Of the life of the Monk of Montaudon the old manuscripts tell us little. We are ignorant even of his name, and only know that he was descended from a noble family residing at Castle Vic in Auvergne. Being a younger son he was, as the biography naïvely puts it, ‘made a monk of,’ and entered the Abbey of Orlac (Aurillac), in the vicinity of his father’s castle; some time afterwards he became Prior of Montaudon. Soon, however, it became apparent that the cowl had not made the monk; he began to compose gay stanzas and satiric sirventeses on the events of the day. The knights and barons of the adjacent castles were pleased with the poet’s gay, genial ways. They asked him to feasts and tournaments, and rewarded his songs with rich gifts, conscientiously remitted by him to the treasury of his cloister; a circumstance which goes far to explain the leniency with which his superiors looked on his infringements of the monastic rules. At last the monk asked permission of the Abbot of Orlac to regulate his way of living according to the commands of King Alfonso of Aragon, known to us as the revenger of Guillem de Cabestanh’s death, and a great protector and friend of troubadours in general. The granting of this comprehensive prayer tends to prove at once the lucrativeness of the monk’s poetic endeavours, and the considerate tolerance of the worthy prelate. For no sooner was the permission given than Alfonso bade the monk eat meat, compose gay songs, and court the favour of a lady. ‘Et el si fes,’ ‘and so he did,’ the manuscript adds significantly.
There were held at that time certain gay assemblies at Puy Sainte Marie, where the noble ladies and gentlemen of many miles round met for a season to enjoy courteous pastimes. The knights measured their strength in the lists, the troubadours sang their sweetest canzos for prizes, made more valuable by the beautiful hands which distributed them. At this gay court the Monk of Montaudon was now created master of the revels, and in this capacity had to hold the celebrated sparrow-hawk, a time-honoured ceremony, performed by him with portly dignity, we may imagine. At the beginning of each of these annual feasts the ‘Master of the Court of Puy’ stood in the midst of the noble guests, took a sparrow-hawk on his fist, and calmly waited till one of the great barons relieved him of his burden. The acceptance of the bird involved the obligation of bearing the not inconsiderable expenses of the whole feast, and was therefore the exclusive privilege of the richest and most liberal nobles. Perhaps it was owing to this pretty but frequently ruinous custom that the Court of Puy itself came to an untimely end. After its expiration the Monk of Montaudon went to Spain, where his abbot conferred upon him the dignity of Prior of Villafranca, in acknowledgment, most likely, of his exemplary life. This monastery, also, the monk enriched with the gifts of his literary patrons. He lived to an advanced age, and died much esteemed and loved by his brethren. He flourished about the end of the twelfth century.
From this short sketch of the monk’s life some anticipatory notion of his poetry may be formed. There is in his works a spirit of freshness and animal vigour which ought somewhat to atone for a considerable admixture of grossness in thought and expression. Whatever the poet’s faults may be, hypocrisy is not amongst them; and, to leave no doubt whatever as to his tastes, he has dedicated three entire songs of moderate size to the enumeration of all the things in the world which excite his just displeasure. A fourth and supplementary poem describes the more agreeable aspects of life by way of contrast. This catalogue raisonné of lights and shadows is exceedingly curious, and outspoken beyond the imagination and endurance of polite minds and ears.
Amongst the most detestable things, the monk ranks quarrelsome and arrogant people, a halting horse, a young knight without a rent in his shield, a monk with a long beard, a proud though poor lady, and finally, an over-affectionate husband. This last point is again highly characteristic of the Provençal conception of marriage already referred to. Our poet also abhors a small piece of meat in a large dish; and that a little wine with a great quantity of water is not to his taste, we would willingly believe without the testimony of St. Martin, solemnly invoked. His culinary principles being thus established, the monk proceeds to take us into his confidence with regard to the tender secrets of his heart. We conclude, from his confessions, that he has met with some ill-treatment at the hands of those members of the fair sex who, although of maturer beauty, have not yet abandoned their claims to admiration. Only personal experience can account for the poet’s bitter resentment. Three times he returns to the point, growing more venomous with every new attack. In one instance he goes so far as to use the ungallant expression, ‘Vielha caserna’—old barracks.
In this manner he goes on grumbling and complaining of contrary winds when he wants to start on a voyage, of badly-lined fur caps, false friends, bad fiddlers, and other miscellaneous evils of this wicked world. A whole litany of saints is called to witness frequently on such precarious points, as to remind one of the Italian brigand, who prays to his Madonna previously to cutting purses or throats, as the case may be.
