The Legacy of the Troubadours

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We cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here find out who we really were Gone medieval. Let me start the way every good story should start A duke, a warrior, a scandal maker, and the first known Troubador all happen to be the very same person This is the great Lord William the Ninth of Aquitain And he didn't merely patronize poets or listen to songs. He was himself The singer The very first Troubador In ten eighty six, William became the master of land so vast they eclipsed the holdings of the French king everything you might expect from a medieval prince, rich. Fred mobile, militarily formidable His excellence in warfare was praised by chroniclers and his life k him across Aquitane, into Iberian campaigns and eastward. on Crusade But what makes him especially significant is that he also forged a new poetic voice in Oxytime, a voice could be commy eroti Inolent, elegant. and moving. In eleven o one marching towards Jerusalem, William's forces were shattered in Anatolia. Most of his army was destroyed, and he escaped with only a handful of men Yet he turned the catastrophe into performance Recounting it in rhythmic verse in front of kings and nobles, the first to make poetry from his lived experience, transforming history into some In his private life, William was impossible to contain. He quarrelled with the church, defended rulers accused of adultery, and was himself excommunicated for refusing to abandon a notorious affair He also patronized religious institutions and supported learning in Poitiers Later Troubadore poetry would often refine desires into idealized courtliness But William's lyrics are more proud sensual, irreverent pololitically dangerous His poems help define the range the Troubadores would inherit Some are playful and shocking, full of sexual bravado and outrageous humor But it could also be unexpectedly great This is William the Ninth's real P oats He's not just the earliest name on the list He establishes the Troubador as a poet of individuality, of performance. and contradiction Later Troubads would refine the art, deepen it, and spread it across Europe William is where it all begins My guest today is Professor Linda Patterson, whose recent book The Troubads tells the story of the lives and art of these remarkable poet musicians, who, she argues, weren't just performers, but also Craftsan courtiers, satarists, politicians, travellers And in some cases women or merchants or clerics working in a culture where song carried social prestige, emotional force and real political consequence V very warm welcome to G Mediev Linda. It's great to be with us.,'s good to be here. I'm looking forward to digging into the whole culture that surrounds Troubads. It's such a fascinating period and fascinating topic. So to start us off with Can you just give us the kind of the basics here? When we talk about troubads What do we mean? Where are we? when are we and who are we talking about? So tribids were poet musicians and the earliest tribidal we know about is William the Knight that Aquitain who was composing around about eleven hundred The tribes were composing in a language which We now call oxytone, but people may know more about it and think of it in terms of promonal. It's a language of the south of France as opposed to and the long dayie in the North of France And they were active mainly in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a few trickle on into the beginning of the fourteenth. And the important thing is that they were composers who composed the tunes and the words to their songs mostly So as you mentioned there, we tend to start talking about troubads with William IIth, the Duke of Aquitaine. Do we know? How and why he begins to turn his exploits into these lyrics to be performed Where does this all come from? There are various chroniclers talk about him coming back from his crusade in eleven oh one And Sydney songs are some of which they complain about because they think they were very bwdy and raucous. And others praised for their wit, but we don't know where it comes from really. that's all we know Why was the eleven o one Cusade kind of such a disaster that Guillom has so much to say about it. William has so much to say about it. It was a disaster because he went on crrusade, he went to Jerusalem and prayed there And then when he was coming back His army just got ambushed in the Anatonian marshes and were pretty they were pretty much wiped out. There's nothing in his songs that actually talks about this crusade However, some people interpret one of his songs as possibly emerging from that crusade. In this, he tells a story and says that he was wandering about pilgrim through the Oalnia And some people think, oh well, pilgrim, that means crrusader and the oveil know maybe he was coming back But it's actually just a kind of funny rude story. Has a pilgrim he's worrying about, he comes across a couple of women and he pretends that he's dumb And these women get very excited and I think we've found exactly what we're looking for. because he won't be able to tell whatever we do with him So they invite you in they give him a a nice dinner with a with a caon with lots of Lots of thick pepper. They prepare a bath and to have a good time then they think, well, maybe this man is tricking us So Let's put him to the test of they get out an absolutely huge ginger cat They have him naked And they scratch him through this cat from top to toe. And he manages