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I mean, it was. The.

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On. Cardinal. This Abu.

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May the 13th century was a time of great change in Europe, the cities of Florence,

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Paris and Eros became thriving commercial centres on the back of the disastrous reign of King John of England.

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The French crown had also grown significantly in strength into this world.

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We find the true that's poets and musicians who wrote and sang about the pains of love and politics and of devotion to the Virgin Mary.

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Their songs preserved in 20 song compendia called Sansoni,

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but also found scattered throughout many early mediaeval manuscripts, are a rare window into mediaeval vernacular culture.

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With me to discuss these rivers are Megan Quinlan, a default student in musicology at Merton College,

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and Julie Mason, a default student author in musicology at Lincoln College.

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Thank you very much for joining me. Perhaps you could start us off by just so small task.

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I know, describing a few of the things that were going on in Europe at the time that these songs are being written.

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What's the historical context? Sure. Well, we take the two fairs from the second half of the 12th century until about the end of the 13th century.

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And some of the events going on at this time, of course, we've got the fierce rivalry between the English crown,

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the Plantagenet dynasty and the French crown, the capuchin dynasty.

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And as you mentioned in your introduction, in the 20s and 30s, there was a great loss of territory by the English.

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And as a result of this, the French crown came to power.

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I think the general view, humane and a huge quantity of large quantity of France is really getting in strife.

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Absolutely. And another another gain of territory for France around this time is the longer dog.

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Where is that exactly?

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Is that the map of France in my head, which in modern day France that in the 12th century was separated into roughly and half into the area of France,

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which spoke northern French and their word for yes, was real.

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So it was referred to as the long tail and the south of France, whose word for yes was OK.

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So that territory was referred to as the longer dog I see.

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And in the first few decades of the 13th century, the French crown crusaded to the south of France,

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the longer dog in order to gain territory, supposedly on the grounds of counteracting heresy.

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And the truth is come out of earlier tradition of troubadours, which was maybe early, was actually reading your notes.

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Can you describe a bit about how the two rivers differ from the troubadours?

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So there's more variation, I think, of class in the true tradition in both traditions, the Troubadours and Travaris Act serving a patron.

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So they find their livelihood through a patron for whom they sort of had to compete.

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So there is a sense of competition and I think a fair bit of so they were probably itinerant in the sense that when their patrons moved caught,

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they would follow with them.

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But in the true tradition, you also get musical activity amongst the bourgeoisie, especially later on in the 13th century.

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So in our tours in Iraq.

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So you guess, for instance, people of someone who is going on these crusades that are just so Thibeault is one of the highest ranking Trivers.

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He was the count of champagne, a very powerful figure, provided political leverage for Blanche to steal the mother of St. Louis, Louis,

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the night Blanche was the region to France between the death of her husband,

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Louis the eighth and Louis the ninth ascension to that or his his his maturity.

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So he because Louis the Ninth was crowned at the age of 12, I think so.

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There were a few years in between rebels that had to take power.

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And Thibeault was was her greatest supporter during this time because there were rebellions happening as well amongst the French parentage.

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When a regent takes power, there tends to be more political instability.

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So Thibeault was a very powerful figure. He also later on became king of Navarre in the south of France,

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was not very well liked by the residents because he he tended to use their resources to bolster up his country of champagne,

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which was much further to the north. Yes, much further north and in.

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So the chanson is normally place him towards the beginning because often they're categorised according to rank.

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So you'll start with songs by Thiebaud the Champagne.

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Yet because he's the most sort of aristocratic traveller and then they follow down the line because we have this really quite large spectrum of tasks.

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You say there are these sort of mercantile class of musicians, poets who are seeking patrons and are putting their livelihood through their patrons.

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But you also have I think so we have evidence of this more and at the end of the

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13th century and I think there's also an aspect of aspiring to the aristocracy.

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We have a really interesting manuscript here at Oxford called Destry Await.

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Our Supervisors is researching it at the moment,

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but it contains narratives about jousts and feasts and all of these sort of very aristocratic activities.

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But it is probably made by the bourgeoisie and owned first by a bourgeois owner.

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And there's also amongst the bourgeoisie, what's known as PRIX'S, or competitions, songwriting competitions, particularly interests.