But the monk is not an entire pessimist. His praise is as eloquent as his vituperation. He likes gaiety and carousals, courteous knights and noble ladies. A powerful man, he wishes to be friendly to his friends, hostile to his foes. The same un-Christian sentiment is repeated still more emphatically in the further course of the poem.
Milder impulses, however, are not wanting. In two charming, melodious stanzas the poet depicts the delights of a summer’s day passed with his love by the side of the murmuring brook, while the air is sweet with the fragrance of blossoms and the song of the nightingale. Truth compels me to confess, that in close juxtaposition to this charming idyl, the very material wish is expressed of having a ‘grans salmos ad hora nona’—that is, a large salmon for supper.
The Monk of Montaudon, as the reader will perceive, was little given to sentimentality, and the love-songs which he wrote, in compliance with the custom of the time, show accordingly more cleverness than true feeling. They are, however, full of happy turns of expression, and particularly abound with well-chosen similes—a proof that the poet was by no means wanting in imagination. Nevertheless, it must be confessed that satire was his true field of action, and we are not surprised at seeing a man of his keen sense of ridicule turn this weapon against those objects of superlative romantic adoration—women. The weaknesses of the fair sex are indeed the theme of two remarkable sirventeses by our troubadour, which we now must consider a little more closely. They deserve attention, both by the original boldness of their satire and by the quaint disguise in which this main purpose is clad. The form adopted by the monk is that of a vision, familiar to the reader from those two great monuments of mediæval literature, the ‘Divina Commedia’ and ‘Piers the Ploughman.’ Heaven itself, indeed, is the scene of the troubadour’s poem, but a heaven how different from the celestial abode to which the inspired Italian singer was welcomed by Beatrice!
The Monk of Montaudon introduces us into the midst of a legal action, the cause of which is, I am almost ashamed to say, that immemorial privilege of the fair sex to counteract the ravages of time by the rosy bloom of artificial colour. The scene of the action, as has been seen before, is heaven; the Judge, the Deity itself; the monks act as accusers; the ladies are defendants. The painted cheeks of the latter are alleged to outshine the votive pictures in the monasteries. Painting, and the mixing of colours, the monks assert to be their own inventions, to the use of which the ladies have no claim or title. This monstrous allegation the ladies, of course, deny indignantly. Colouring, they say, is their natural birthright, and has been practised by them long before either monks or votive pictures were thought of.
At this juncture a compromise is proposed by the bench, to the effect that ladies on the right side of twenty-five shall be allowed to retain the bloom of youth by what means they please for a further term of twenty years. But the vicious monks refuse to grant more than ten years; and it is only by the intercession of those accomplished diplomats, SS. Peter and Lawrence, that a medium time of fifteen years is at last agreed upon by the contending parties. Forty years, then, is the limit up to which, to judge from this decision, a Provençal lady might, without incurring ridicule, play youthful parts in life’s comedy. ‘But,’ the monk adds, ‘I see that the ladies have broken their promise, which is unfair and wicked; few only have been faithful to their vow.’ He further enters upon a detailed enumeration of the various ingredients of paint which, by the way, seems to throw some new light on that interesting question in the history of mediæval art, the composition of colours previous to the introduction of the oil-medium. ‘The old monks,’ we hear, ‘are deprived of their beans, the only thing which they can eat; and they are therefore left without any food. The price of saffron also, which ought to be used for the sauces of ragoûts, has been driven up by the ladies to such a degree, that people over the sea begin to complain, as pilgrims tell us. Let the ladies take the cross, and go themselves to Palestine, to fetch the saffron of which they stand in such need.’
In the second poem the ladies have been charged with the breach of the former treaty, and it seems that the monk has been summoned to heaven for a preparatory consultation. The Supreme Judge is indignant at such audacity. ‘Monk,’ he says, ‘I hear the ladies have broken their promise; go down, for the love of me, to tell them that if they again use colour, I shall take dire revenge.’ But the poet has evidently been under gentle pressure since the last trial. He now takes the part of the ladies in the warmest terms. ‘Gently, gently, my lord!’ he interposes; ‘you must have patience with the ladies, for it is their nature to sweetly adorn their countenance.’ To this opinion he adheres with obstinacy. In vain it is alleged against him that the ladies, by trying to perpetuate their youth, infringe the unalterable laws of Nature. The monk is not to be shaken. There is only one alternative, he thinks—either to grant unfading beauty to the ladies, or else to deprive the whole human race of the art of painting.
