[In the following essay, Léglu examines the political implications of certain slanderous troubadour songs.]

One of the features of satirical writing is that it transgresses textual boundaries in order to address issues and concerns understood by performer and audience to be extra-textual. Despite an awareness of the relations between troubadour sirventes and contemporary political and personal disputes, the possibility that these songs might have functioned as lampoons, and been received as slander, has not been fully addressed.¹

The twelfth-century troubadour Marcabru is described in one of the fourteenth-century vidas composed about him as a slanderer: ‘e dis mal de las femnas e d'amor’ (‘and he slandered women and love’).²Maldir,³ from the Latin male dicere, also maledictum or maledictio, means (in classical usage) slander, wicked gossip, criticism or insult.⁴ This definition is made clearer by the fate assigned the poet in the other vida: ‘E fo mout cridatz e ausitz pel mon, e doptatz per sa lenga; car el fo tant maldizens que, a la fin, lo desfeiron li castellan de Guian[a], de cui avia dich mout gran mal’ (‘and he was much cried out [reputed?] and listened to throughout the world, and feared for his tongue; for he was so slanderous that, in the end, the castellans of Guyenne, whom he had slandered very badly, killed him’).⁵

The precise definition of this maldir is left to the songs attributed to Marcabru in the manuscripts. The eventual murder may be a fictional device, similar to Peire Vidal having his tongue cut out by a knight, for claiming to be his wife's lover, or the death of Guillem de Berguedà at the hands of a footsoldier after a career of mayhem,⁶ but these violent punishments may be related to contemporary ideas about slander in poetry.⁷ The association between sirventes and violence is clearest in the vida and razos composed about Bertran de Born, but this corpus raises questions about general troublemaking, rather than the specific instances of slander to be examined here, and will therefore not be addressed in this article.⁸

The sirventes in a woman's voice previously attributed to Raimon Jordan attacks previous troubadours' songs for mal dir against women,⁹ and an anonymous cobla advises a woman to avoid slandering another, once again in these terms:¹⁰

qar domna deu esquivar
malditz d'autr' e elognar.
E pos malditz d'autra.il passa las denz,
de si eissa sapcha q'es maldizens.

(5-8)

(For a lady must avoid and reject the slander of another. And if slander of another lady does pass her lips, may she know she slanders herself.)

The Latin term maledictum conflated slander with curse,¹¹ but legislation under the Republic differentiated carmen malum, a sung curse aiming to harm the person, from carmen famosum, which attacks reputation.¹² Among the dense writings on slanderous words in Quintilian and the Rhetorica ad Herennium,¹³ as well as in the use of invective curse by Ovid in Ibis and in the Tristia,¹⁴ it emerges that Roman society was extremely concerned with the delimitation and control of slanderous words, but that the use of slander, distilled in small doses through invective, insinuation and irony, was an essential ingredient of good oratory.

The concerns are evident in the Justinian Code, which took over from the Theodosian Code as the basis for civil law from the twelfth century onwards.¹⁵ The two codes directly influence canon law on the subjects of slander and defamation, despite the surprising lack of a specific code on defamation in Gratian's Decretum. It is only with Gregory IX's Decretals that a coherent, but still unspecified, canon-law position emerges.¹⁶ This is partly due to the fact that secular courts and local custom tended to be responsible for such cases.

Helmholz's study of civil cases of defamation in English church courts up to 1600 notes that the gap in Gratian's Decretum was filled through a provincial constitution promulgated in 1222. This piece of legislation, read aloud in all churches in England, covered all false accusations of crime (such as theft or adultery) but could be stretched to include such ‘personal defects’ as illegitimacy or leprosy.¹⁷ Reparation was not mentioned, since the slanderer was excommunicated, but was implicit in the process of penance, which involved making amends to persons harmed.¹⁸ Cases extant tend to be resolved through fines and public apology.¹⁹

The English constitution on the subject was based on the notion of infamia. A person whose fama—reputation or status—was damaged or removed through an acknowledged or notorious misdeed on his or her part was considered to be in a state of infamia. There were three forms: infamia iuris, incurred through a judicial sentence; infamia canonica, resulting from mortal sin; and infamia facti, the result of the public dissemination of information. The least controllable, and eventually the most insidious, since it remained until disproved and was not the result of a judgement, was infamia facti, which could only be removed through canonical purgation, a formal oath. Any form of infamia debarred its subject from certain official posts, and from testifying in court.²⁰ It also resulted in social ostracism.