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You have the US and I'm sure JOKIN can say a little bit more because arouses a great centre of the song tradition,

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lots of what we find comes out of us. So Arus has been treated by some scholars as kind of the cradle of modern literature.

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In a way, there's this extraordinary literary culture in the US in the 13th century,

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partly because I think the statistic is 25 percent of the men in the US were literate because of clerical training and then clerical training,

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which these men did not take up in their subsequent jobs.

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So there were too many trained clerics in the clerical ranks of the jobs.

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And one possible outlet for if you were a trained cleric but you couldn't get a job,

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you know, you couldn't get into a monastery or into the church was to become a chantler,

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who is a performer of SHAMSUL, a performer of of other things as well,

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such as recounting stories, telling jokes, falling over, farting on demand activities.

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Let's get a sense of the subject matter of these songs, because they're very varied.

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But there are certain tropes that the writers of the text can always go back to you.

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Perhaps you could start us off or we can we can go back and forth. So does the Courtney Love.

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The pains of love is a big yes. So that's kind of the principal genre of these songs.

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They typically open with the screen topos. When I hear the birth of me singing, I am moved to sing because love tells me to sing.

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That's the kind of classic opening. The other important aspects of this trope are.

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It's love for a higher lady. She is unattainable. There are certain aspects of kind of fusel imagery in this relationship to the lady.

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So there's often the image of the poet singer on his knees, hands clasped, head bowed before his lady in a in an attitude of homage to her.

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There are frequent images such as the dot of love, the prism of love, separation of separation of the heart from the love his body.

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So so the heart is sort of taken out of the lover's chest and resides with the lady.

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But the cervera poet, singer, lover character doesn't really mind because he's sort of loyally devoted to the lady.

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And it's so it's this kind of paradox between suffering and the sweetness of love.

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It's like sort of getting caught up into this this circle, this this vicious circle of of love, which was seen as a sickness then.

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So if you think of the Saijo mentioned the the dart of love topos, we see this on Valentine's Day.

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Still right. Cupid is, of course, shooting his arrow into somebody's heart.

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But this had sort of more physiological associations in the 13th century.

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Some earlier theories of vision posit that when you see rather than light going into your eyes, your eyes themselves shoot out darts of light,

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which then make impressions on the objects around you and and take that information back into your mind.

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And so these these are shown often in manuscript size being arrows and the figure of love shoots arrows into the eyes.

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And then these arrows go into sort of pass through the bodily humours into the heart.

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And the arrows are fiery arrows, arrows of light like you would get in vision.

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And because they're fiery, when they go into the heart, they sort of set it aflame.

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So there's this whole aspect of physiology and temperature and heat.

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And that's why the lover size, because they're fanning the fuels of this fire.

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It's like they want more of it. But the more they get, the more they suffer.

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So to bring in here is that most of these songs were written by and performed by and performed for them.

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Exactly.

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So one of the other contradictions that's got the heart of the calling of topos is that you're singing about love, but your lady would never hear it.

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So there's always this unrequited aspect.

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Of course, this unrequited aspect means that the tradition can be perpetuated because the song you can never thinking about unrequited feelings.

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Yes, it's always the desire that allows you to sing. And if that desire were fulfilled, you wouldn't necessarily need to sing in your job.

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You. Yeah, and the lady also is is she's always kind of the same lady.

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She has a clear face clad voice. She's very beautiful.

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She's the most beautiful lady. So it's not we don't really get a sense that they're singing to specific ladies,

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but to a kind of idealised, abstract lady who might be interpreted in many different ways.

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And and indeed, there's quite interesting issues around gender here because.

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Certainly for troubador poetry. You find that?

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That lady has many female characteristics like her clear face, sometimes mentions aspects of her body as well.

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And yet there's also the male side to her personality, which is this kind of dominating figure who you have to pay homage to.

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So there's a uneasy relationship between the gender.

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Yeah, you could you could almost say she's kind of like a third gender in a sense,

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because women at the time didn't have any political power besides figures like belongs to Castiel.

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This was quite rare.

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And so to treat a lady as your kind of feudal overlord bow down to a lady and be dominated by her because there really is this dynamic of domination.

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The ladies is beautiful, but she's also cruel because she doesn't acknowledge you and you just sort of waiting for this.

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Just a slight sense of acknowledgement from her, but it never comes.

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So that's the major trope, I guess. But there are certain pastorale you write about, which is a shepherdess and a knight.

