The Age of Chivalry | Page 8

whose poets, under the name of
Troubadours, were the masters of the Italians, and particularly of
Petrarch. Their favorite pieces were Sirventes (satirical pieces),
love-songs, and Tensons, which last were a sort of dialogue in verse
between two poets, who questioned each other on some refined points
of loves' casuistry. It seems the Provencials were so completely
absorbed in these delicate questions as to neglect and despise the
composition of fabulous histories of adventure and knighthood, which
they left in a great measure to the poets of the northern part of the
kingdom, called Trouveurs.
At a time when chivalry excited universal admiration, and when all the
efforts of that chivalry were directed against the enemies of religion, it
was natural that literature should receive the same impulse, and that
history and fable should be ransacked to furnish examples of courage
and piety that might excite increased emulation. Arthur and
Charlemagne were the two heroes selected for this purpose. Arthur's
pretensions were that he was a brave, though not always a successful
warrior; he had withstood with great resolution the arms of the infidels,
that is to say of the Saxons, and his memory was held in the highest
estimation by his countrymen, the Britons, who carried with them into
Wales, and into the kindred country of Armorica, or Brittany, the
memory of his exploits, which their national vanity insensibly
exaggerated, till the little prince of the Silures (South Wales) was
magnified into the conqueror of England, of Gaul, and of the greater
part of Europe. His genealogy was gradually carried up to an imaginary
Brutus, and to the period of the Trojan war, and a sort of chronicle was
composed in the Welsh, or Armorican language, which, under the
pompous title of the "History of the Kings of Britain," was translated
into Latin by Geoffrey of Monmouth, about the year 1150. The Welsh
critics consider the material of the work to have been an older history,
written by St. Talian, Bishop of St. Asaph, in the seventh century.

As to Charlemagne, though his real merits were sufficient to secure his
immortality, it was impossible that his HOLY WARS against the
Saracens should not become a favorite topic for fiction. Accordingly,
the fabulous history of these wars was written, probably towards the
close of the eleventh century, by a monk, who, thinking it would add
dignity to his work to embellish it with a contemporary name, boldly
ascribed it to Turpin, who was Archbishop of Rheims about the year
773.
These fabulous chronicles were for a while imprisoned in languages of
local only or of professional access. Both Turpin and Geoffrey might
indeed be read by ecclesiastics, the sole Latin scholars of those times,
and Geoffrey's British original would contribute to the gratification of
Welshmen; but neither could become extensively popular till translated
into some language of general and familiar use. The Anglo-Saxon was
at that time used only by a conquered and enslaved nation; the Spanish
and Italian languages were not yet formed; the Norman French alone
was spoken and understood by the nobility in the greater part of Europe,
and therefore was a proper vehicle for the new mode of composition.
That language was fashionable in England before the Conquest, and
became, after that event, the only language used at the court of London.
As the various conquests of the Normans, and the enthusiastic valor of
that extraordinary people, had familiarized the minds of men with the
most marvellous events, their poets eagerly seized the fabulous legends
of Arthur and Charlemagne, translated them into the language of the
day, and soon produced a variety of imitations. The adventures
attributed to these monarchs, and to their distinguished warriors,
together with those of many other traditionary or imaginary heroes,
composed by degrees that formidable body of marvellous histories
which, from the dialect in which the most ancient of them were written,
were called "Romances."
METRICAL ROMANCES
The earliest form in which romances appear is that of a rude kind of
verse. In this form it is supposed they were sung or recited at the feasts
of princes and knights in their baronial halls. The following specimen

of the language and style of Robert de Beauvais, who flourished in
1257, is from Sir Walter Scott's "Introduction to the Romance of Sir
Tristrem":
"Ne voil pas emmi dire, Ici diverse la matyere, Entre ceus qui solent
cunter, E de le cunte Tristran parler."
"I will not say too much about it, So diverse is the matter, Among those
who are in the habit of telling And relating the story of Tristran."
This is a specimen of the language which was in use among the nobility
of England, in the ages immediately after the Norman conquest. The
following is a specimen of the English that