Trencavel, who at age fourteen in 1199 became the immediate
suzerain of Miraval), Miraval was able to address equally the great seigneurs of
his own land as well as those of Spain.
Miraval’s political role appears to have been discreet, and except for one
significant song from 1213, he makes no reference to the ferocious war with the
northern crusaders fought by the nobility of the Languedoc and of Aragon from
1209 (the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars).
15 While his friend Raimon
VI was the soul of that resistance, Miraval does not appear to have written
sirventès against the crusade. It is possible that Raimon VI did not want outward
provocation but instead held out hopes for diplomacy. This may say something
of the political and diplomatic weight of the free words of troubadours.
According to L. T. Topsfield, it is likely that Raimon VI was against the
“inferior” political sirventès (being a politician himself), preferring the
troubadour dedicated to the art of courtly love.
16
It was in Miraval’s interest to
rise above dynastic quarrels, because he could, as a certain Villelmi jibed, have
three masters in a year. Miraval had accused Villelmi of moral poverty; Villelmi
accused Miraval of being a “goody-goody.”
THE LADIES IN HIS LIFE
It is both informative and amusing to look at Miraval’s romantic life through the
eyes of a critic. A rare work, L’Histoire littéraire des Troubadours, was
published anonymously in Paris in 1774. This “literary history” is in fact a juicy
collection of risqué portraits describing the vidas (notes on the poets) and razos
(commentaries on the poems) revealing the sexual mores of the time. What
makes the work particularly entertaining to students of irony is the Catholic
moral gloss that intrudes at every possible opportunity, either because the author
is shocked or to avoid official censure, or, perhaps, simply for sophisticated
amusement. The intended audience would be young aristocrats or rising
bourgeois looking for guidance in the ways of love, and of lust. The author
appears ignorant of the real conditions of the twelfth century and seems simply
baffled as to how the institution of marriage could have been so consistently
flouted.
In one sense his account stands as a memorial to how a truly revolutionary
culture could be so completely suppressed and trivialized. It is especially ironic
that the book appeared only fifteen years before the French Revolution, a series
of events characterized by a barbarity similar to that which put an end to the
freedom of the troubadours.
The anonymous author begins by claiming that his Provençal sources praise
Miraval for his great inventiveness and fine speech, knowing more of love and
gallantry “than anyone,” possessing to a supreme degree virtuous and pleasant
manners. Next we are told that his first passion was for Loba, also much sought
after by the seigneurs of Saissac, Mirepoix, Montréal, the troubadour Peire
Vidal, and, successfully, by the count of Foix.v
courts to perform his works. Their names were Bayona and Forniers. They
would often receive Miraval’s new compositions while on their travels, for this
was a traveling movement, its exponents journeying all over the known world.
While Bayona and Forniers headed for the court of Alfonso II of Castile,
Miraval was on his way to his friend and patron Raimon VI, count of Toulouse.
While Peire Vidal, the greatest voice of them all, took Fine Love to Tripoli in
Syria, Raimon de Miraval offered five years of love service to the famous “shewolf” of the Cabardès, Loba de Pennautier. This great dame was also courted by
Peire Vidal, the furrier’s son from Toulouse.
11 At some marvelous moment, it
must have seemed that the stars were everywhere and the Fin’ Amors always in
season.
By the many references to “false lovers,” it can be inferred that there was
something of a bandwagon going on, but reputations were hard to win. The
troubadours’ principal song genre, le canso, was, according to Dante (Occitan
poetry’s greatest enthusiast), “worthy of the highest honours to those who
practise it with success”—and a source of acute embarrassment to those who
could not.
12
The word troubadour may derive from the Occitan verb “to find” or “to
invent.” Certainly the works were original—unlike those of the ecclesiastical
world of the time. The literary life of the Church depended to a very great degree
on endless copying and the ubiquitous voice of past authority; originality was
dangerous. Troubadours vied with one another both for originality and for
perfection; their works boast of their superiority to other troubadours—always
ready to try out new verse forms, new twists of subject matter, fresh allusions
and insights; they seem to have lived in a world of their own. We do know that
troubadours would meet and compare works at towns such as Fanjeaux (at one
time populated by as many as fifty lords) and at the castle of Cabaretz, down the
path some five miles from Miraval, some eight centuries ago.
MIRAVAL
Because everything here is corrupt and returns to nothingness, Miraval never wanted to believe in the
God of the Roman Catholics. Because the beauty of women, ephemeral as it is, exalts the man and
makes him better, he never wanted to admit that this world was the work of the Demon [as the Cathar
Church believed]. He only put his confidence in the supreme love, which is neither of God nor of the
devil, but remains the image of the only eternity which nature permitted to men to experience for the
duration of an instant.
13
Miraval is a tiny village in the Cabardès, some twenty miles north of the walled
city of Carcassonne. It is an astonishingly beautiful place, set in an intimate
valley and bounded by oceans of bright green bushes and trees, full of fragrance
and birdsong. Above a small waterfall in the River Orbiel, which has carved out
this place, but still in the depth of the valley, is a stone parapet, largely
overgrown, part of three surviving walls of the tower of Miraval’s ancient castle.
