Gone Medieval - The First Troubadours

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

How could a love song become a political weapon? How were scandals, wars and crusades turned into some of the most influential poetry ever written?The songs of the troubadours - celebrities in their day - helped define the emotional landscape of the Middle Ages and left a legacy that still echoes through European literature. Matt Lewis is joined by Professor Linda M. Paterson to explore the poet-musicians who shaped medieval ideas of courtly love, chivalry, gender, power and performance.More:Erotic Medieval Poet: Gwerful MechainListen on AppleListen on SpotifyCrusades Against Heretics (Albigensian Crusade)Listen on AppleListen on SpotifyGone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. Audio editor is Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcastSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week plus ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research from the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the crusades. We cross centuries and continents to delve in to rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories big and small that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with gone medieval.

Let me start the way every good story should start. With a Duke, a warrior, a scandal maker and the first known troubadour, who all happened to be the very same person. This is the great Lord William the 9th of Aquitaine, and he didn't merely patronise poets. or listened to songs, he was himself, the singer, the very first Trubidor. In 1086, William became the master of land so vast that eclipsed the holdings of the French king. He was everything he might expect from a medieval prince, rich, feared, mobile,

militarily formidable. His excellence in warfare was praised by chroniclers, and his life took him across Aquitaine, into Iberian campaigns, and eastward on Crusade. But what makes him especially significant is that he also forged a new, poetic voice in Oxitan, a voice that could be comic, erotic, insolent, elegant, and moving. In 1101, 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 song. In his private life, William was impossible to contain. He quarreled with the church, defended rulers accused of adultery, and was himself excommunicated for refusing to abandon a notorious affair. Yet he also patronised religious institutions and supported learning in Poitiers. Later Trubador Poetian,

would often refine desires into idealised courtliness, but William's lyrics are more proud, sensual, irreverent and politically dangerous. His poems helped define the range the troubadours would inherit. Some are playful and shocking, full of sexual bravado and outrageous humour, but he could also be unexpectedly grave. This is William the ninth's real importance. He's not just the earliest name on the list. He establishes the troubadour as a poet of individuality, of performance and contradiction. Later troubadours would refine the art, deepen it,

and spread it across Europe, but William is where it all begins. My guest today is Professor Linda Patterson, whose recent book The Trubedores tells the story of the lives and art of these remarkable poet musicians, who, she argues, weren't just performers, but also craftsmen, courtiers, satirists, politicians,

travellers, and in some cases, women or merchant or clerics, working in a culture where song carried social prestige, emotional force, and real political consequence. A very warm, welcome to gone medieval, Linda. It's great to have you with us. Hi, it's good to be here. I'm looking forward to digging into the whole culture that surrounds Trubedores. It's such a fascinating period and fascinating top.

So to start us off with, can you just give us the kind of the basics here? When we talk about troubadours, what do we mean? Where are we? When are we? And who will be talking about? So Trubedores were poet musicians. And the earliest Tribudor we know about is William the Knight of Aquitaine, who was composing around about 1,100. The Triborals were composing in a language which we now call Oxytan,

but people may know more about it and think of it in terms of, of Provencal. It's a language of the south of France as opposed to the long d'aille in the north of France. And they were active mainly in the 12th and 13th centuries. A few trickle on into the beginning of the 14th. 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 troubadours with William the 9th, the Duke of Aquitaine. Do we know? So 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 1101.

And Sydney song, some of which they complain about because they think that they were very bawdy and raucous. And others praised for their wit, but we don't know where it comes from, really. That's all we know. Yeah. And why was the 1101 Crusade kind of such a disaster that Guillaume has so much to say about it? William has so much to say about it. It was a disaster because he went on crusade. He went to Jerusalem, prayed there. And then when he was coming back, his army just got ambushed in the Anatolian marshes and 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 a moment. that crusade. In this, he tells a story and says that he was wandering about as a pilgrim through the Overnia. And some people think, oh, well, pilgrim, that means crusader, and the Ovalier

maybe he was coming back. But it's actually just a kind of funny, rude story. As a pilgrim, he's wondering about, and he comes across a couple of women, and he pretends that he's dumb. And these women get very excited, and I think we found exactly what we're looking for, because he won't be able to tell whatever we do with him. So they invite him in, they give him a nice dinner with a cap on, with lots of thick pepper. They prepare a bath and to have a good time. But then they think, well, maybe this man is tricking us.