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So the pastoral is a fairly formulaic genre. It centres around one encounter, as you say, between a knight and a shepherdess.

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It normally starts with the line. The other day I rode out into the countryside.

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So we've immediately got this image of a knight riding out into the countryside where he encounters a shepherdess.

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He amorously advances on the shepherdess and presses her for kisses and more.

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Then there are a range. There is a range of responses. Sometimes the shepherdess acquiesces.

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Sometimes she refuses that there may be rape in these texts.

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And there is also the figure of Robin who comes. He may come to rescue his shepherdess when she calls him.

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He may come to rescue her and it's too late. She may call for him and he may not answer,

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or she may be willingly in the arms of the night when Robin walks in and finds them variations on the theme.

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Exactly. But also your speciality, these songs called Unusual Party, which are I mean, you tell us, though, that debate songs.

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That's right. So the party literally means divided game or game of choice, but we get the word jeopardy from it.

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And in these songs, the first verse, a question is presented by one of the singers.

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And it's always a question of courtly love. So is it better to.

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Well, I think that we're about to hear you sing one of these songs. Megan, you told me earlier what the central question of this.

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Yes. Is. The question of this particular example is, is it better to sleep with one lady for all night but not accomplish all of your desire?

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Or is it better to sleep with a lady and sleep directly afterward, so you leave the you take the flower, leave the fruit.

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But this song is written as a dialogue debate between a man and a woman taking opposing sides.

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Now as normal first party, we alternate the two singers alternate stanzas, each taking a side of the debate.

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Now, there are a few unusual things about this, this Sparty, one of which is that it's between a man and a woman, mostly party between two men.

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Hmm. The second unusual thing is that the man jumps in midway through one of the verses and doesn't allow the woman to finish.

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You really do get the sense that the debate is getting more heated and you can imagine well,

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you can probably guess which voice takes which side to sort of gender stereotypes.

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And in this case, there is also sort of a sense that this dynamic is happening not just on the level of the content of the argument,

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but also in the relationship between the singers, because it's between a man and a woman.

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And the woman is asking my friend, and this is not just friend, it's also it can be lover.

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It's a very, very intimate term. And in some of the manuscript versions of this, the lady always calls the male voice Amies, my my beloved, my friend.

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But the male voice calls the lady dolma, which is a much more formal term rather than Omiya.

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So you kind of get the sense that the the female voice is asking, you know, is it better to the whole argument is really is it is affection,

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better affection and time spent together better than just, you know, doing it and going one night stand.

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And since the male voice goes for the one night stand and the voice takes the other option,

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there is this effect produced of the lady wanting the man to stay or having a bit more affection for the man than the man does for the woman.

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That's an incredible description, but that's where we're going to be cutting in about halfway through, I believe, notes.

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We have a pitchfork here a last minute.

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In the. Said on.

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Cardinal. This Abu.

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Miss. So keep.

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Love you, busy. During Greenwood on tenor mood said sign on today.

151
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Tom, how long have you got it to you personally?

152
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Somebody has to know key for us now.

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Every time Sonali feeds to her collarbone for.

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Ten miles from her home for Kinnison Napat.

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Miss Onkalo, hey, you see Groeschel, oh, look who it is.

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Are you mad at me?

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Well, in the corner boy she is a peeping.

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Congruently. Don.

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Third party see Don Sherwood, energy policy may call her tone today motorcycle's of he key part of the wild cards her to her.

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Tom, Poggio, including Lesia, illegally here we have it on my arm, me Curly Ferré has.

161
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Call for a mere Sleaford, I say, Tam, what a good hater, Paul, and he can have Morrisson Hey hardcoded heads.

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Or feed her and I cannot let her see. Thank you very much.

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That was absolutely wonderful.

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Can we talk a bit about these Sonia themselves, these documents that we have, these songs and others from what what do they look like?

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Are they vellum, parchment and parchment and so very expensive material?

166
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It takes a number of sheep or cows to make a book. And the objects themselves are very luxurious.

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And you can you can tell this, especially looking at the margins.

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You've got these huge, huge unused spaces of margins which sort of emphasises its decadence, lots of gold leaf historian and initials.

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So those big, big initials that you you can imagine in mediaeval manuscripts and and they have pictures of various Travaris at the beginning of each,

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uh, each section. You've got pictures of knights and singers and so on.