It is not the kind of impregnable stronghold associated with kings; it does not
need to be. Nature has provided the best defenses for this region. A small plaque
in the language of the region, Occitan (hence La Langue d’Oc), placed at the
base of the mound on which the castle was built, informs us that here was born
Raimon de Miraval, poet of love and honor. He was born between 1160 and
1165 and died sometime between 1216 and 1229.
According to his Provençal vida, Raimon de Miraval was “a poor knight of
the Carcassès, who owned a fourth part of the castle of Miraval.” The castle was
taken by Frankish crusaders against the Cathars in either 1211 or two years
earlier, when Béziers was taken and the entire population of the city massacred.
This loss was certainly the coup de grâce for a family whose fortunes had
declined consistently over the previous centuries. Deeds show that the family
had had to renounce possessions around Castres and cede possessions in
Rouergue and feudal rights in the Larzac throughout the twelfth century. Goods
situated in the environs of Castres went to the viscount of Béziers and
Carcassonne, Rogier II, in 1174, when Miraval was a boy. This demand was
made on Guilhem de Miraval as punishment for warlike activity and brigandage.
In stanza 4 of his sirventès “Pos Peire d’Alvergn’a chantat” (Since Peire
d’Auvergne Sang), the troubadour known as the Monk of Montaudon scoffs at
Raimon’s poverty. He refers to Miraval’s failure to produce the customary fairs
at the beginning of each month due to his attending the courts of the Midi and
Spain as troubadour and courtier. Thanks to his castle, Miraval was able to play
the role in the courtly love process of vassal-possessor of a fief. He did this by
offering his castle to his lady, and this frequently. This symbolic gesture was
terribly important to Miraval. Miraval itself was for him more than a place, more
even than a home. In a wonderful canso addressed specifically to the lady
Azalaïs de Boissézon, he sang:
It is a new love which invites me
to serve her in such a manner
that at Miraval let there be firmly established
all the goodness of love and of sincere accord.
At Miraval his pen would catch fire:
At the bottom of my heart is born the flame
which leaves my lips when I sing,
and with it I set ablaze the ladies and lovers.
And my melodies are gentle and grave,
lovable, gracious and courteous;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
and that is why one can learn them gladly.
So the one who is slow to love
on hearing my beautiful words
will hurry towards love.
14
Holding the castle also enabled him to affirm his quality as knight and author.
Compared to the great seigneurs of the region, he was indeed a poor chevalier
unable to equal their obligatory largesse. He still gave much nonetheless, and
Miraval, who had a spiritual outlook, might have considered his thoughts the
more noble because they were unrelated to material possessions.
Miraval enjoyed the favor of Raimon VI’s magnificent court of Toulouse and
was, with his few possessions, able to avoid extreme poverty. With the exception
of Audiart (his name for the count of Toulouse) and Pastoret (quite possibly
Raimon Rogier Trencavel, who at age fourteen in 1199 became the immediate
suzerain of Miraval), Miraval was able to address equally the great seigneurs of
his own land as well as those of Spain.
Miraval’s political role appears to have been discreet, and except for one
significant song from 1213, he makes no reference to the ferocious war with the
northern crusaders fought by the nobility of the Languedoc and of Aragon from
1209 (the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars).
15 While his friend Raimon
VI was the soul of that resistance, Miraval does not appear to have written
sirventès against the crusade. It is possible that Raimon VI did not want outward
provocation but instead held out hopes for diplomacy. This may say something
of the political and diplomatic weight of the free words of troubadours.
According to L. T. Topsfield, it is likely that Raimon VI was against the
“inferior” political sirventès (being a politician himself), preferring the
troubadour dedicated to the art of courtly love.
16
It was in Miraval’s interest to
rise above dynastic quarrels, because he could, as a certain Villelmi jibed, have
three masters in a year. Miraval had accused Villelmi of moral poverty; Villelmi
accused Miraval of being a “goody-goody.”
THE LADIES IN HIS LIFE
It is both informative and amusing to look at Miraval’s romantic life through the
eyes of a critic. A rare work, L’Histoire littéraire des Troubadours, was
published anonymously in Paris in 1774. This “literary history” is in fact a juicy
collection of risqué portraits describing the vidas (notes on the poets) and razos
(commentaries on the poems) revealing the sexual mores of the time. What
makes the work particularly entertaining to students of irony is the Catholic
moral gloss that intrudes at every possible opportunity, either because the author
is shocked or to avoid official censure, or, perhaps, simply for sophisticated
amusement. The intended audience would be young aristocrats or rising
bourgeois looking for guidance in the ways of love, and of lust. The author
appears ignorant of the real conditions of the twelfth century and seems simply
baffled as to how the institution of marriage could have been so consistently
flouted.
In one sense his account stands as a memorial to how a truly revolutionary
culture could be so completely suppressed and trivialized. It is especially ironic
that the book appeared only fifteen years before the French Revolution, a series
of events characterized by a barbarity similar to that which put an end to the
freedom of the troubadours.
The anonymous author begins by claiming that his Provençal sources praise
Miraval for his great inventiveness and fine speech, knowing more of love and
gallantry “than anyone,” possessing to a supreme degree virtuous and pleasant
manners. Next we are told that his first passion was for Loba, also much sought
after by the seigneurs of Saissac, Mirepoix, Montréal, the troubadour Peire
Vidal, and, successfully, by the count of Foix.v