The Knight in History (12 page)

Lo ferm voler q ’el cor m ’intra

No · m pot jes becs escoissendre ni ongla

De lausengier, qui pert per mal dir s’arma;

E car non I’aus batr’ab ram ni ab verga
,

Sivals a frau, lai on non aurai oncle
,

Jauzirai joi, en vergier o dinz cambra
.

Quan mi soven de la cambra

On a mon dan sai que nuills hom non intra

Anz me son tuich plus que fraire ni oncle
,

Non ai membre no · m fremisca, neis l’ongla
,

Aissi cum fai l’enfas denant la verga
,

Tal paor ai que · ill sia trop de m’arma
.

Del cors li fos, non de l’arma
.

E cossentis m’a celat dins sa cambra!

Que plus mi nafra · l cor que colps de verga

The firm desire which enters

my heart cannot be taken from me by the beak or nail

of that talebearer whose evil words cost him his soul,

and since I dare not beat him with a branch or rod,

I shall at least, in secret, free from any spying uncle,

rejoice in love’s joy, in an orchard or in a chamber.

But when I think of that chamber

which, to my misfortune, no man enters

and is guarded as if by brother or uncle,

my entire body, even to my fingernail,

trembles like a child before a rod,

such fear I have of not being hers with all my soul.

Would that I were hers, if not in soul

at least in body, hidden within her chamber;

for it wounds my heart more than blows of rod

Car lo sieus sers lai on ill es non intra;

Totz temps serai ab lieis cum carns et ongla
,

E non creirai chastic d’amic ni d’oncle….

C’aissi s’enpren e s’enongla

Mos cors en lei cum l’escorssa en la verga;

Qu ’il m ’es de joi tors e palaitz e cambra
,

E non am tant fraire, paren ni oncle:

Qu ’en paradis n ’aura doble joi m ’arma
,

Si ja nuills hom per ben amar lai intra
.

Arnautz tramet sa chansson d’ongla e d’oncle
,

A grat de lieis que de sa verg’a l’arma
,

Son Desirat, cui pretz en cambra intra
.

that I, her serf, can never therein enter.

No, I shall be with her as flesh and nail

and heed no warnings of friend or uncle….

As if with tooth and nail

my heart grips her, or as the bark the rod;

for to me she is tower, palace and chamber

of joy, and neither brother, parent nor uncle

I love so much; and in paradise my soul

will find redoubled joy, if lovers therein enter.

Arnaut sends his song of nail and uncle

(by leave of her who has, of his rod, the soul)

to his Desirat, whose fame all chambers enters.

(Translation by Anthony Bonner)
⁴⁵

Arnaut Daniel has been described as the culmination of the troubadour poets; to Dante he was “the better craftsman of the mother tongue
(il miglior fabbro del parlar materno)
.”
⁴⁶

In the first decade of the thirteenth century, a historic calamity devastated the world of the troubadours. Pope Innocent III, alarmed by the Albigensian heresy that had spread through southern France, turned to the weapon his predecessors had forged for war with the Muslims. An army of knightly Crusaders mobilized in northern France invaded the land that had proved equally hospitable to poets and heretics. Poetry fell victim along with heresy. The aristocracy of the South was ruined, and many of the troubadours fled to Spain and Italy to find new patrons. Raimon de Miraval appealed in verse to Pedro II of Aragon, begging him to recover “Montégut and Carcassonne”:

Puois poiran dompnas e drut

Tornar el joi q’ant perdut
.

(Then ladies and lovers can

Return to the joy they have lost.)
⁴⁷

But the environment that had created and fostered the troubadours was lost, never to be recovered. The surviving singers prudently abandoned the theme of earthly love for praise of the Virgin and other religious themes. Suddenly the troubadour was gone. Not, however, without sending a powerful wave of poetic impulse through Europe that reached far into the future.

Beginning in the late twelfth century, northern France had its own knightly poets, the trouvères (again, “finders”), who like the troubadours composed and sang their own verses. Like them, the trouvères’ status was knightly; like them, they ranged in class origin from great lords, like Count Thibaut IV of Champagne, to knights like Gace Brulé and a few commoners like Rutebeuf of Troyes. The types of their poetry were essentially the same as those of the troubadours, with northern French names; the pervasive theme remained “courtly love.”

In the thirteenth-century kingdom of Sicily, during the enlightened reign of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1205–1250), lyric poetry in vernacular Italian appeared, modeled after the Provençal. The erudite emperor himself contributed verses to the movement. Tuscan poets also began to write in the “mother tongue,” and in the last half of the thirteenth century a school of lyric poets appeared, characterized by the “sweet new style”
(dolce stil nuovo)
described by Dante, who practiced it himself: a serious, refined, and delicate treatment of love. Besides Dante, its major exponents were Guido Cavalcanti, Guido Guinizelli, and Cino da Pistoia. In the thirteenth century vernacular lyric poetry also made its appearance in Spain and Portugal, where poets wrote verses in the troubadour tradition. Simultaneously Germany and Austria adopted the love lyric, and the minnesingers (
Minne:
love), knights whose origins were mostly in the class of ministerials, the unfree household retainers of the German empire, circulated among the courts performing their songs. Of the more than 300 known minnesingers, the most famous was Walther von der Vogelweide (c. 1170–c. 1230). A poor knight who, like the troubadours, wandered from castle to castle, Walther wrote in the tradition of courtly love, like the best of the troubadours distilling his own poetic flavor.
⁴⁸

The chief contribution of northern France and Germany to the literature of knighthood, however, lay in a different direction, though this too was influenced by the tradition of the troubadours. The narrative literature of the North, both poetry and prose, exerted influence in turn on the self-image of the knight and on his manners and mores, and through the knightly class it came to influence not only the literature but the manners and thought of Europe. It also provided the modern world with most of its notions about knights.