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And what is the musical notation itself look like? Because I guess it will be very different to what we might see if we open a book today.

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Sure. So some things are similar. We still have a Stav.

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It's drawn in in red and there are at least four lines, mostly four lines, sometimes more.

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We also, as in modern notation, have a clef at the start of each line.

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Normally a C clef, but this can also be an F clef.

176
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And then the notes themselves are 12th and 13th century French square notation,

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which bears some resemblance to the kind of news that one might see in chant books that are used in the Catholic Church today,

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for example, that say you can have just notes on there on their own, but they can be combined together.

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You told me earlier. That's right. So in in modern notation, we link together notes using all sorts of of means.

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Sometimes we use it to show rhythm. Sometimes we link notes together with slurs or ties to show that you join notes together.

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Principally in this music, you join notes together to show that they belong to one syllable.

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Yeah, and I think it's also important to note that the notation of this music is from a very different tradition than the music itself.

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So the notation that that they're using is the notation of church music, of chant and of motets or.

184
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Yeah, mostly of chant. So you're kind of. You're kind of trying to capture a tradition using a different language and a different musical language,

185
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and so there are certain things that we can't really recover all the time.

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For example, rhythm, we don't know.

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This is like this used to be a massive debate which nearly sort of stifled all study in this area because college was so angry at each other.

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Was was there rhythm in this music? And a few German scholars sort of made very elaborate theories of rhythm in this music.

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But others sort of very, very strongly rejected this.

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And we still don't know. But I think nobody really cares very much anymore.

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We kind of just we accept the doubt and and move on and try to we try to find out other aspects of this music.

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So who was writing down these songs in the chants on the air?

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Were they sort of roughly contemporary when the songs were being written and sung?

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Well, these books written all at once, or they composed piece by piece. Well, it's kind of a complicated story.

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The earliest chanson that we have is from the 40s or 50s, from eastern France,

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quite a quite a way away from the centre, the geographical centre of this tradition.

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Now, the earliest truth as drawn out in our country and of course,

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actually the Icelandic Lucy were writing at the end of the 12th century and the start of the 13th century.

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So that's a time gap of 30 years.

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We then have something here being produced pretty much in every decade up until the first decade of the 14th century.

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So from 12, 50 onwards, we have. Sean, eight from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 12 90s and from the 30s, hundreds.

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And these are mostly being produced in Artois, which is a region in northeastern France,

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nearly of just south of Lille is Århus, which is the centre of Artois.

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And we imagine they would have been produced in ateliers. So not not within the church, but they're kind of scriber workshops, grabble workshops here.

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But there isn't very much evidence of these the workshops themselves.

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So we rely quite heavily actually on art,

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historical evidence of the Illuminations and the historian and initials in the manuscripts and who's paying for them.

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Hmm. Patrons. So one particular example is the short, funny idea, what it's known as the ceremony of the King,

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probably copied in the 12 60s or 70s in the Artois, possibly.

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It's been suggested for Charles of Austria, who was the younger brother of Louis the 9th,

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and he became king of Naples and at one point king of Jerusalem.

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And these were, as I said before, these were very expensive objects and they were used probably as status symbols by these wealthy patrons.

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We don't really think they were sung from very often because they're they don't bear much sign that many signs of wear.

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So we might look, for example, in manuscripts for Tear's in pages or worn edges, particularly on the sides or dirt.

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And that gives us a sign of how much the book might have been used. Mm hmm.

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But these lots of visuals are really quite clean and in good condition.

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Very good condition, which suggests that actually.

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The singers just knew the music that these these notes functioned more like memory cues and maybe they were passed around,

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you know, when you had guests to to spark discussion, to to spark the performance of music.

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But they were not necessarily sung from their words like codebooks.

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So no. Very different kind of.

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I think it's time to talk about control factor, which I word that I learnt this morning, where you get one song to the tune of another.

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It's like, I'm sorry, I haven't a clue. This happens quite a lot. You tell me the melodies travel very far and wide in Europe.

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Yes, I have one example of a melody. It began its life as a troubadour.

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Melody can allows that to move there. And it's quite a well known melody in its time.

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It was we know that it was well known because it was disseminated in over 30, 40 manuscripts from all over France, in England as well.

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At least the melody was disseminated there. But so the Troubadour song itself has at least four different contra factor.

