In the 12th century we find in Languedoc sermons, whose importance is more linguistic than literary (Sermons du Xlle siecle en vieux provencal, ed. by F. Armitage, Heilbronn, 1884). About the same time, in Limousin, were translated chapters xiii.—xvii. of St. John's Gospel (Bartsch, Chrestomathie proven cale). Various translations of the New Testament and of some parts of the Old have been done in Languedoc and Provence dur ing the 13th and 14th centuries (see S. Berger, "Les Bibles pro vencales et vaudoises," Romania xviii. 353 ; and "Nouvelles re cherches sur les Bibles provencales et catalanes," ibid. xix. 505). The Provencal prose rendering of some lives of saints made in the early part of the 13th century (Revue des langues romanes, 1890) is more interesting from a purely linguistic than from a literary point of view. To the 13th century belong certain lives of the troubadours intended to be prefixed to, and to explain their poems. Many of them were written before 1250, when the first anthologies of troubadour poetry were compiled; and some are the work of the troubadour Hugh of Saint Circq. Some were composed in the north of Italy, at a time when the troubadours found more favour east of the Alps, than in their own country. Considered as historical documents these biographies are of a very doubtful value. To the same period must be assigned Las Razos de trobar of the troubadour Raimon Vidal de Besalii (an elegant little treatise touching on various points of grammar and the poetic art), the Donatz proensals of Hugh Faidit, and the Life of St. Douceline, who died in 1274, near Marseilles, and founded an
order of Beguines.
The leading prose-work of this period is the treatise on gram mar, poetry and rhetoric known by the name of Leys d'amors. (See J. Anglade, Las leys d'amors, 4 vol., Toulouse, 1919-192o.) The Leys d'amors (composed in Toulouse circa 1350) was to be the starting-point and rule of the new poetry; it is the best pro duction of this abortive renaissance. The decay of Provencal liter ature, caused by political circumstances, arrived too soon to allow of a full development of prose. This accounts, in some measure for the complete absence of historical compositions. The 14th and 15th centuries were in no respect a prosperous period for literature in the south of France. In the 15th century people be gan to write French both in verse and prose; and from that time Provencal literature became a thing of the past. From the i6th century such poetry as is written in the vernacular of southern France is generally dependent on French influence. The connec tion with ancient Provencal literature is entirely broken.
See Joseph Anglade, Les Troubadours, Paris, 1908; and Histoire sommaire de la litterature meridionale au moyen age. Both volumes contain a bibliography. Documents and dissertations on various points of Provençal literature will be found in almost all the volumes of Romania (Paris, in progress since 1872, 8vo), and the Revue des langues romanes (Montpellier, in progress since 187o, 8vo). See also the other journals devoted to the Romanic languages, passim.
(X., L. B.)