In the eleventh century, before the troubadours appeared on the scene, a mass of epic poetry came into being. The
chansons de geste
were orally transmitted, and had a single common subject: the exploits of Charlemagne and his followers. No one knows who composed, transmitted, or finally recorded them in writing. The
chansons de geste
sang war rather than love, and vaunted the knightly virtues of honor, courage, and loyalty. The most famous was the
Chanson de Roland
, written down by an unknown pen just before the First Crusade. The
Chanson de Roland
tells the story of the ambush of Charlemagne’s rearguard in the pass of Roncesvaux in the Pyrenees following his expedition against the Muslims in Spain in 778. The hero Roland (an obscure historical figure) confronts overwhelming odds and with knightly pride, and knightly obstinacy, refuses to summon help by blowing his ivory horn (olifant) until it is too late; finally, alone amid his fallen companions, he sinks to the grass,

His olifant and sword beneath him placed,

Turning his head to face the pagan host,

He wished that Charles and all the Franks might say,

“The noble count has died a conqueror!”
⁴⁹

In the late eighth century of the real Roland and Charlemagne feudalism was barely germinating and “knight” was neither a title nor a concept, but the authors of the
Chanson de Roland
and its companion eleventh-century epics unhesitatingly dressed their tales in the forms of their own day, a literary custom that continued long after.

A different spirit informed the narrative poetry that originated in northern France at the end of the twelfth century. The
romans
, so called because they were written in the “Romance” language, the vernacular, were frankly fiction, stories of chivalry, love, and adventure that owed much of their spirit and ideas to troubadour poetry. One group, known as the “romances of adventure,” or the “matter of France,” dealt with knights, their exploits, and their ladies. In such tales as
Galeran, Joufroi, Flor et Blancheflor
, and
Amis et Amiles
, love was idealized, but in a very different sense from that of troubadour poetry. The lovers were young couples who, after adventures that were romantic but reasonably realistic, ended by getting happily married. A second group, the “romances of antiquity” or “matter of Rome,” developed new versions of classical themes: the
Roman de Thèbes, Roman de Troie
, and
Roman d’Eneas
. Most influential, however, and by far the best known today, was a third group of romances dealing with the “matter of Britain.”

Whether a King Arthur ever existed is uncertain.
⁵⁰
The only contemporary British chronicler, Gildas (died c. 570), recounts the sixth-century invasion by the “abominable Saxons” and the opposition organized under Ambrosius Aurelianus who “alone of the Roman race had escaped the disasters of the epoch.” The British resistance was climaxed by a great victory at Mount Badon. No mention is made of Arthur. Nor is Arthur mentioned in the account of the Saxon invasion in Bede’s
Ecclesiastical History
, written in 731.

A compilation begun not long after and completed at the end of the eighth century by a chronicler known as Nennius, the
Historia Britonum (History of the Britons)
, is the only documentary basis for the Arthur story, and the first source to mention Arthur, identified only as a
dux bellorum
(leader of wars, or general) who “fought against [the Saxons] in those days together with the kings of the Britons.” The
Historia
lists Arthur’s “twelve battles,” the last on Mount Badon, where “he alone in one day killed nine hundred and sixty men; and in all the battles he was victor.” Some elements that were developed in later versions of the King Arthur story also appear, principally the figure of a miracle-working youth who became Merlin. The source of the
Historia
’s information about Arthur is unknown.

Over the next four centuries nothing was added to historical information, but piece by piece a rich Arthurian myth was constructed. Chronicler William of Malmesbury (born c. 1095), reframing the
Historia Britonum
to make a more interesting and consistent story, commented about the “warlike Arthur”: “This is the Arthur concerning whom the idle tales of the Britons rave wildly even today—a man certainly worthy to be celebrated, not in the foolish dreams of deceitful fables, but in truthful histories; since for a long time he sustained the declining fortunes of his native land and incited the uncrushed courage of the people to war.”
⁵¹

Not long after, the Arthur story was given its greatest impetus and almost its final historical form by a Welsh cleric named Geoffrey of Monmouth. In his
Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)
,
⁵²
written in about 1136 in a Latin prose of style and originality, Geoffrey in effect created the medieval romance of Arthur, with many of the elements familiar to us today. According to Geoffrey, he found most of his information in “a certain very ancient book in the British tongue” given him by the archdeacon of Oxford. Whether such a book existed or was a literary device of Geoffrey’s, or possibly a figurative reference to a body of oral tradition, Geoffrey combined, rearranged, and elaborated his material into a strong, integrated narrative. He made Arthur for the first time a king and introduced in addition to Merlin the personae of Uther Pendragon, Gawain, Guinevere, Mordred, Kay, and Bedevere. He added the seduction of Arthur’s mother, the lady Igerna, by Uther, Mordred’s usurpation and his treacherous abduction of Guinevere, and Arthur’s final departure, mortally wounded, to the Isle of Avalon.