to keep himself silent. So they say, okay, this is fine. And then the song ends at a big baudy rom with words which I probably shouldn't repeat here Ill do that when we're not recording you can tell me all about it And he does so he's he's well known for these kind of bd songs that you say get him into a little bit of trouble. He's frequently very, very rude. but there is there is range to what he does. It's not all just rude poetry, is he? Does he have a variety of styles and subjects that he covers? He certainly does. I mean he actually composed some very lovely delicate love songs The roude songs are actually very clever So there's one which interweaves various levels of meaning and he's 's talking about dice playing and he's talking about words But then underneath all that there's a lot of sexual shenanigans going on. And then he also wrote a very moving Farewell to the world where he asks the Count of Anjou to and the King of France to protect his son. Yeah, so there's quite a personal element to that sort of last poem, that farewell, isn't there? and a real concern about what's going to happen to his son when he's gone. There is, There is indeed, yes. ye And so as this becomes more popular and moves on, we get other names that appear in your book as well. So I wanted to talk a little bit about Geoffre Rudel, who I think is kind of this legendary Troubadour figure. What do we know about him Well, we know that he composed the six songs which have been been preserved. We know that he was from the family of Blay. The Lords of Blay were vassals of the Dukes of Aquiton. so he was essentially he was a vassal of Duke William the Um, the tenth of Aquoutain But he was exiled from Blis for a long time and so he was He's known sometimes to modern readers as a prince without a country And that apart from that, we know that he went on the secondecond Cusade with the French along with Louis VII and Eleanor of Acquitaine That's it During May when the days are long I admire the song of the birds from far away And when I have gone away from there I remember a love far away I go scowling with my head down so much that songs and Hawthorn flowers aren't better to me than the frozen winter I trust the Lord's fairness in having formed this farway love But for each consolation I achieve, I get two ills because I am so far away. A, why didn't I go there as a pilgrim So that to my staff Coak would be beheld by her beautiful eyes. And how different is his style to William the N ninth? So if he's growing up in that same kind of area in that same kind of atmosphere, Is he covering similar things or is he different? He's extremely different. William is very physical about love and there's one poem where which is attributed to him, it's a little bit unsure But he says he can't wait to get his hands under his lady's cloak, for instance. And there's no nonsense about any kind of distance With Jeoffrey Ruddel, he's a poet of Amur de Lologne which is love at a distance, distant love. It's all about desire but for something really unspecific and it's so unspecific that people have come up with all sorts of theories about what it is that she's actually Tsari. Is it a real woman? Is it a woman of his imagination? Is it love for the Holy Land, is it love for Jesus? Is it love for the Virgin Mary? and you're just left to make your reminder. The language is different too. It's known as of our plan or the small smooth style so it's very smooth and Um apparently uncomplicated Yeah And is this are we seeing here the emergence of what will become known as courtly love that's sort of wrapped up in chivalry? Are the Troubadores driving that or are they plugging into something that already existed That's a good question. Well, first of all, I think chivalry is a difficult word Um and I don't think Chivalry really comes into being until about seventy years later If you replace that term perhaps with a knightly ethos, then maybe that's okay It has been said and I would go along with it that the Troubadurs really invented courtly love And this is a love which is and Van's love for woman mainly, although women's tribs do come in later. The man is in a position of his lady's vassal and he refers to her as his Dnda, which is a kind of female equivalent of dominus, in other words, lord And he serves her and he worships her allegedly And he promises all kinds of things in his love such as constancy and discretion and he claims to be very timid in her presence and so on and so forth. It's all about longing for something that hasn't happened yet So It's true that the true adults later when they're carrying some of these ideas they do talk about what they call the sord Puse the rest, but basically it's about love before and anything really happens very much. Yeah. And Jeffrey Rudell kind of gives us a really good example of that around the story of the Countess of Tripoli How much do we know about that story? What happens there? The story about the Countess of Tripoli is an invention of the thirteenth century. so this is one hundred years later and it appears in something called the Vidas, these the life stories. In the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries, there were people mainly in Italy who were going around collecting, well they were anthologizing songs that they could find Sometimes with music, sometimes not And then they were thinking in terms of presenting these to a public, a thirteenth century public. who were curious about who these troubads were, just like today. And so sometimes they