This is, in brief outline, the argument of two of the quaintest productions mediæval literature can show. The bold cynicism with which the delicate secrets of the dressing-room are revealed justly surprises us in a troubadour of noble family and liberal education; but much more are we astonished at the familiarity with which the Deity itself is mixed up with these worldly matters. It is true that, in the old Mysteries and Miracle-plays, tolerated and even countenanced by the Church, sacred topics are treated with a naïve simplicity strange to modern religious feeling. But the experienced eye can almost always discern the under-current of sacred awe at the bottom of the wildest outburst of popular imagination. Even the ‘Wanton Wife of Bath,’ whose tongue is a match for all the saints in heaven, ‘trembles at his sight,’ when the Saviour himself appears in his glory. This sacred tremor is entirely unknown to the Monk of Montaudon, who, moreover, as an artistic poet addressing a refined audience, is without the excuse of popular rudeness and ignorance. Yet I think we should be unjust in ascribing to him any conscious intention of blasphemy, or even irreverence. Supposing even he had been a sceptic, he was at the same time too much attached to life and its pleasures to parade his heresies at the risk of his neck. The only way of solving the psychological puzzle is to follow the ancient example of the monk’s superiors, and to make ample allowance for the reckless buoyancy of a poet’s fancy, difficult to check at a certain point when once let loose. To give an idea of the ease with which he moves in the celestial regions, I will quote the opening stanza of another poem, the tone of which reminds one somewhat of the ‘Prelude in Heaven’ of Goethe’s ‘Faust.’ It seems to have been written at a time when, after a prolonged stay at his monastery, the author was fain to set out on another expedition.
The drift of the poem is easily discernible. Some of his monastic brethren had evidently remarked upon the poet’s worldly ways; and to silence these, the very highest authority is now brought to bear on the subject. This is the reassuring answer the monk receives to his pretended conscientious scruples: ‘I like you to laugh and sing, for the world grows merrier, and Montaudon gains through it.’ By such an argument, coming from such a quarter, the sourest of ascetics was reduced to acquiescence.
A troubadour who, as we have seen, wholly disregarded the rules of courteous gallantry could not be expected to use much consideration where his own sex and his rivals in art were concerned. Accordingly, we find that one of the most venomous literary satires of that libel-loving age owes its existence to our author. It ought, however, to be mentioned, in justice to him, that another troubadour had set the example of wholesale abuse. The Monk of Montaudon’s sirventes is, indeed, avowedly founded on a similar production by Peire of Alvernhe, in which that distinguished poet gives vent to his affectionate feelings towards no less than twelve contemporary troubadours, some of them celebrated poets, others entirely unknown to us, but evidently men of considerable reputation at the time. One of his victims, the sweet singer of love, Bernart of Ventadorn, has been mentioned before. Of another no less renowned troubadour, Guiraut de Bornelh, it is said that ‘he resembles a dry blanket in the sun, with his thin, miserable voice, which sounds like that of an old woman crying out water in the street. If he saw himself in a mirror [meaning, “as others see him”], he would not think himself worth a roseberry.’ In this manner Peire of Alvernhe goes on through twelve stanzas, battering down reputations in order to erect on their ruins the column of his own glory. ‘Peire of Alvernhe,’ he winds up, ‘has a fine voice, and can sing high and low, filling the air with sweetest sound. His would be the highest praise, but for the obscurity of his words, which hardly any one can understand.’ The candid reader who would see in this last qualification a remnant of modesty would be vastly mistaken; for a dark, involved style was considered by connoisseurs as the sign of highest genius, and it was chiefly to his motz oscurs (dark words) and rims cars (rare rhymes) that Arnaut Daniel owed that place of honour awarded to him in Petrarch’s beautiful lines—
It is satisfactory to notice that in Peire of Alvernhe’s case exceeding pride has met with due castigation. For in some of the manuscripts the opening lines of the self-laudatory stanza have been travestied by a witty copyist into a very differing meaning. ‘Peire of Alvernhe,’ this altered version reads, ‘sings like a frog in a pond, although he praises himself above all the world.’ The remainder of the stanza, however, has been left unaltered, for Peire’s high literary position was an undeniable fact. The manuscripts call him ‘the best troubadour in the world till Guiraut de Bornelh (his “dry blanket”) came,’ and Nostradamus relates that Peire found such favour with the ladies as to enjoy the privilege of kissing the fairest amongst his audience after each canzo he had sung.