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One of the contra facts is the one the Jeopardy that we just sang, and that's that's preserved in a source from Burgundy and one from Lorrain.

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So sort of northeastern France. But there's also a Latin debate fact, which is about something similar that these these two male and female voices.

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So they were arguing about about love and they're using imagery that has to do with the eye and the heart.

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So they're talking about the art of love topos, again,

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about being struck by this fiery dart which travels into your heart and bursts and makes it burst into flames.

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Well, the Latin contra fact is actually a debate between a heart, a personified heart and a personified eye over the dangers of love.

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And so it sort of turned this rhetoric of about love into a rhetoric about lust and sin, the sins of the eye, which are written on the heart.

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But there's another kind of fact which is in the voice of a female to there.

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And then there are more. Oh, yes, it's then it sort of moves full circle.

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And in the early 14th century or the late 13th century, we have a we see the melody turning up in a mystery play on St. Agnes,

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who also had sort of had a lot to do with the dangers of love because she was betrothed to a Roman soldier.

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But of course, she wanted to she wanted to be the bride of Christ.

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Right. So but they stripped stripped her naked and sent her to a brothel.

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And so this is sung at that part of the play. There's actually a citation in this place manuscript, and instead of citing the original troubador song,

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which from that which was from the south of France, they cite the Latin song, which was from probably around Paris.

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This play, the manuscript of this plays from the south of France. So it's odd that they would cite a song from so far away.

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But we get the sense that over time,

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maybe the maybe the Troubadour song is forgotten or maybe this Latin song is more sort of appropriate about this Latin song,

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about the sin of lust for this particular play. So there's a huge sort of inter textual dialogue happening.

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And this is typical of a lot of control factor. Sometimes you get the first line repeated, in fact, the first line of the original song.

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So it's setting up an expectation that you're going to hear a particular song. But then the line, the text changes.

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It diverges from the original. So you get the sense that the writers of these contra factor want the audience to think or

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they're sort of tricking the audience into thinking they're hearing this original song.

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Everybody knows that's really widely disseminated. But no, actually, they're hearing something else.

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I realise that there's one thing that we haven't managed to talk about yet, which is the cult of the Virgin Mary, that these Courtney Love poems,

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they lend themselves well to small alteration, to a very, very Christian message where the woman is now the Virgin Mary.

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Yeah, because you've got this idealised lady anyway. And so the most idealised lady of all would be Mary.

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So it's quite, quite easy to to transform these into Mary in songs, quite Orthodox Mary in songs.

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And a number of Travaris themselves made their own Mary in songs, possibly for their own devotion.

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But there are other figures like Gotanda Quincy, who was a Benedictine prior,

258
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and he made it his mission really to take as many true their songs as he could and transform them into Mary songs in various in very clever ways.

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Because you get this with contracture, you get this sort of layering of meaning happening.

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And so often these texts are reacting against the Tuvaluans, whereas the lady in the original text is is cruel and so on.

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And Mercilus, of course, Mary is the intercessor. She is the most merciful lady of all, and God has a huge dissemination of his manuscripts.

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He's one of the first authors to have ordered and compiled his manuscripts very meticulously.

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He wants it to be ordered in a very specific way. And there are over 100 manuscripts with his his stories and his songs in them about the Virgin Mary.

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So there was a link between the religious and the secular song styles at the time through these these resetting of the tunes for religious purposes.

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Absolutely. And I think actually conjure facta sort of blur the lines between sacred and secular all the time,

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because some of these, Travaris, even so generous and so on,

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were associated with Confraternity or were amongst themselves and and were writing so-called secular love songs about the Dharma the Lady.

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And we know that figures like Ordinated Quassey or there's another one named Adamsville Abbassi,

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they were very aware of these songs and they knew them. They knew them well enough to be able to construct other songs from them.

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And one of the interesting things about these kind of eternities is that they were on the whole in general, they were dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

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So the one that we know the most about the puy of our US was founded on this 11th

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century miracle where the Virgin Mary appeared to two joggler who were estranged,

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brought them together with the bishop of Arus, gave them a miraculous candle.

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And from this legend, this confraternity of Shangla of postings was formed.

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So there are these analogues between the sacred and the secular all the time.

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Hmm. We'll come back to talk more about contraception later.