were able to draw on information that people had been able to collect, but more often than not they were inventing stuff Now the story about the Countess of Tripoli, we don't really know where it came from, but we only know it had emerged in the thirteenth century And the story is that Jeoffrey went on crusade, which he did And then When he was on board ship Fial. And He also heard stories about the Countess of Tripoli and he fell in love with her without seeing her So if you like, it's an attempt to explain the Armod Nonia, the distant love And the story has it that when he arrived, he'd lost his powers of sight and hearing but he could still He could still speak and feel. She took him in hiss arms and he died in her arms. All very lovely and it's illustrated in some of the songbooks by veryery pretty illuminations Yeah. So it's interesting that sort of a century or so later people are wanting to build these stories and myths and legends around the Troubadors. They're kind of interested in in who they were and what drove them to write this music as much as they're interested in the music Yes, that's right. you're so curious about it Ply because by this time the courts in Italy were imitating the courts in the south of France. which is we refer to as ocitania, but just to be difficult So we're talking about Lia from the mouth of the Gnde going up through Oal and coming down to the north of Italy So mainly Italians but also This also happened There were some collectors in the south of France as well And as I said, the courts in Italy were actually imitating the values and traditions and behaviour of the courts in France. And another troubadur that you cover in your book is Macabreu. and I wonder if you could talk us a bit kind of what does he bring to the genre? How is he different Well, he's very different because he's a moralist and a satirist he talks about love in the abstract, but he doesn't think much of it in in reality and he's actually a very strong misogynist. So quite a lot of his songs are saying what a dreadful lot women are and they're always trying to entice men and lure them to do bad things. It feels like almost the opposite of what we've been talking about so far, isn't it? It's almost the opposite of that love at a distance and this devotion to a woman.s Oh absolutely. And I think well, I've argued this although it's not totally proven, but I think he's actually well he's engaged in discussions with other troubadurs It talks about other tribids who are completely mindless. And he actually tries to define love And what he says about it is actually important for the way that later Troubads come to incorporate this into their idea of courtly lovever what they call phhilomorts But basically Martha Brw's idea of love is rooted in marriage It's the church's line. But he's countering a very powerful current actually, which is really anti church You know, the church is going to want to be supporting the ideals of love, which is for somebody who's not your wife Go I said, Sweet pious child detoured from my way to keep you company this day I reckon it a thing ill styled that in this place, remote and wild You tend so big a flock as this All alone, companionless My Lord, she said, whatever I be Polly and sense I can discern Your company, good sir, I spurn and leave it to your lady She has more right to the thing than me Your luckless lady who believed she had it that is quite deceived Yeah, so he's almost like a like a small C conservative Troubadour, which is sort of the opposite of what we associate with the genre really. That's true in terms of ideas and yet he's very innovative as well because he cribes all the different qualities which ought to go along with love and the kind of courtty way of life Mainly, it has to be said to do with the generosity of the leaders of the court and he as a As somebody who depends totally on that is completely self interested in that respect But as far as innovation goes, I mean he's extremely innovative in language. He's got the most amazing powerward words And do we get a sense in some of his lyrics? It feels like sometimes he comes across as quite angry. Does that come out in his lyrics sometimes Yes. Yes, I was thinking about this. I think I think it comes out in his misogyny But I think the other aspect is that he calls himself a sudader Um It's a word that gives us the word soldier He did actually go to Spain and fight in the reconquest But whether it was a soldier or not is simply a hired man, which is what the origin of the word means that he he identifies with a group of Basically servants at a court And he's angry about the meanness or the stinginess of the Lords who how it in their power to make their life a lot better And he's also very resentful of the favoritism given to other servants such as stewards who have more powers than they do and who get all the perks So I think that's where some of his anger comes from Yeah, ye, it's an interesting mix. Yeah Given all of the different types of subjects that are being covered sort of so far Do we get any sense of how these things were performed? Is there like dramatic staging going on? Is it almost like watching a play rather than a piece of music I think to be truthful, we don't know about that. What we do know is that any performer is putting on a performance And I think there are a couple of things I might say about coulder in this respect One is that he himself puts on a lot of different personi The most common one is that of a preacher And there's a song called