So let's put him to the test. 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 in a big baudy romp with words which I probably shouldn't repeat here. We'll do that when we're not recording.

You can tell me all about it. And he does, so he's well known for these kind of boredy songs that you say, get him into a little bit of trouble. He's frequently very, very rude. But 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 rude songs are actually very clever. So there's one which interweaves various levels of meaning, and he'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 Vangelo 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. Yeah. Yeah. And so as this becomes more popular and moves on, you get other names that appear in your book as well.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about Geoffrey Rudell, who I think is kind of this legendary troubadour figure, What do we know about him? Well, we know that he composed here the six songs which have been preserved. We know that he was from the family of Blay. The Lords of Blay were vassals of the Dukes of Aquitaine. So he was essentially he was a vassal of Duke, William, the 10th of Aquitaine. But he was exiled from Blay for a long time.

And so 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 Second Crusade with the French along with Louis the 7th and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Yeah. And 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 far away love, but for each consolation I achieve, I get two ills because I am so far away. Ah, why didn't I go there as a pilgrim

so that my staff and hooded cloak would be beheld by her beautiful eyes? And how different is his style to William the 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 Jafri Riddell, he's a poet of Amor de Lonia, 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 he's actually desiring. 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 a reminder. The language is different too. It's known as Throbbaugh-Ruban, or the small. smooth style. So it's very smooth and apparently uncomplicated. Yeah. And is this, are we seeing here the emergence of what will become known as as courtly loved that's sort of wrapped up in chivalry? Are the troubadours 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. And I don't think chivalry really comes into being

until about 70 years later. But 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 troubadours really invented quarterly love. And this is a love which is a man's love for woman mainly, although women troubadours do come in later. The man is in a position of his lady's vassal,

and he refers to her as his domda, which is a kind of female equivalent of dominion, 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 Troubadolta later, when they're echoing some of these ideas, they do talk about what they call the Sor Plus, the rest. But basically, it's about love before anything really happens very much.

Yeah. And Geoffrey 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 13th century. So this is 100 years later. And it appears in something called the Vidas, the life stories.

In the 13th and the 14th centuries, there were people mainly in Italy who were going around collecting, well, they were anthologizing the songs that they could find, sometimes with music, sometimes not. And then they were thinking in terms of presenting these to a public, a 13th century public, who were curious about who these trivedores 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 that it had emerged in the 13th century. And the story is that Jaffrey went on crusade, which he did.

And then when he was on board ship, he fell ill. 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 Armord. 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 speak and feel.

She took him in his arms and he died in her arms. All very lovely. And it's illustrated in some of the songbooks by very 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 troubadours.

They're kind of interested 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. Yes, I'm curious about it. It's partly because by this time, the courts initially were imitating the courts in the south of France,

which we refer to as Occitania, but just to be difficult. So we're talking about Laria from the mouth of the Girond going up to a verandum, coming down to the north of Italy. So it's 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 troubadour that you cover in your book is Maccabrew. And I wonder if you could talk 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 abstracts, but he doesn't think much of it in reality.

And he's actually a very strong misogynist. So quite a lot of his songs are that saying, what a dreadful lot of 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. He's, oh, absolutely. And I think, well, I've always.

argue this, although it's not totally proven, but I think he's actually, well, he's engaged in discussions with other troubadours. He talks about other troubadours who are completely mindless, and he actually kinds to define love. And what he says about it is actually important for the way that later troubadours come to incorporate this into their idea of courtly love or what they call phenomorves. But basically, Martha Brew'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. Girl, I said, sweet pious child. I have 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, folly 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, but is quite deceived. Yeah, so he's almost 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 describes all the different qualities which ought to go along with love

and the kind of courtly way of life. Mainly it has to be said to do with the generosity of the leaders of the court. And he, as somebody who depends totally on that, as completely self-interested in that respect. That as far as innovation goes, I mean, he's extremely innovative in language. He's got the most amazing power-awed words.