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But the texts of many of these songs are, by modern standards, rather rather rude, rather bawdy.

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Can you give us some sense of why people wrote and wrote in this way?

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Well, I think it's first important to stress that tastes in bawdiness change.

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So we in the 21st century still have something of a hangover from the Victorian sensibility.

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It's been relatively widely discussed about why why literary texts from this time are quite so rude,

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and one argument for it is that there's quite strict codification about what you are allowed to say and what you should say.

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And the flipside of that is that people sometimes want to let out what they're not allowed to say.

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And these songs are the media when they can do it as well. So suggesting, for example, you might see in a mediaeval book.

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I'm thinking of a 14th century copy of the Rome until a Rose, very famous 13th century text, which during a diatribe against women in the margin,

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the illuminator has drawn a picture of a nun in the arms of a monk and in another page, a nun picking phalluses off a tree, for example.

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This one has made the rounds on the Internet. It's a very, very famous example.

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And. The art historian Michael Karmiel has made the argument that this kind of margin and made

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body text relationship is sort of symbolic of the way mediaeval people might have thought.

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So in the main body of the text, you have the orthodox framework of how one should think.

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And in the margins you have a kind of subversive, bawdy, rude aspect to mediaeval thought.

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And we see this in certain opposition.

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So we have the normal church liturgy, the prescribed services of the church, and then we have occasional feasts such as the Feast of Fools,

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which happened after Christmas where a boy bishop was elected and a boy was bishop for the day.

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This is kind of mediaeval liturgy turned upside down,

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topsy turvy atomically turf if you so that people got it out of their system and the status quo could remain.

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So you're suggesting that these vernacular songs, although we might perhaps at first past see them as from subversive,

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actually, they have a role in preserving the Orthodox. Yes.

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So one theory about troubador poetry,

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because it doesn't it sort of doesn't make sense why all of these knights might have been singing about desire for a lady who they couldn't have.

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You know, why? Why waste their time on it? Well,

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scholars have argued that actually this desire and this singing keeps the knights busy so that they can't it

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sort of keeps them in a position of subjugation so that they then can't challenge the overlords of the court.

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And in a way, these this kind of bawdiness does the same thing rather than it being a sign that everyone is being immoral and.

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Promiscuous, it could, in fact, be people able to talk about it so they don't go and do it.

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Although you mentioned the songs about love, keeping the lights busy and not thinking of political gain,

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there is an example of a contracture that make a legend in her notes in which a rather sharp political point is made by guards against the king.

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Yeah, and I've actually found a few examples of these these contri factor, this political culture factor.

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In this particular instance, we have a contract which is based on a true Verizon and it shares similar phrases.

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So in the trivia song you have phrases like, I've been sweetly deceived, but in the political song it says, I've been cruelly deceived.

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And what happens in the political song is instead of being addressed to a lady or talking about a lady,

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the narrator here talks about Lady France in the original song.

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You have all of these kind of that the typical ambiguity of a true very narrators voice,

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which is saying at the same time that the lady is beautiful and sweet, but also that the lady is cruel and really underneath.

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It's kind of masking the kind of hatred or kind of anger.

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But this is externalised in the political song and it's directed toward France and toward Louis the ninth in particular,

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Saint Louis, who is king at the time. Based on some of the references of what's happening, so they say that we've been we've been judged by inquest,

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all of the barons are are astonished because they've lost their rights.

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What this is based on is a historical event towards the end of the century, around the 12th, 60s,

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70s, where a baron named Underland QC found some young people apparently trespassing on his lands.

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Now, this is preserved in, I think, six different chronicles. So there are different versions of it.

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But basically, he he arrested these three young people, youths, it says, I think, and had them hanged just for trespassing on his in his forests.

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And a relative of the young people complained to Saint Louis, who at this time had a great reputation for being the king of justice.

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You know, the just killing the good king. And Louis had uncle brought to a hearing and uncle wanted to settle it by judicial duel,

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which was was quite common at the time, was kind of a tradition, traditional way of settling justice.

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So so the idea was whoever had the truth in them would would win the duel because sort of God was on their side.

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But in this case, because the youths were not of any aristocratic status, there was nobody who could really defend them in that way.

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And so Lewis said, no, this is not fair. I'm going to be subjected to trial by inquest.