Paxon Nomini Domini where he actually starts in Latin and you can imagine him coming on stage and perhaps performing the sign of the cross as he does it. And then he gives what is a kind of a sermon but in verse. Other personally are very different. Sometimes he kind of pretends to be a philandering knight could imagine gestures, but you simply have to imagine them There's one exchange where I perhaps bit fancifully imagine that possibly have done some staging and maybe use even used costumes. It's a debate between The Trouubador as in Mab Bw, So that his Troubor persona with a minor lord called Audrik. And the Troubadore complains to Auduriit that he's too stingy, and Auddriite comes back and says, Well, you're a totally rubbish troubadore And I can just imagine this being done as a kind of skit, but there's no evidence for this Yeah So you're a rubbish lord, you're a rubbish troubidor where you smell worse than me. You stink as well. Exactly. Yes, exactly Yeah. One of the next people you cover in your book is B Art deeventa Dorn. And you think is it fair to say that he really gives us this crystallized idea of courtly love that we perhaps most associate with this genre. Yes, I think so. I think that's true. So it's u it's a physical laugh with spiritual aspects, but what the spiritual aspects are a matter for a debate And it goes along with various qualities in the person such as generosity and obedience to the lady and discretion to the lady because obviously her reputation is at stake and joy and youth. and many other things. So yes, I think it's fair to say that he crystallizes these ideas I suppose the other important thing is that it's he sees love as a source of not only the inspiration for poetry also for moral worth That's an important aspect of courtly love, as it's come to be called As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Bwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history Kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodisiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwix the sheets the history of sex scandal in society twice a week every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts, brought to you by the award winning network, History Hit And is it fair to say that you suggest that his lyrics can appear quite simple, but that we ought to think of much more going on beneath the surface that they're actually a bit more sophisticated than we often allow I think one's right. I think they are very sophisticated, but he composes in what we call Mr of V Lu, the light style or the accessible style, as opposed to Marabu who composes in the closed door. Some people have even said obscure style, the difficult style So he's very accessible So much so that you know, the nineteenth century romantics really really loved him and he's still very popular today Recorded, much recorded What he prizes above all is sincerity he says that u love and poetry need to spring from the heart. There's a great deal of craft in the way that she gives this impression U musicality of the words to go with it s of echoes and lots of interesting images, but it doesn't make life difficult for the listener Yeah. And one of his most famous pieces is the Lark song. When I see the Lark display, his wings with joy against the day forgetting. Fold then fall away. As sweetness to his heart makes way Such great envy then invades my mind I see the rest take fire And marvel at it, for no way can my heart turn from its desire Ah, I so dearly wished to know of love yet so little learn For I cannot keep from loving her will not have me though I burn. She stole my heart and all of me And she herself and worlds apart lacking herself Now nothing's left But long game and the willing heart It was very much loved It's really moving and he starts off with this beautiful image of the Lark, which is flying up to the sky which is for the sublime of some kind And then it's so full of joy that it forgets to fly and then it plubbits down to earth And it's an image that he elaborates in the song where he veers between hs of joy and suffering and he ends up with a sense of exile from him his own identity, from the lady, from his roots in society and he goes off into exile. It It's a lovely song And but not someone else who kind of develops this sort of legendary backstory as well. They seem to give him these really humble origins from which he has sprung. How much do we know about the truth behind his story We don't really know anything about that. I think this is just invented. I'm not sure that it's trying to explain the law But I think it's just trying to say who was he And it just picks up one or two comments in his songs and spin stories about them. I mean, we do know that he was attached to the so called schoolool of Ele. Ebily Eventerne was a rival friend and rival to William the ninth and they have they have various kind of friendly competitions where they try and outdo each other in their cult the extravagance Belnut says that he He's so full of sorrow that he no longer will belong to the school of Lord Elay And so I think they try and him to that that court and maybe he was at that court, but Basically, it's just people spinning stories Yeah, But it's fascinating that you almost get this fan fiction around Troubads and who they really were. So people are latching onto it. and if maybe you can't write the same kind of music and poetry that they could, you can still expand the world by kind of crafting these backstories for them. It's fascinating that people want to