Yeah. 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 it comes out in his misogyny, but I think the other aspect is that he calls himself

for Sudadier, it's a word that gives us the word of soldier. He did actually go to Spain and fight in the re-conquest, but whether it was a soldier or not as simply a hired man, which is what the origin of the word means, that he identifies with a group of basically servants at a court, and he's angry about the meanness and the stinginess of the lords who are having it in their power to make their life a lot better. and he's also very zentful of the favouritism 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, it's an interesting mix. Given all of the different types of subjects that are being covered 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 Markerborough 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 Paxin nominidomini-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. You could imagine gestures, but you simply have to imagine them. But there's one exchange where I perhaps bit fancibly imagine that they could possibly have done some theatrical staging and maybe even used costumes. It's a debate between the Trubador, as in Markerborough, so that is Troubadour persona with a minor lord called

Audriek. And the Trubedor complains to Ardrich that he's too stingy and Ardrich comes back and says, well, you're a totally rubbish troubadour. 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 troubadour

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 Bernard de Venterdawn and do you think is it fair to say that he really gives us this

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 a physical love but with spiritual aspects but what the spiritual aspects are matter for 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 crystallises these ideas. I suppose the other important thing is that he sees love as a source of

not only inspiration for poetry but also for moral worth. That's an important aspect of courtly love, it's come to be called. 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 that's right. I think they are very sophisticated,

but he composes in what we call the Throbberleu, the light style, or the accessible style, as opposed to Mark Abrou, who composes in the closed door, some people have even said obscure style, the difficult style. So he's very accessible, so much so, but the 19th century Romantics really loved him. And he's still very popular today, recorded, much recorded. What he prizes above all is sincerity. He says that love and poetry need to spring from the heart.

But there's a great deal of craft in the way that he gives this impression. The musicality of the words to go with it, lots of echoes and lots of interesting images. But it doesn't make life difficult for the listener. Yeah, 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 and fall away, as sweetness to his heart makes way. Such great envy then invade.

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, who 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 longing and the willing heart. very much loved. It's really moving, and he starts off with beautiful image of the lark, which is flying up to the sky, which is hope for the sublime or some kind, and then it's so full of joy that it forgets to fly,

and then it plummets down to earth. And it's an image that he elaborates in the song, where he veers between the poles of joy and suffering, and he ends up with a sense of exile from him. with his own identity from the lady, from his roots in society, and he goes off into exile. It's a lovely song. Yeah, yeah. And is Bernard 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 is as 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 Lark, 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 school of Ebly. Ebly of Ventadorn was a rival, friend and rival to William the 9th, and they have various kind of friendly competitions where they try and out do each other in their course. courtly extravagance. Belknut says that he's so full of sorrow that he no longer will belong to the school of Lord Ebly. And so I think they try and kind of attach him to that court. And maybe he was at that court. But yeah, basically it's just people spinning stories. Yeah. But it's fascinating. You almost get this fan fiction around troubadours and who they

really were. So people are latching onto it. And maybe we 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, isn't it? It is, and you've expressed it very well. Yeah. And you also mentioned in the book that there are, probably around about 20 named women, troubadours as well. What do we know about them and how does their role in the troubadour tradition differ from men's? Is it the same or is it different? What do 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 Maria

Eventadorn, she's a well-known figure. It's clear that such women are important in courtly life. Someone in the 13th century makes it quite clear that women were involved particularly in dialogue poems, songs. And what he says is, well, if you are going to engage in these, just make sure they're not really. They write in different genre, so they do write love songs. They are also very much involved in dialogues, which is part of courty entertainment, basically. And they also write Cirventes, which were moralising and or political songs. So it's a big mixture.

But the difficulty for them in writing love songs is that typically, well, the conventions say that in the poetry, the lady is the one on top, as it were. She's the dominant figure, and the male lover is the one who is pleading for love. And this gets reversed in a women's love song because she's in a 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, which feels like during this period, and we talk to.

talked about the misogyny of some of the male troubadours and the work that they were engaged in and the, you know, the church was increasingly misogynistic during this period. Is there something dangerous in what these women are doing? Particularly 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 all right with you, I thought I'd just quote a little bit from a couple of women troubadours.

So I'm going to go to it in translation, obviously. but one of them called Aziz de Port Cairoeguze evokes an erotic situation which led Renelli to elaborate a whole theory around the Assach or trial or test for a woman and she says, Fair love, I have 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 provisced 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. Dada-da-da-da, 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 in the place of husband, provided that you promised me to do everything that I wish. So it doesn't seem to have stopped them.

