Troubadour and Trouveres Tradition ― When used in reference to a MetaPhysical Orientation as to Tradition, Culture or Preferred Flavour, is primarily defined, usually selfdefined by its members and/or adherents which holds Celebrations of the Divine Feminine usually through poetry and/or song as a primary or critical parameter of their Spiritual Paradigm. Troubadours and Trouveres were lyric poets or poet-musicians of France in the 12th and 13th centuries. It is customary to describe as troubadours those poets who worked in the south of France and wrote in Provencal, the langue d'oc, whereas the trouveres worked in the north of France and wrote in French, the langue d'oil. Eleanor of Aquitaine was central to the development of the Tradition. The first centre of troubadour song seems to have been Poitiers, but the main area extended from the Atlantic coast south of Bordeaux in the west, to the Alps bordering on Italy in the east. There were also 'schools' of troubadours in northern Italy itself and in Catalonia. Their influence, of course, spread much more widely. In the Bibliographie of Pillet and Carstens, 460 troubadours are named; about 2600 of their poems survive, with melodies for roughly one in ten. The romantic idea of the troubadour current in the 19th century is slowly fading before a more careful and realistic appraisal built up by scholars over the years. Far from being a carefree vagabond 'warbling his native woodnotes wild', the troubadour was a characteristically serious, well-educated, and highly sophisticated verse-technician. Guillaume IX of Aquitaine, generally described as 'the first of the troubadours' was a duke, and his granddaughter, Eleanor of Aquitaine, married first King Louis VII of France, and soon afterwards Henry of Anjou, later Henry II of England. The art of the troubadours was one in which music and poetry were combined in the service of the courtly ideal, the ideal of fin'amours (refined love). Their repertories of poetry were very self- conscious, and the discussion of technique played an important part in the poems themselves. For sheer virtuosity, the poets surpass all other lyric poets of the Middle Ages, with the possible exception of Dante. The mystical tradition embodied by the troubadours is not widely recognized. Traditional historians will claim they originated in southern France, during the 12th and 13th centuries. They will often cite that the troubadours were an evolution of the 10th century minstrels, and themselves evolved into the trouveres of the 14th century. Be this as it may, there is much more to the troubadour story than simple entertainment via love songs. That troubadours sung of courtly love is undisputed. Courtly love was a vogue at the time that was characterized by a romantic devotion for a sexually unattainable woman, usually another man's wife. In some circles, the woman was abstracted to an ideal and held to be the Virgin Mary. It is generally accepted that the troubadours embodied these concepts in their songs, but the mystical tradition holds that the troubadours, in fact, originated them, and as a result, the code of chivalry itself. The mystic holds that the love songs were in fact odes to God, who in the vocabulary of the mystic is called the beloved. There is reason to believe that these troubadours originated in Saracen Spain, and they were an act of spiritual impregnation of the West by the Near East. The seed that would grow a religion of love. "The darkness of scholastic Christianity is being replaced by the light and warmth of Saracen life, in spite of the eclipse of it's military power," says Jules Michlet in his Satanism and Witchcraft (London, 1960). Not only have historians noted that the troubadours resembled Arab singers "not only in sentiment and character but also in the very forms of their minstrelsy" (P. Hitte, History of the Arabs, New York, 1951), some also note that the very word 'troubadour' drives from the Arabic root TRB which means (among other things) to find. The troubadours were finders. To the casual listener, the songs were sweet and moving love songs, whose effect was to soften the heart, it's object obviously a female. To the mystic, it was a reminder that Love is the both the sustainer of the phenomenal world as well as the Path to enlightenment. As the Sufi mystic Jalaluddin Rumi said, "Whatever you are, whatever your condition is, be a lover." (It is an interesting aside, that both Rumi (d. 1275) and the mystic poet Omar Khayyam (d. 1122) both referred to themselves as troubadours.) The pinnacle of this movement resulted in the Arthur legends, and the Grail cycle; Avalon et. al. Associations between love and poetry, poet and musician, all of these and magician, run all through the mystic traditions of the near east (both Semitic and Arabic), and were later embodied in the West through the legacy of the Rosy Cross, the Templars, and Masons as they searched to find the Philosophers Stone; that which could transform the bestial man to divine human. The alchemy of love. The poet Yeats, whose mystical phrase has so enamored Van, was the head of the magick circle The Order of the Golden Dawn whose membership included Alister Crowley. In Van Morrison, we see the tradition of the troubadours resurrected in the modern age with the full light of the mystic tradition undiminished and in fact renewed. The Seeker of his own wellspring. The Finder of a tradition as old as humans. The Healer of hearts. Contributed by Frank LoPinto Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most powerful and fascinating personalities feudal Europe. At the age of 15 she married Louis the 7th king of France bringing her vast possessions from the River Loire to the Pyrenees into the union. A few years later at age 19 she offered thousands of her vassals for the second crusade. But while the church was happy about the people she recruited to fight in the crusade they weren't to happy about her deciding to go along on the crusades. Along the way many people mad jokes about the ladies ho were dressed in armor riding war horses and carrying battle lances. Despite having ben dressed in battle attire Eleanor and the ladies she brought with her never had to enter battle. For more about Eleanor of Aquitaine you can go to http://www.womeninworldhistory.com/heroine2.html. During the second crusade she had some contact with the arabs to learn more go to http://www.millersv.edu/~english/homepage/duncan/medfem/arab.html. Eleanor wasn't just another ruler who got favor by helping on the crusades, she was also known for her cultivated intelligence and great beauty and was queen to two kings and mother of two others one of which was king Richard the lion hearted who was quite well liked by his people when he wasn't battling in the crusades. Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the most powerful and fascinating personalities of feudal Europe. At age 15 she married Louis VII, King of France, bringing into the union her vast possessions from the River Loire to the Pyrenees. Only a few years later, at age 19, she knelt in the cathedral of Vézelay before the celebrated Abbé Bernard of Clairvaux offering him thousands of her vassals for the Second Crusade. It was said that Queen Eleanor appeared at Vézelay dressed like an Amazon galloping through the crowds on a white horse, urging them to join the crusades. While the church may have been pleased to receive her thousand fighting vassals, they were less happy when they learned that Eleanor, attended by 300 of her ladies, also planned to go to help "tend the wounded." The presence of Eleanor, her ladies and wagons of female servants, was criticized by commentators throughout her adventure. Dressed in armor and carrying lances, the women never fought. And when they reached the city of Antioch, Eleanor found herself deep in a renewed friendship with Raymond, her uncle, who had been appointed prince of the city. Raymond, only a few years older than Eleanor, was far more interesting and handsome than Eleanor's husband, Louis. When Raymond decided that the best strategic objective of the Crusade would be to recapture Edessa, thus protecting the Western presence in the Holy Land, Eleanor sided with his view. Louis, however, was fixated on reaching Jerusalem, a less sound goal. Louis demanded that Eleanor follow him to Jerusalem. Eleanor, furious, announced to one and all that their marriage was not valid in the eyes of God, for they were related through some family connections to an extent prohibited by the Church. Wounded by her claim, Louis nonetheless forced Eleanor to honor her marriage vows and ride with him. The expedition did fail, and a defeated Eleanor and Louis returned to France in separate ships. On her way home, while resting in Sicily, Eleanor was brought the news that her fair haired uncle had been killed in battle, and his head delivered to the Caliph of Baghdad. Although her marriage to Louis continued for a time, and she bore him two daughters, the relationship was over. In 1152 the marriage was annulled and her vast estates reverted to Eleanor's control. Within a year, at age thirty, she married twenty year old Henry who two years later became king of England. In the papal bull for the next Crusade, the pope expressly forbade women of all sorts to join the expedition. All the Christian monarchs, including King Louis, agreed to this. But by this time Eleanor had problems of her own in her marriage to King Henry II of England. It was in the 11th century, that the troubadours first began to appear, chivalry waxed in form and substance, and the ideal of courtly love found expression in the words and deeds of medieval man. Celts of Cornwall, fleeing the encroaching Christian church, found greater acceptance and tolerance in France. They brought with them a wealth of folklore (such as the accounts of the Holy Grail ), which French poets absorbed into their own work. Out of the Celtic folklore, French poets created the great romances of the Middle Ages. The first troubadour of record was Duke William of Aquitaine. His poetry is said to contain all the elements of courtly love, and his formalized ideals were carried north when his granddaughter, Eleanor of Aquitaine, married King Louis of France, divorced, then married Prince Henry of England. Eleanor became queen twice shortly after each marriage, and it was in her courts to the North and to the South, that the ways and poetry of courtly love flourished. Under Eleanor's influence, Tristram and Ysolt, Wace's Brut and the romance of Troy were written. Three of Eleanor's sons were patrons of literature and kept the troubadour tradition alive. But her two daughters, especially Marie de France, played the most influential roles in carrying on their mother's social and literary interests. Marie was to thank for commissioning Cretien de Troyes' Knight of the Cart. Cretien credits Countess Marie with furnishing subject matter and the manner of treatment, and writes that he was trying to carry out her intentions. Courtly love most flourished in the time of Eleanor of Aquitaine's influence in France and England, when Andreas Capellanus declared "a court of ladies convened in Gascony". But this age of influence was not long-lived. In 1174, the same year that dates The Art of Courtly Love, the courtly love experiment in France was set back abruptly when King Henry of England came to Poitiers, took Queen Eleanor back to England and imprisoned her for some time. The other ladies in her court were sent to their homes. The disbanding of the Poitiers matriarchy dissolved the critical mass of female power and influence, and was no isolated incident in the medieval patriarchal/Christian wresting of power from the women of Europe. Misogynist writings flourished at that time, and the sin, guilt and impurities of women were preached from every pulpit. There was a brief return to matriarchal influence in 1181, when Count Henry of Champagne died, leaving Marie to act as regent during the minority of their sons. During this time, Marie revived in Troyes on a small scale her mother's social experiment without interference. While Marie's court was not as receptive to the ideals of courtly love as Eleanor's had been, courtly love's ways did survive in the literary activity of that period. Cretien worked on his Story of the Grail, and Andreas Capellanus (her chaplain) continued work on The Art of Courtly Love under her direction. The age of chivalry signaled a "revival of Celtic feminism"17 in England, and revived in Christian Europe the matrifocal ethos of the Celts. Yet the passion engendered by courtly love was hardly mortal in nature, alone. In locales where women's political and social power was concentrated, the gynofocal ethos of courtly love found both a context and a language to express what was one of the last overt expressions of veneration of the Divine Female. For the long-standing, now-subverted European tradition of Goddess worship had found a new voice in the language of love poetry from Eastern lands. The love poets of the East brought to France a vocabulary of veneration for a chaste and distant female, which matched the sentiments of once-matriarchal Europe. In a time when overt Goddess worship was strictly forbidden, the language of courtly love and the standards of chivalry enabled a deprived and subjugated people the chance to express a deeply rooted side of them within a permissible social context.