do that is It is, and you've expressed it very well. Yeah And you also mentioned in the book that there are probably around about twenty named women, Troubadur as well. What do we know about them and how does their role in the Troubadur tradition differ from mens is it the same or is it What we know about them? Well, we know a certain amount about them because they're pretty well all aristocratic women who feature in other records. such as um Maria Eventedawn No she's a well known figure. It's clear that such women are important in Hkly Lve Um, Someone in the poet in the thirteenth century makes it quite clear that women were involved particularly in dialogue poems songs And um What he says is, well, if you are going to engage in these, just make sure they're not rude They write in different genres, so they do write love songs. They're also very much involved in dialogues for which is part of courty entertainment basically And they also write Ciodentes, which were moralizing hand or political songs. So this big mixture The difficulty for them in writing love songs is that tyypically, well the conventions say In the poetry, the lady is the one on top as it works. She's the dominant figure And the male lover is the one who is pleading for love This gets reversed in a women's love song because she's in this position where she's not really supposed to be pleading, but that's what she is doing So it's awkward for her. And there is also the problem of how is it that a woman can be talking about love in physical terms. which they do. Yeah., whichich feels like you during this period, and we've talked about the misogyny of some of the male troubids and the work that they were engaged in and you know the church was increasingly misogynistic during this period Is there something dangerous in what these women are doing? partarticularly if they're aristocratic, does this rebound on their reputations at all? Well, you think it could And yet it doesn't seem to stop them. I thought if it's alright with you, I thought I'd just quote a little bit from a couple of women through the doors. So I'm going' go did in translation obviously One of them called Azise de Port Cerages, evokes an erotic situation which led R Nelly to elaborate a whole theory around the asatch or trial or test for a woman and she says Fair love pledged always to be well disposed towards you, courtly and welcoming. provided that you do not ask me to go too far We shall soon come to the test of this, for I shall put myself at your mercy You have promised faithfully that you will not ask me to do anything wrong And the Countess of Dia says I would like to hold my knight naked in my arms one evening for he would be overjoyed if I only served him as a pillow. Dy Dy When shall I hold you in my power? If only I could lie with you one evening and give you a loving kiss, know that I would I should dearly love you to hold you place of husband provided that you promised me to do everything that I wish It doesn't seem to have stopped them Pst pretty racey stuff, isn't it? Yeah. But there's no evidence that it did rebound on them. was considered completely acceptable to preserve their songs in these expensive song books and the illustrations in the songbooks actually show them as ladies, It doesn't just noble women. it doesn't suggest there was anything bad about them Then in the nineteenth century, there were people who thought that they were actually scandalized and thought of the Countess Si as a sccarlet woman. But they didn't respond that way as far as we know in the Middle Ages, Not at all. Yeah, Very interesting. that's a nineteenth century reaction rather than anything contemporary And just does that? Does that almost freedom and that acceptance of that work by women troubadurs reflect a slightly different attitude in the Oxitanian world to perhaps the rest of the European world. I mean we famously, I think we think of it as being a much more kind of liberal and light atmosphere when we think of people like Eleanor of Aquitaine coming out of that world. Wow. Does it reflect a different attitude to women in particular, in that region at that time Well, it does seem to, doesn't it? I mean, there are something I think you mentioned about twenty named womed trobitors You have to look very hard to find any women writers in or women composers or lyric at any rate in the North. They're one or two I think they were actually very important in courtly life. You know they were they were people who presided over caught the entertainment them And also in the South, I think women It's a difficult subject, but there were some quite powerful women in the South France Eleanor obviously is one example, but I think the social situation was you could say it's somewhat different in the south. Yeah And unfortunately, we're going to move back to men because Okay We have more of their nameam, don't we? One troubador kind of stands out in particular' a man named Arno Daniel who is kind of praised by people like Gante and Petrarch and famous names that people will know. They sort of seem to appreciate and like his poetry. What do we know about him and why is his work so outstanding What do we know about him? Well, we're told in the Veda that he started off his career learning Lras, which means Latin. And it looks as though he was maybe aiming for some sort of career as a cleric Oh, in the in the u in the clergy And then he just abandoned that and he became a Jog Lar. And he went around singing and composing, and he became a troubadore and he was