5
very beginning grapple with its psychological implications, collapse of virtue, this
singular indictment of the human species. A word, cruelty, that most prominently
corresponded to take one salient, if seldom discussed, example to the Spanish
Inquisitional flames that claimed so many lives of a culture of southwestern France,
the Vaudois, which had given birth to the ascetic, pure, and sensuous musical traditions of the nomadic lyrical gypsies of Provençal. We single them out, that time and
place in Western history, because it was a fashion of music subtly delivered in order
to please, to quiet the heart, and it was nearly obliterated by forces who refused to be
pacified by poets. Dante was greatly influenced by their fancies, the Utopian songs
and lyricism that are their legacy, and the Inferno to which many were subjected.
This far-off and elusive aesthetic, two centuries of Arcadia-enraptured Occitansinging musicians who had sought a safe haven in Spain, across the Pyrenees, only
to be viciously turned upon (again) and many burned at the stake over their musical
and poetic faith, represents one of the most emphatic dialectics in Western tradition;
an iconic example of our species-wide psychoses of which much will be written; not
unlike the many martyred saints throughout Christian tradition. In this case, the tragic
victims of an ill-turning human nature in the Late Middle Ages were Troubadours.
Their melancholic soliloquies, sonnets, and cansos (love songs to one’s beloved)
would centuries later inform Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, and Handel, and
even Goethe’s first and most despairing of creations, The Sorrows of Young Werther
(1774). We feel the fragile presence of the Troubadours in equal measure across the
span of literature and natural history reflections, from Petrarch to Cervantes, from
Shakespeare to Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and ultimately Buffon, Beethoven,
and Darwin; so star-crossed were the heavens and hells to which their melodies and
dreams fell prey.
Theirs is an unwritten history emblematic of The Birth of Innocence; the Fall of
Man. Within its diverging paths are two distinct philosophical and moral poles:
sagas writ painfully in so many leys d’amors, the pastorela, descort, and alba, this
latter a shepherd’s song of woeful countenance, as dawn broke ranks with darkness;
and a natural history of Europe and, by sharp implication, all of human time, human
contradiction, and ensuing turmoil.
2
And at this very moment, a concatenation of global crises is not only bringing
out the best in our species but also epitomizing how unprepared the collective really
is to effectively deal with individual and community suffering, from Washington,
D.C. to Siberia, from Sweden to the Antarctic. The breakdowns are not restricted to,
though possibly made more intractable by, democracies. But in every nation, institutional vulnerabilities are now glaringly seen to track with our apparent inability to
effectively change large numbers of minds and hearts; to engage in civil and
transformational dialogue that can surmount the hurdles inherent to theory; let alone
2 See Protestant Endurance Under Popish Cruelty: A Narrative Of The Reformation In Spain, by
J. C. M’Coan, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Binns And Goodwin, London, 1859; See also, The
Troubadours -A History Of Provençal Life And Literature In The Middle Ages, by Francis Hueffer,
Chatto & Windus, London, 1878, particularly Chapter XIX, “Siege Of Autafort -Bertran’s Death,”
and Chapter XXI, “The Vaudois And Albigeois,” –“The Reformation Of The Thirteenth Century.”
1.2 Troubadours
very beginning grapple with its psychological implications, collapse of virtue, this
singular indictment of the human species. A word, cruelty, that most prominently
corresponded to take one salient, if seldom discussed, example to the Spanish
Inquisitional flames that claimed so many lives of a culture of southwestern France,
the Vaudois, which had given birth to the ascetic, pure, and sensuous musical traditions of the nomadic lyrical gypsies of Provençal. We single them out, that time and
place in Western history, because it was a fashion of music subtly delivered in order
to please, to quiet the heart, and it was nearly obliterated by forces who refused to be
pacified by poets. Dante was greatly influenced by their fancies, the Utopian songs
and lyricism that are their legacy, and the Inferno to which many were subjected.
This far-off and elusive aesthetic, two centuries of Arcadia-enraptured Occitansinging musicians who had sought a safe haven in Spain, across the Pyrenees, only
to be viciously turned upon (again) and many burned at the stake over their musical
and poetic faith, represents one of the most emphatic dialectics in Western tradition;
an iconic example of our species-wide psychoses of which much will be written; not
unlike the many martyred saints throughout Christian tradition. In this case, the tragic
victims of an ill-turning human nature in the Late Middle Ages were Troubadours.
Their melancholic soliloquies, sonnets, and cansos (love songs to one’s beloved)
would centuries later inform Monteverdi, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, and Handel, and
even Goethe’s first and most despairing of creations, The Sorrows of Young Werther
(1774). We feel the fragile presence of the Troubadours in equal measure across the
span of literature and natural history reflections, from Petrarch to Cervantes, from
Shakespeare to Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and ultimately Buffon, Beethoven,
and Darwin; so star-crossed were the heavens and hells to which their melodies and
dreams fell prey.
Theirs is an unwritten history emblematic of The Birth of Innocence; the Fall of
Man. Within its diverging paths are two distinct philosophical and moral poles:
sagas writ painfully in so many leys d’amors, the pastorela, descort, and alba, this
latter a shepherd’s song of woeful countenance, as dawn broke ranks with darkness;
and a natural history of Europe and, by sharp implication, all of human time, human
contradiction, and ensuing turmoil.
2
And at this very moment, a concatenation of global crises is not only bringing
out the best in our species but also epitomizing how unprepared the collective really
is to effectively deal with individual and community suffering, from Washington,
D.C. to Siberia, from Sweden to the Antarctic. The breakdowns are not restricted to,
though possibly made more intractable by, democracies. But in every nation, institutional vulnerabilities are now glaringly seen to track with our apparent inability to
effectively change large numbers of minds and hearts; to engage in civil and
transformational dialogue that can surmount the hurdles inherent to theory; let alone
2 See Protestant Endurance Under Popish Cruelty: A Narrative Of The Reformation In Spain, by
J. C. M’Coan, Esq., of the Middle Temple, Binns And Goodwin, London, 1859; See also, The
Troubadours -A History Of Provençal Life And Literature In The Middle Ages, by Francis Hueffer,
Chatto & Windus, London, 1878, particularly Chapter XIX, “Siege Of Autafort -Bertran’s Death,”
and Chapter XXI, “The Vaudois And Albigeois,” –“The Reformation Of The Thirteenth Century.”
1.2 Troubadours