Read Online Terry Jones' Medieval Lives by Alan Ereira - Free Book Online

culture. He wrote and performed elegant songs, both at court and while on campaign. Two of his poems have survived, one with the music.
    BLONDEL
    It was because of Richard’s poetic inclinations that the story of his rescue by his minstrel, Blondel, had such wide currency. In 1192 Richard was captured by Leopold of Austria while returning from the Third Crusade. (He was alone and in disguise – typical of Richard, no other English king would have created such an adventure.) He simply vanished, and it was said that Blondel set out to find him. The minstrel wandered from castle to castle, and outside each he sang part of a song they had composed together. At the castle of Durnstein he heard Richard answer his song by completing it. The king, having been found, could now be ransomed.
    This is a good poetic tale in itself, but probably apocryphal. Blondel de Nesle was certainly a well-known troubadour, the composer of many love songs. But he was not Richard’s minstrel, a supporter of the English; he was actually from northern France and wrote in the Picardy dialect. The tale is probably a minstrel’s invention – the minstrel in question being the unknown author of Récits d’un ménestrel de Reims , which appeared in about 1260. Presumably he wanted to convey a clear moral: ‘Look after your minstrel and he’ll look after you.’
    The career of Blondel de Nesle is an illustration of the way in which the troubadour influence had spread north to the Loire and beyond, out of the Langue-d’oc. (Dante distinguished three cultural regions that were defined by their word for ‘yes’: si in the south, oc in the middle and oïl in the north.)
    Although the romanticization of song and poetry spread into northern France, where the poets were called ‘trouvères’ , troubadour poetry was uniquely linked to the culture of Provence, shaped by the experiences of Provençal crusaders in the Middle East. It was within this framework that the world of courtly love flourished, chivalry became concerned with courtesy and the adoration of noblewomen, and a new kind of literature arose: the poetic, epic romances of heroes like Arthur and his knights.
    CATHARS
    At the same time, Provençal religious beliefs were changing significantly. Hostility to the worldliness and greed of the Church was widespread throughout Europe, but in Provence the belief that it was a fraudulent and pompous organization that had misunderstood Christianity mutated into a new form: Catharism. The Cathars believed the world was seized in a combat between two divinities, God and the devil, and that the material world was the territory of evil and the devil. They understood the Bible not as a historical document but as an allegory, and saw Jesus not as a man but as an angel.
    They maintained that humans could free themselves from the evil world by being good. The perfecti , ‘pure ones’, were idealistic, pacifist vegetarians. Many members of the Languedoc nobility supported and were sympathetic to the Cathars.
    There was an obvious contradiction between the earthy enthusiasm of Duke William’s poetry and the flesh-denying asceticism of the Cathars. To some extent this was moderated as Catharism came to dominate Provençal courts. Troubadour music and poetry became more high-flown, rhetorical and allegorical. Just as some of the music of the 1960s was the voice of protest and hippy idealism, some of the troubadours of the thirteenth century were the voice of Cathar protest. Even the use of their own language rather than Latin had an anti-Rome flavour to it.
    Pope Innocent III was deeply hostile to the movement. Recognizing that its appeal was largely a reaction against the venality and corruption of his Church (a criticism with which he thoroughly agreed), he tried to win people back by sending poor preaching friars into the region, including a group led by St Dominic in 1205. They failed to attract