much appreciated. The reason he was so much appreciated then and later is by Danteon Pethark is that he's an incredible wordsmith The craft is just unbelievable particularly for his Um But searching out of rare words and complicated versification and rare rhymes and yeah, it's I mean it's all apart from one extremely rude poem, it's all love poetry, but it' it's the craft for which he's known As the saying goes, if these walls could talk. And on the Bwixt the Sheets podcast, we make it our business to discover what happened behind closed doors, and even more importantly, in the bedrooms of people all throughout history kings, queens, mistresses, servants, and everyone in between. We also get up close and personal with medieval aphrodysiacs, lethal Victorian makeup routines, and look at the scandalous lives of beloved children's authors. Nothing is off limits In other words, it's the best bits of history with me, Dr. Kate Lister. Listen to but twwix the sheets the history of sex scandal and society twice a week, every week, wherever it is that you get your podcasts, brought to you by the award winning network, History Hit. Is he innovating with the form? Is he progressing it? Is he taking it further than it's gone before? sort of finding new ways to use language to deliver these messages Yes, he is, well. I mean, it's partly through this search for ravocabulary But perhaps I could just give you an example. of of a form that he had adented which is picked up later by Italian poets. They called it a Sestina. He didn't call it that, but that's what it is and it involves six stanzas and a couple of lines at the end picking up the last picking up the last bid And in each stanzer, he ends he ends each line with a word, a rhyme word So there are six different rhyme words and then in the next anwer he picks them up again, but in a different order and so on in six stanzas. So it's my husband actually looked into this because he was trying to get a sort of mathematical explanation for what was going on and he kind of compared it with Bell rigging and the u Ct know which is called. It's the the round bob or something But anyway, it's very it means that you come back to the sameattern you would come back to the same pattern at the end if you started again after the end of the sixth lanzer And in the final two lines, he just incorporates those six rhyme words so it's tool to false. And I wonder if we could talk a little bit as well. and maybe we can bring in Bertrand De Bourne as our example to talk about this what extent Do does the politics of the day Troubads are writing and singing about and As an extension of that, kind of how reasonable is it to use someone like Bertnd De Bourne as almost a historical source material for what's going on and attitudes to politics of the day? Well, to a vast extent, there's a whole Jan called the Sirentes, which is hardly preserved in the North among the Pt speaking in French as opposed to occitan yes, there are h huge vast numbers of political poems. and, uh, yes, I think it's, um Obviously, with any source, you're going to have to take account of all sorts of things I think it's with the Troubads, there are details which can emerge which you wouldn't otherwise know about, particularly in Bercard deour. historians have had recourse to this There are names that he mentioned who can be identified through other sources and you can form a bigger picture of what their role was, what they were doing, who they were associated with Particularly though, I think you can use the Trumadors if that's not the wrong word to get an idea of a public response to events such as the Crusades Yeah, interesting. So it's almost like watching a satirical news programe today, you know, We might watch something that comments on the news and makes a bit of fun of it light of it or makes obscure references to it. That's kind of what the Troubadores are doing us a very good way of footing it, although sometimes it's extremely serious. And when B Vad Bghn is criticising leaders of the crrusade for not getting on with it and just delaying and delaying when you know when we've heard that Jerusalem has fallen or I hope I forgot my dates right there Yeah, in response to dreadful events that are going on in in the holy Land He's goading them, he's prompting them and it's quite serious So yeah, satire but also serious. Other sorts of events that come into this might be the conflict between the Holy Roman emperor and the Pope, for instance in the thirteenth century. There's a lot of true responses to that And a lot of it is propaganda, partly You can see that Frederick IId Henstdalfen is actually he has a whole propaganda machine going and Troubads could be part of that. Yeah ye. and cut it unlike Arno that we talked about earlier Bertraan attracts attention from Dante who kind of complains about him and says, you know he's out there sowing discord with the work that he's doing Is that a fair assessment by Dante or is he being a bit mean He's not being mean, he's been quite truthful. Belkran was a sower of discord. He saidays he likes it when war is happening because well first all I mean first of all, he foments discord because he's actually trying to get people on his side in local wars that he's involved in and he's trying to protect his own Castle But more than that, he loves people being at war because it makes the top people a lot friendlier It means he could hobnob with people like Richard the Leionhart and the young King Um Henry of England. And there are lots of courts