III. BERNART DE LA BARTA, FOILLA NI FLORS, NI CHAUTZ TEMPS NI FREIDURA (58,4)

 

In 1229, Count Raymond VII of Toulouse was forced by the humiliating treaty of Meaux to surrender to Louis IX what he possessed in France, and to the papal legate his possessions in the Kingdom of Arles (i.e., in the Empire). True, Louis did return to him in fief a part of this territory, but only for his lifetime, after which it would constitute the portion of his daughter Jeanne, who was to marry one of the king’s brothers, so that it too would eventually become part of the French royal domain. In addition, Raymond had to subscribe to numerous other terms: payment of money, destruction of the walls of his cities, etc. It was thus that the pitiless war of the Albigensian Crusade was brought to an equally pitiless close. The poem of Bernart de la Barta which is presented here is one of the most outspoken protests against the provisions of this treaty. To be sure, Bernart does not call the enemies of his land by name, but he leaves little doubt of their identity. Writing in 1885, Chabaneau took his poem for a commentary on the Treaty of Meaux, and later scholars, including Jeanroy, have unhesitatingly accepted his opinion. (1)

In his sirventes, Bernart speaks eloquently in defense of his lord, Raymond VII, and inveighs against the church and the king of France, who have treated him so unjustly. His poem is called forth, he says, by those who profess to see only good in peace; but what if it is merely a peace of clerics and Frenchmen? The crusade, of course, had been nominally a religious struggle, waged by the northern French, who were regarded practically as foreigners in the South. Peace, he continues, is good when it is just, amicably arrived at, and lasting; but not a peace forcibly imposed on the vanquished, as this one clearly was. Furthermore, one would expect to find mercy and forgiveness in the church, and justice in a king. A good vassal should be rewarded, and only the evil punished; a king who cares about true worth ought to heed the advice of those who are brave, courtly, honored, and wise.

Bernart’s invective is perhaps more forceful because it is restrained and backed up by logical considerations, because his accusations are implied rather than explicitly formulated. We are told what a good king should do, what one might reasonably expect from the church; it is left to us to read between the lines and deduce the actual misdeeds the poet has in mind. What we know about Bernart himself is also derived from reading between the lines of this poem, his other work (two tensos and a stanza from a satirical sirventes) being of no biographical interest. We can only say, then, that he was a man of strong convictions, intensely loyal to his lord and his land, and capable of expressing his feelings energetically in verse.

 

ATTRIBUTIONS: Dc, Bernarnz delabarta; IK, Bernart de la barda; d, Benart de la Barda.

VERSIFICATION: A sirventes consisting of five coblas unissonans of seven lines each, with the rimes ura, en, es, arranged as follows (Frank 495,10):

a	b	b	a	a	c	c
10’	10	10	10’	7’	8	8

 

Three other poems share the same metrical pattern and the same rimes: a sirventes by Peirol, Ren no val hom joves que no·s perjura (366,5), two coblas by Peire Cardenal, Tostemps volgra·m vengues bon’aventura (335,59), and two coblas by Uc de Saint Circ,Totz fis amics a gran dezaventura (457,39). Since none of these is a canso (the genre whose form was most frequently copied in other compositions), one may assume that Peirol, the oldest of the poets to use this pattern, invented it for his sirventes, and that the others imitated him. The melody has not been preserved.

TEXT: That of K, although the text of I is practically identical. Dc, as noted above, contains only one cobla; and I have given under poem no. 1 my reasons for disregarding d.

 

Note:

1) Camille Chabaneau, Les Biographies des troubadours en langue provençale, reprinted from De Vic et Vaissète, Histoire générale de Languedoc, 10 (Toulouse, 1885), p. 337. Jeanroy, Poésie lyrique, 2: 220-221. (↑)