Such is the model the Monk of Montaudon has chosen, and it must be owned that the disciple is worthy of the master. The monk’s acquaintance with the most intimate details of his rivals’ biographies would do credit to a modern interviewer. ‘As Peire of Alvernhe,’ he begins, ‘has sung about the troubadours of past days, I am going to do the same for those that have come since, and I hope they won’t be angry with me for exposing their evil doings.’ And then he sallies forth on his crusade of abuse, devoting with laudible equality the space of six verses to each victim, ‘a character dead at every stanza,’ as Sir Peter Teazle would say. The reader will be glad to hear that no mercy is shown to Peire of Alvernhe. ‘He wears his coat these thirty years,’ we are told. ‘He is as lean as firewood, and his singing is getting worse and worse. Since he has joined company with a lewd woman at Clermont, he has not made a single good song.’ ‘Arnaut Daniel (Petrarch’s “great master of love”) has never in his life written anything tolerable, but only composed stuff which nobody can understand.’ Folquet of Marseilles, whose conversion from a gay troubadour to a religious zealot has been briefly mentioned before, is reminded that his father was a pedlar. ‘He swore a foolish oath when he said he would write no more songs, and it has been said that he consciously perjured himself.’
But the most piercing darts of his quiver the monk reserves for a troubadour whose immeasurable vanity, almost bordering on madness, was indeed a tempting mark for the satirist. I am speaking of Peire Vidal, of whose life and works and follies the reader has had a full account. Only a few leading points need here be recapitulated.
He was the son of a furrier, but had forgotten and made others forget his low origin. He believed himself to be an irresistible breaker of hearts, and had to pay dearly for his vain boasting of favours never granted. For a jealous husband, whose wife the Peire counted amongst his victims, had the poet’s tongue pierced, which, however, did not prevent the incorrigible braggart from continuing to call himself the dread of husbands, ‘who fear me worse than fire or pointed iron, God be thanked.’ At one time he took part in a crusade, and married a Greek lady at Cyprus, with whom he returned home. For some reason or other he imagined his wife to be the niece of the Greek Emperor, and, as her husband, claimed a right to the imperial throne. In the meantime he adopted the style and title of an Emperor, and even thought of equipping a fleet to enforce his right to the throne. His follies naturally excited universal merriment, and we need not wonder at finding the Monk amongst the foremost of the scoffers. ‘Peire Vidal,’ he exclaims, ‘is one of the very last of poets. He has not got all his limbs, and a tongue of silver would be desirable for him. Once he was a miserable furrier, but since he has dubbed himself a knight he has lost his last remnant of wits.’
In this strain the monk continues through fifteen stanzas, scattering abuse broadcast, and if his wit sometimes seems to desert him, it must, at least, be owned that his spite is genuine and unflagging. But in his case also the manuscripts contain an additional stanza of retributive justice, most likely by a later copyist. ‘With the sixteenth stanza,’ it says, ‘the false Monk of Montaudon will be satisfied, he who quarrels and fights with every one. He has deserted God for a flitch of bacon, and for his ever attempting to write canzos and verses he ought to be hung up in the wind.’
Such was literary criticism amongst the troubadours—a not very edifying spectacle, upon which, the reader perhaps may think, too many words have been wasted already. So we will drop the curtain on the Monk of Montaudon, not without a good-natured smile at his weaknesses, nor without wonderment at an age which burnt and quartered thousands of virtuous Albigeois, and tolerated, or even approved of, such doings and such utterances in a monk.
But, before leaving the subject finally, I must warn the reader not to judge the general tone of the Provençal sirventes by the few examples of personal satire here specified. The troubadours grow, as Schiller says, with their greater purpose. In reproving the moral evils of their time, the decay of piety, the avarice of the great, the outrages of clerical pride, they frequently attain to an almost Dantesque power of conception and imagery. I know of few grander ideas in poetry than Marcabrun’s picture of the enormous tree, whose branches mingle with the clouds, whose roots spread down to mid-earth. To it are tied innumerable multitudes of all classes, from king to beggar. For the tree is the eternal evil of the world, and avarice and covetousness are the bonds which fetter mankind.
But such objective depth of idea must not be expected from the Monk of Montaudon. He is a broadly humorous figure, and although characteristic in many ways of his time and country, he must not blind us to the serious currents of thought moving the age in which he lived, and the literature of which he represents one feature. We must look at him as one of those burlesque types by which the terrible seriousness of man’s life and thoughts is fortunately relieved at intervals—a product of nature’s creative humour in one of her most whimsical moods.