It's pretty racy stuff, isn't it? Yeah. But there's no evidence that it did rebound on them. It was considered completely acceptable to preserve their songs in these expensive songbooks. And the illustrations in the songbooks actually show them as courtly ladies. It doesn't just noble women. It doesn't suggest there was anything bad about them. But then in the 19th century, there were.

were people who thought that they were actually scandalised and thought of the Countess of D as a scarlet 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 19th century reaction rather than anything contemporary. And does that almost freedom and that acceptance of that work by women, Trubedores, reflect a slightly different attitude in the Occitanian world to perhaps the rest of the European in 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. Well, 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 20 named women trouvitors. You have to look very hard to find any women writers in, or women composers of lyric at any rate in the north, they're one or two. I think they were actually very important in courtly life. They were people who presided over courtly entertainment. 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. Unfortunately, we're going to move back to men because we have more of them named, don't we? One troubadour kind of stands out in particular, there's a man named Arno Daniel, who is kind of, he's praised by people like Dante 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 Vida that he started off his career learning Lepras, which means Latin. And it looks as though he was baby aiming for some sort of career as a cleric in the clergy. And then he just abandoned that and he became a joglard. And he went around singing and composing and he became a troubadour and he was much appreciated. that the reason he was so much appreciated then and later is by Dante and Petrarch is that he's an incredible wordsmith.

His craft is just unbelievable, particularly for his searching out of rare words and complicated versification and rare rhymes. I mean, it's all, apart from one extremely rude poem, it's all love poetry, but it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, craft for which he's known. 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. I mean, it's partly through this search for rev vocabulary. But perhaps I could just give you an example of a form that he had vented, which is picked up later by Italian poets. They called it to 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 bit and in each stanza he ends he ends each line with a word

a rhyme word so there are six different rhyme words and then in the next stanza 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 I 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 I can't remember what is called it's the the round bob or something but anyway it's a very it means that you come back to the same pattern you would come to act to the same pattern at the end if you started again after the end of the sixthanza and in the final two lines he just incorporates those six rhyme words so it's tall the 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.

But to what extent does the politics of the day affect what troubadours are writing and singing about? And as an extension of that, kind of how reasonable is it to use someone like Bertrand de Bourne as almost historical source material for what's going on and attitudes to politics of the day? Well, to a vast extent. There's a whole genre called the Sirentes, which is hardly preserved in the north among the Prouvaire speaking in French as opposed to Occitan. But yes, there are huge, vast numbers

of political poems. And yes, I think it's obviously with any source you're going to have to take account of all sorts of things. I think it's with the Troubadours there are details which can emerge which you wouldn't otherwise know about

particularly in Bertrand de Bourne. Historians have had recourse to the 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 Troubadors, 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 program today.

You know, we might watch something that comments on the news and makes a bit of fun. of it and make light of it or makes obscure references to it. That's kind of what the troubadours are doing. That's a very good way of putting it, although sometimes it's extremely serious. And when Baudelaide is criticising leaders of the crusade for not getting on with it and just delaying and delaying when, you know, when we've heard that Jerusalem has fallen, oh, I hope I've got my dates right there. But yeah, in response to dreadful events that are going on 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 13th century. There's a lot of Troubadour responses to that. And a lot of it is propaganda. Partly, you can see that Frederick III, Honstalfen, is actually, he has a whole propaganda machine going,

and Trubedon's can be part of that. Yeah, yeah. And kind of unlike Arnault that we talked about earlier, Bertrand 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 being quite truthful. Veldchan was a sewer of discord. He said he likes it when war is happening because, well, first of 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 can hobnob with people like Richard the Lionheart and the young king, Henry of England. And there are lots of courts and lots of free spending and drinking and things. beasts and celebrating the Corky Way of Life. And so, yeah, he thinks discord is great. Good for business. We also have, so a word that cropped up a little bit earlier is a jangler. And I wonder if we could just talk a little bit about how a jangler is different from a troubadour

and whether people sort of moved between the two spheres. I mean, it's an arguable area, but it makes sense to see a jangler as somebody who performs and a trouvado 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 A La Danielle so yes you could certainly go from one to the other Yeah yeah interesting and maybe to give a rather different kind of example well it is a different change of status and that is

Reimbat de Vacheras, who started as a troubadour, a very fine troubadour, but he became the troubadour and friend of Boniface, the first of Montferrat, who was a leader at the Fourth Crusade. And Bonifas, this was a very rare thing. I mean, Trubedores really hoped that the rich would promote them in some way or give them lots of nice gifts. But what Bonifas did was he made Rionbatte a knight. He knighted him. Yeah, yeah, fascinating. So that's So certainly a change of status, yeah. And how does or how did Trubador culture kind of change with the status of the singer? And I'm thinking mostly here in the book of Fulke de Marcellar in particular.

