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...Others may vainly boast of love:
But we two hold the bread and knife...
writes William of Aquitaine, usually described as the first troubadour. His father had fought against the Moors, thus establishing a contact with eastern thought long before the first great journey to Outremer.
There are other signs of a link between Islam and the Aquitaine in the creation of this culture. There are apparent musical influences - for the poetry of love was a lyrical one - including the introduction of certain musical instruments. In some cases, these physical remains are a guide which are historically more reliable than the ideas they represent, for they can be dated with some certainty. Thus, the first bowed instrument in medieval Europe is directly borrowed from Moorish Spain. This is the rebec, rather resembling a violin. A manuscript from Christ's Church Canterbury which is dated to around 1070-1100 contains a picture of one of these instruments.5
Another arrival from the east was the 'ud, known since antiquity in the East, but only present in northern Europe from around 1300, where it is nowadays known as the lute.6
Other eastern musical instruments which were adopted into popular music in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries include the kettle drum, which the Crusaders first encountered when it was used as an instrument of terror on the battlefield. The English called these instruments nakers (Arabic: naqqara) after they adopted them in the thirteenth century.7
Such points of contact suggest an interchange of popular culture between the two spheres, which might support the view that Europe's courtly love traditions were borrowed from or heavily influenced by eastern traditions, particularly those of Spain.
It was not until after the first generation which had been on Crusade had returned, and especially not until the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the courts presided over by other great ladies, that the spiritual aspect of love triumphed. However, it has been pointed out that there is very little evidence of intellectual exchange between Islamic and Christian cultures in Spain until the mid twelfth century.
Thus, the first translation of the Koran into Latin did not happen until about 1140. The famed concentration of scholarship at Cordoba was indeed just that: until the beginning of the eleventh century, Cordoba remained self absorbed. Christian and Jewish scholars did come searching for knowledge - but they tended to be from the eastern Mediterranean rather than the North.8
As well, there was a physical and cultural wasteland separating Christian and Islamic Spain throughout most of this era, which only began to break down in the twelfth century. There was indeed a flood of Islamic scholarship in manuscript form that was released into Europe - but this was by the 1130's. On the other hand, the Arab intellectual world seems to have been remarkably incurious about western thought.
It should also be acknowledged that the troubadour sentiments of twelfth century poetry were unique. They may have owed much to Platonic ideals of a spiritual love, transmitted through Arabic manuscripts and poetry, and they may have asserted delight in the pastimes of earthly sexuality, as in the Carmina Burana. But what originated in the cauldron of Aquitainian culture was earthier than Platonic love, and more spiritual than the eroticism of the wandering scholars.
Henceforth, the lady was to be in the ascendant in the contract between the lovers, and she combined in her person the idealised qualities of supreme femininity. At once terrible, beautiful, compliant, aloof, eternally pursued and never captured.
There are hundreds of love songs on this theme, echoing down through the ages into the lyrics of our own age.
Here indeed is the remote angelical rose of Alaide Foppa's poem, too precious to exist, but so powerful that she is never quite obscured by reality.
In the writings of the Countess of Die, we hear - as all too rarely - the voice of the woman in relation to this faery land of love.
In her writing, the position is reversed: it is the lady who is disappointed and betrayed, a role usually attributed to the poor male. It is the lady who is faithful to the uttermost, and who will love when there is no longer cause for hope.
She sends a message reproving her handsome friend for his haughtiness.
But she also sends a message reminding him that she is ultimately in control - and too much aloofness can cause much great damage.9
The Countess of Die has never been identified. The note accompanying the manuscript of her four extant poems claims that she was the wife of William of Poitiers and was both beautiful and gracious. She fell in love with Raimbaut d' Orange and wrote fine poems for him.10
Five separate Williams of Poitiers have been identified and two Raimbauts.
Two of the Williams are said to have belonged to the younger branch of the Counts of Poitiers and became counts of the area in which Die is located. Die is a town in the foothills of the Alps near Valence. One of these counts died around 1188 and his grandson of the same name in 1226.
The poet Raimbaut III had a grand nephew Raimbaut IV who died in 1218 and who may have also written poetry. Raimbaut III (born 1144) was lord of Orange and Courthezon, and was, according to the manuscript of his work, a clever and well educated knight. He was said to have long loved a woman of Provence named Maria de Vertfuoil, for whom he wrote many songs and performed many deeds. Perhaps this was the enigmatic countess of Die.
Or perhaps she was another woman he loved, the Countess of Urgell of the house of Monferrat, the daughter of the Marquis of Busca. This lady was honoured above all other ladies, says Raimbaut's biographer, and Raimbaut fell in love with her without ever having seen her, simply from the reports of her deeds.
Having loved her from afar, as was the duty of the good lover, he died without the pleasure she would have granted him - to touch her bare leg with the back of his hand.
The disappointed but ennobled Raimbaut died (1173) without male heir, leaving his county to his two daughters, who may have been illegitimate.
Here is the doomed but entrancing life of the troubadour and his lover, captured in the real life stories of two mysterious people.
This region which gave birth to courtly love was a hotbed of conflicting philosophies and ideas, in much the same way as northern Italy became a centre for new artistic ideas in the fifteenth century.
Dominating our view of this southern French world, as of so much of the medieval world,
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