TROUBADOURS, the name given to those poets In the Romance language, or Langue d'Oe, who lived in southern France, eastern Spain, and northern Italy, during the 12th and 13th centuries. [Itearssez Lases:arra.] The name is a French form, from the Pro vençal " trobador," a derivative of the verb " trobare," " to find," and means an " inventor." The word " TrouvOre," in northern French, had the same meaning, and served to designate the poets of northern France, or of the Langue d'Oil. The troubadours were distinct from the jongleurs : the former were the real poets, and many of them were knights and men of noble birth, who occasionally occupied themselves with poetical composition; whilst the jongleurs were strolling min strels, who did not compose poetry, but sang the lays of the trouba hours, and accompanied them with their musical Instruments, and thence derived their subsistence. Many of the troubadours however were skilled both in music and singing ; but those who were not, re tained a jongleur in their service. According to the splrit,ipf chivalry, the nobles kept open house for all the wandering followers of war and minstrelsy, and often requited munificently both poets and musicians for their exertions to amuse them.
It was in the south of France that the poetry of the troubadours originated. That fertile region, blessed with a genial climate, had suffered less from the irruptions of the barbarians than the northern provinces of the kingdom, and had retained more of its old Roman civilisation : It hardly felt the civil wan of the Merovingian dynasty, and escaped the devastations of the Normans ; and during the decline of the Carlovingian It became independent of the French crown by the revival of the kingdom of Bourgogne, or of Arles, and by the power of the great vassals, the counts of Toulouse and of Poitou and the dukes of Aquitaine. At the beginning of the 12th century the counts of Barcelona acquired by marriage the possession of Provence ; and the whole region bordering on the Mediterranean on both sides of the Pyrenees, from the Ebro to the Var, became eubject to one dynasty, whilst the people spoke the same, or nearly tho same, Romance dialect. It was In the 12th century that the poetry of the troubadours attained its perfection : that poetry was essentially lyrical and mostly amorous, and was characterised by simplicity, or rather paucity, of ideas, and by a strained refinement of expression, and peculiarity of form, which made It quite distinct from the classical models. In that age and country of chivalry, every noble beauty had in her train some admiring poet ; and every poet selected some fair lady—sometimes the daughter, but oftener the wife, of the nobleman to whose retinue he was attached —for the object of his poetical passion and the subject of his eong. It was a poetical attachment, although it sometimes ended in a real one : its expression was artificial. These remarks apply generally to • troubadour amatory poetry, to which however there are exceptions. (Sismondi, ' Litt6rature du Midi de l'Europe.') The troubadours wrote also at times of loftier themes. Some of them, who had followed the Crusades and shared the dangers of Eastern campaigns, sang after their return the valiant deeds of the soldiers of the Cross. Others wrote to animate the Christian princes
to deliver Palestine iron the yoke of the Moslems. Others, especially about the time of the lernectition of the Albigenses, wrote bitter satires against the persecutors, the Inquisitersotgainst the priesthood, the hierarchy, and against Rome itself. That persecution was one of the causes of the decay of troubadour poetry In the 13th century. Many of the troubadours perished, or fled and died in foreign lands. Afterwards Charles of Anjou, who had become count of Provence by marriage with the heiress of the house of Barcelona, having removed to Naples, took with him many Provençal knights and ladies to grace his new court. There they found a new language, the Sicilian or Italian, which was rising into maturity and was well calculated for poetry, and it became the favourite language of the Anjou court. When, in the following century, Queen Joanna I., being obliged to fly from Naples, returned to Provence, she endeavoured but in vain to revive the study of Provencal poetry ; and when, many years later, she adopted Louis, son of King John, and the head of the third house of Anjou, that prince, who thus became possessed of Provence, spoke the Langue d'Oil, or northern French, and had no taste for the Provençal, His grandson Ren6, duke of Anjou, count of Provence, and nominal king of Naples, made in the following century some attempts at re viving the poetry of the Langue d'Oc, but the race of the troubadours was now extinct, and the only result of his exertions was the collecting and compiling the lives of the old troubadotirs by the monks of the isles of Ilyeres, and after them by litigates de St. C6saire.
At Toulouse however efforts were made to revive troubadour poetry. The " Capitouls," or municipal magistrates of that city, established ari academy called "Del Gal Saber," or "of the gay science ; " and seven of the best rhymers of the place, styled " the Seven Troubadours of Toulouse," were placed at the head of it. They fixed upon the let of May for holding an annual public festival, to which they gave the name of " Floral Games." The first meeting was held in 1324, and was attended Ly many poets from various parts of Languedoc. 16 aistre Arnaud Vidal de Chilteauneuf d'Arri obtained the prize, and graduated as doctor of the gay science in consequence of a song in honour of the Virgin. The morality of troubadour poetry, however, underwent a reform under this new institution. It was forbidden by the statutes of the Academy to recite any composition on the subject of unlawful or adulterous love, a frequent theme of the old troubadours. The old language of the troubadours has long since fallen into disuse, and has given way to various patois, the Languedocian, Provençal, Poitevin, and others.
See for a thorough examination of troubadour poetry, with examples, Raynouard, Choix des Poesies Originates des Troubadours,' 0 vols. 8vo., Paris,.1816-21; Lexique Roman, avec un nouveau Choix des Paaies Originales des Troubsulours,' Paris, 1836; also the work of Professor Dicz, Die Poesie der Troubadours.'