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And according to to French mediaeval French law, this wasn't really constitutional in this case because it would touch his his personal, his status.

330
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So although he actually sort of circumvented traditional customary law in this case and forced ungiven to to submit to this trial.

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And uncle ended up paying a huge fine, had to spend three years in the Holy Land,

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had to have a church built where prayers would be said for the three young people in perpetuity.

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I don't know, maybe they're still being said. But but the thing was that Libby was breaking with convention here.

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And and this song is written by the barons in defence of well, we don't know exactly who wrote it, but probably a baronial voice,

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probably somebody who is sympathetic because the other barons were with anger at this trial and they were equally sort of amazed and confused.

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But the thing is, the song doesn't directly criticise Louis because that would be dangerous.

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We know that they didn't have any sort of violent uprising, at least there's no there's no evidence of that.

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So it seems like the only way they could get back or protest was through music.

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But the song mentions the mendicants. So the song doesn't blame Louis.

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It's very careful to blame the mendicants instead of the Dominican and Franciscan friars who were very close to Louis,

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who were advisers to him, but also they they name one amongst themselves, one of the nobility who is to blame.

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And that, I think is Seimone the Klerk more or Seimone than now.

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Now, Simon Simon of now was from Noel, and he was one of Louie's most trusted advisers.

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He took control of France when Louis went on the Sixth Crusade. And it so happens that this song is taken from.

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The original to their song is by somebody named Blondell Donau, who is probably from this same area.

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So what I think is that by using Blondell song, you're kind of getting you're targeting music musically,

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SIMONOV now, because and actually I found that there might there might be a relation between the two.

348
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They had a familial. Yes, that's right.

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It depends on who you think Blondell is because there is some question over his identity, his historical identity.

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But if he is two of the figures that scholars think he is, then he would be related to Simonov now.

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So they're using this song by Blondell to kind of, I don't know,

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target or at least provoke dialogue or a kind of rich commentary on what's happening here.

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We have about five minutes left. Joe Madison, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the reception of his songs, their history.

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Do they influence later songwriters and poets? Another big question.

355
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I'm sorry. I mean, one thing to say is that mediaevalism has really captured the modern imagination, particularly in the 19th century.

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You know, we're in Oxford and we're surrounded by Victorian buildings, inspired by the mediaeval Gothic.

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And in a way, the reception of courtly song is a kind of romantic nostalgia for that.

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One of the important effects of the songs of the trevisan in the troubadours is the trope of the love song.

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This was really established by the troubadours, possibly with Arabic influence before that.

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And it's now the dominant genre of popular music and love songs.

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You can trace love songs right from the troubadours through the arson and over in

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the in the 14th century to show some in the 15th century courtly court songs,

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songs, madrigal's in the 16th century. Then we get into lovesongs opera, 19th century leader, 20th century pop songs.

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To finish, I think we've heard a little bit about your work, about Simon Denel, but Joe, what are you working on at the moment?

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Well, at the moment, I'm also working on contracture, in fact, specifically related to debates almost as your party,

366
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because it seems that early debates, songs might have taken their melodies from lovesongs, the particular songs I'm working on at the moment.

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One is the debates on which debates whether it is better to be able to see and talk to your lover,

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but without kissing or touching her or to kiss or touch her, but without being able to see or speak to her.

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Now the song that shares a melody with this is a song devoted to the Virgin Mary.

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And in this song, The Champagne, the king of Trivers compares his love for women to his love for the Virgin Mary.

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And this is allegories in an elaborate image of trees and fruit.

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So he says that his heart is an orchard which is full of withered,

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unripe fruit trees that will never bear fruit properly because it's not what God wants for him.

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Whereas Mary is the is the sweetest tree who will give sweet fruit that will satisfy him forever through her son Christ.

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And there are all sorts of interesting readings. If you read the songs together, you can see that on the one hand,

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this devotional song is trying to transform profane love into something more idealised.

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On the other hand, if you look at the debate about whether you should sleep with or without speaking to or speak to, without sleeping with,

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there's a kind of anxiety about male sexual prowess and impotence,

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which ties in to all of this imagery about trees, trees that when flower and trees, that only flower.

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When you say I've got. Well, thank you very much, both of you.

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I feel we've barely scratched the surface in our 45 minutes. Yes, just so much to take in and to learn.

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Next week, we'll be talking about Oscar Wilde.