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Capital A with ring aboveÅ   Capital A with macronĀ   Capital A with breveĂ   Capital A with diaeresisÄ   Capital A with circumflex   Capital A with dot aboveȦ   Capital A with inverted breveȂ   Capital A with tildeà   Capital A with ogonekĄ   Capital AE ligatureÆ   Capital AE ligature with tildeÆ̃   Capital Glottal Stop⦾   Capital Palatoalveolar Click⊛   Regular English AA   Script Capital Lℒ   Capital L with macron aboveL̅   Capital L with dot belowḶ   Capital L with stroke, Dark L Ł   Regular English LL   Capital WHω   Capital W with macron aboveW̅   Capital W with dot belowẈ   Regular English WW   Capital Slide H with reverse solidusℋ⃥   Capital H with macron aboveH̅   Capital H with dot belowḤ   Aspirate^○   Slight Pause⚫   Very Slight Pause⚬   Regular English HH   Capital S with macron aboveS̅   Capital S with dot aboveṠ   Capital SH sign∫   Capital SKΣ   Regular English SS   Hard and Deep Capital DД   High and Light Capital D∇   Regular English DD   Capital O with ring aboveO̊   Capital O with macronŌ   Capital O with breveŎ   Capital O with diaeresisÖ   Capital O with solidusØ   Capital OE ligatureŒ   Capital O with Cyrillic Round OmegaѺ   Capital OIꙔ   Capital O with ogonekǪ   Capital O with double oo topტ   Regular English OO   Capital EZJHʑ   Capital Z with macron belowẔ   Capital Z with dot aboveŻ   Regular English ZZ   Capital K with macron aboveК̅   Capital K with dot below К̣   Capital Hard KHχ   Capital KHƙ   Regular English KK   Capital V with macron aboveV̅   Capital V with dot belowṾ   Regular English VV   Capital G with macronḠ   Capital G with dot aboveĠ   Capital GNΓ   Capital GRЖ   Capital GW   Capital Uvular Voiced ImplosiveϘ   Regular English GG   Capital rolled R with macronЯ̅   Capital rolled R with dot aboveЯ̇   Capital R with macron aboveR̅   Capital R with dot above Ṙ   Capital R with ogonek R̨   Regular English RR   Capital C with cedillaÇ   Capital CHЧ   Regular English CC   Capital N with macron aboveN̅   Capital N with dot belowṆ   Capital N with tildeÑ   Capital NGŋ   Capital NG with macron aboveŋ̅   Regular English NN   Capital Y with macron above Ȳ   Capital Y with dot aboveẎ   Capital Y with yaw aboveЎ   Regular English YY   Capital J with macron aboveЈ̅   Capital J with dot belowЈ̣   Regular English JJ   Capital U with a ring aboveŮ   Capital U with macronŪ   Capital U with breveŬ   Capital U with circumflex aboveÛ   Capital U with diaeresisÜ   Regular English UU   Capital F with macron aboveF̅   Capital F with dot aboveḞ   Regular English FF   Capital Q with macron aboveQ̅   Capital Q with dot aboveQ̇   Regular English QQ   Capital B with macronB̅   Capital B with dot belowḄ   Trilled B   Regular English BB   Capital M with macronM̅   Capital M with dot belowṂ   Capital M with tilde M̃   Capital MB   Capital MGⱮ   Regular English MM   Capital X with macron aboveX̅   Capital X with dot aboveẊ   Regular English XX   Capital I with macronĪ   Capital I with breveĬ   Regular English II   Capital T with macron aboveT̅   Capital T with dot belowṬ   Capital TH voicedΘ   Capital TH voicelessÞ   Capital TSЦ   Capital TSCHЩ   Regular English TT   Capital E with macronĒ   Capital E with breveĔ   Capital E with circumflexÊ   Capital schwa Ə   Regular English EE   Capital P with macron aboveP̅   Capital P with dot aboveṖ   Capital pT   Regular English PP

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