Fulke de Marcellar, yeah, yeah. Well, you could say that Fulke started off being a Trubador as well as being the son of a merchant and so on. And he ended up as a bishop. And when he became a bishop, he felt very embarrassed. about having dallied around with these silly Trouvard-Lov-Dor love songs, that as far as Trouva-Dour culture went, Falké sided with the French and the church in their invasion of the South during the Albigensian Crusade,

which was started to allegedly to extirpate the Cathar heresy and other heresies, but basically it ended up being a war of conquest. And Falki was Bishop of Toulouse, and he played a really pretty despicable role, actually, from Truvado'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 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 all sent off into exile. I mean, he was certainly important for a change, change in Trouineral culture, because apart from anything else, a lot of the troubadours started lambusting the church and the French and the Crusaders.

Yeah. It's an interesting case, isn't it? Because he's a troubadour who being a troubadour sort of opens the doors to social progression for him. He ends up as a bishop who, as you say, he's 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 Oxytown way of living and trying to see that subsumed into a more northern French way of doing things. He's almost, he's poacher and gamekeeper almost, isn't he?

Well, he is. I wouldn't say that having, I don't think there's a direct link between him getting an introduction to powerful people himself through his songs. I don't think there's a link between Doughton and becoming a bishop. I think that two things are quite separate, actually. but he certainly becomes, yes, you could say he becomes, he's a poacher and gamekeeper. He's not, I'm afraid, he's not a very attractive figure. But then I'm kind of on the side of the Troubadours, aren't I?

Yeah, absolutely. We'll leave him behind. He can be the bad guy of our story. Yeah. And to what extent do we see an end to the Trubidor tradition? Does it finish or does it sort of subside a little bit? Does it go quietly or slowly? We don't have any truver or songs in Oxtatal after the very beginning of the 14th century.

So you could say that it subsides in that sense. I mean, it gains new life by it being absorbed into Italian in the Dolce Stil Novo and Dante's lyrics. And in the whole courtly lyric tradition, in that sense it doesn't die, but it gets transformed. Yeah, yeah. Are we able to see a kind of a direct influence on people like Dante from the troubadour tradition and their interest in it? Well, certainly, yes, yes. Dante, in his youth, he wrote, well, when he's comparatively young, he wrote a treatise in Latin called the DeVulgari eloquentia on vernacular eloquence. And he's arguing for the status of the vernacular as a vehicle for the highest form of poetry.

and he talks about there being three traditions here. There's the language of Ollia, the language of Ollia and the language of C. The language of Ock is Oksetan, because it's the way that people said yes in Oxtan. The language of Ollia is Old French and the language of C is Italian. And then he cites various authorities, authoritative figures, including people like Alain, and so on. So, I mean, he's very clearly deeply influenced by the truth. And you can see this in his divine comedy for Innsvils as well as the lyrics. Yeah, yeah.

Well, 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 the poetry that we can't talk about on air. Yeah. But I wonder before we finish, whether you think there is a real lasting legacy to the Trubador movement. What is its legacy? That's such a difficult question. I think it brought ways of talking about love which have persisted and there were people in the 19th century who were complained about this.

They complained about simple-minded women who had internalised thoughts about love adventure which didn't do society much good at all. I feel like most of the troubadours would be quite happy to feel like they were a bad influence seven or eight hundred years later. I think so. I think it's also a good influence in their values. think there are many positive values which belong to there.

There are lots of people nowadays who like to think of themselves as troubadours. There are a lot of people who record the troubadours and, you know, there are lots of CDs and so on with different ways of performing them. Of course, that's a whole other question. How do you perform the music that you find written out in the manuscripts? But that's a different issue. Yeah, yeah. But it's fascinating to think of an art form sort of launched by

a Duke of Aquitaine 900 years ago that is still around today that is still influencing popular culture today? Yeah, I hope so, yes. Of course, I wouldn't call troubadours necessarily popular culture, but I think they've become all that. Yeah, yeah, fascinating. Well, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this, Linda. People can go and find your book

and learn far more about the troubadours than we've been able to cover. This has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you very much. Well, thank you, Matt. If you've enjoyed this episode, you can find plenty about Eleanor of Aquitaine in our back catalogue, as well as an episode on the Albigensian Crusade that we mentioned, and one on Welsh female poets. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history.

Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can also sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours. of original documentaries with a new release every week at historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hit.