and lots of free spending and drinking and feasts and celebrating the courtty way of life. And so yeah, he thinks discourord is great. It's good for business We also have so a word that cropped up a little bit earlier a jndleau. And I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about how a jndleau is different from a Troubadour and whereether people sort of moved between the two spheres. I mean it's an arguable area, but it makes sense to see a gndleaur as somebody who performs and a Tribadore as somebody who composes And certainly you can be the same person but you could primarily start off your life going around singing other people's songs and then you could start composing yourself. And that is the story that's told about Aa Danieele U So yes, you could certainly go from one to the other Yeah, interesteresting. And maybe to give a rather different kind of example, well it is a ch a different change of status and that is Reinb, de Vaceras. who started as a troubadore, a very fine troubadur, but he became He became the Troubador and friend of Bonnie Fast I F of Monferart, who was a leader at the Fourth Crusade And Byfuss, this was a very rare thing. I mean, Troubads really hoped that the rich would promote them in some way or give them lots of vice gifts So Bonifast did was he made he made Can about a knight, he knighted him. Yeah Fascinating. So that's certainly a change of status. Yeah And how does Or how did Troubador culture kind of change with the status of the singer. and I'm thinking mostly here in the book of Fulcade to Marl art iller F Cmel said, yeah where you could say that Folqu started off being a Troubadore as well as being the son of a merchant sar And he ended up as a bishop When he became a bishop, he felt very embarrassed about having dallied around with these silly Suver love songs that as far as tribinal culture went, Folquay sided with the French and the Church in their invasion of the south during the Alberensian Cusade, which was started to allegedly to extirpate the Kathar heresy and other heresies Basically it ended up being a war of conquest And Far was Bishop of Toulouse And he played a really pretty despicable role actually from a trival's point of view and the locals' point of view in tricking the citizens to accept the rule of the French. claiming that they would all they'd all keep their lands and they'd all, you know, life would just carry on as before And as soon as he'd got them in his power They were sent off into exile ID was certainly important for a change change in Troubador culture because apart from anything else, a lot of the Trrouads started lambasting the church. and and the French. and the Crusaders Yeah. And it's an interesting case, isn't it? Be he's a troubador who Being a Troubadour sort of opens the doors to social progression for him. He ends up as a bishop who as you sayays, is almost embarrassed of his origins despite the fact that that's how he got there. But then he also turns into someone who is effectively attacking Oxytan culture and the Oxxtam way of living and trying to see that subsumed into a more Northern French way of doing things. He's almost's he's poach a turn gameeper, almost isn't Well, he is. I wouldn't say that, um that having I don't think there's a direct link between him Getting an introduction to powerful people in South through his songs. I don't think there's a link between Dusson and becoming a bishop. I think those two things are quite separate actually But he certainly becomes, yes, he's could say he becomes he's a poacherer and gamekeeper. He's not afraid he's not a very attractive figure then I'd kind of h on the side of the troueors all time? Yeah, absolutely. We'll leave him behind. He can be the b guy of our story Um yeah. and to what extent do we we see End to the Tbador tradition, does it? finish or does it sort of subside a little bit? Do it go quietly or slowly? We don't have any tri or songs in Oxital to the the very beginning of the fourteenth century. so you could say that it subsides in that sense I mean, it gains new life by being absorbed into Italian in the Aolciistill novel and and Dante's lyrics And in the whole courtly love courtly lyric tradition, in that sense it doesn't die, but gets transformed. Yeah yeah. Are we able to see a kind of a direct influence on people like Dante from the Troubador tradition and their interest in it? Oh well, certainly, yes, yes Abdanti in his youth, he wrote well when he' was comparatively young, he wrote a treatise in Latin called the Dvilgaria Lquentia on vernacular eloquence and he's he's arguing for the status of the vernaculular as a vehicle for the highest form of poetry And he talks about there being three traditions here becauses the language of o the language of Aa and the language of C. The language of Oc is ocitan because it's the way that people said yes, it ocks down The language of Oia is oldld French and the language of C is Italian and then he cites There is authorities, authoritative figures, including people like A Dangyen and so on So I mean, he's very clearly deeply influenced by the Troubads and this and you can see this in his divine comedy for instance, as well as the lyrics. Yeah this has been absolutely fascinating and I really feel like I'm going to go away and have to read some of the ruder versions of poetry that we can't talk about on air. I wonder before we finish whether you whether you think there is a real lasting legacy to the Troubador movement. What is its legacy? That's such a difficult question