Across Europe, local custom tended to dominate in such cases, as well as the Roman law concept of iniuria, derived from the Justinian Code, as an act or a statement intended to damage another person, which conflated physical injury with insult (in French, injure).²¹ Gratian's Decretum addressed the question most explicitly in C.5 q.1 c.1: ‘Qui in alterius famam publice scripturam aut verba contumeliosa confinxerit, et repertus scripta non probaverit, flagelletur’ (‘Whoever shall formulate a written text, or slanderous words, publicly against the reputation of another, if he does not prove what he has written, shall be whipped’).²² However, there is no specific chapter on defamation issues.

This conflation of bodily with verbal harm is evident in the treatment of verbal assaults,²³ as well as in the cases recorded in the Fueros of northern Spain, where the denuestos vedados, the words ‘through which came murder’, identify slander with physical harm.²⁴ The Alphonsine Siete Partidas (composed in the mid-thirteenth century) attempted to empty out the more brutal and sexual aspects of injury and to privilege a concept of iniuria concerned with personal dignity in the abstract, ‘deshonra que es fecha o dicha á otri á tuerto ó á despreciamento dél’ (‘a dishonour which is done or said to another to harm or to diminish his reputation’).²⁵ The palabras vedadas consist of accusations of leprosy, ugliness, treachery, sexual promiscuity and homosexuality, a range of references which Madero also traces in the Gallego-Portuguese Cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer, with the addition of impotence, and mockery of poorly endowed men.²⁶

The cases recorded in the fueros understand any physical assault which exposes, damages or reduces the body (for example, dragging someone from their horse) as iniuria, an attack on the individual's honour, in terms of their dignity or reputation. These dishonours de fecho were perceived as serious assaults.²⁷

The relation between iniuria and infamia facti is elaborated through slander: damage to an individual's reputation and social standing may be carried out through invective or physical attack, and the victim be made ‘infamous’ as a result, but the slander must be grounded in fact, and proved by witnesses, especially when the product of verbal report. For the poeta maledicus,²⁸ the dangers of a verbal attack conflated with physical assault are great, since they may rebound as physical retribution. Maria Ana Ramos has suggested that the distinction between cantigas d'escarnho (songs of mockery) and de mal dizer (of slander) is stylistic rather than systematic;²⁹ in terms of the legal activity extant from the period, it is tempting to argue that, on the contrary, the differentiation of mockery from slander was a delicate matter for poet and audience alike.

Helen Solterer's study of a particular instance of debate over slander, that between women and male writers claiming ‘mastery’ over women, notes the importance for the woman respondents to Alain Chartier of asserting that they are free of infamia, and therefore should not be attacked: ‘tes escrips, esquelz tu nous diffames tant grandement que se fuissons infames’ (‘your writings, in which you defame us as greatly as if we were infames’).³⁰ While a person known to be ‘infamous’ may be insulted at will, a person known to be of good character should not.³¹

Solterer's book is concerned with a specific instance of gendered literary debate, which is not strictly within the scope of this study. It is useful, however, in insisting on the importance of distinguishing slander against women, which is overwhelmingly concerned with sexual reputation and takes different forms, from slander between men, where women may feature as accessories but the issues are different (for example, Sharpe's examination of sexual slander cases in York uses cases involving women in support of statements about men's attitude towards slander, without analysing why the assaults on women are so much more citable than the men's, and therefore different).³²

Solterer cites Evelyne Larguèche's point that insult is combative, aimed to silence its addressee or to instigate a direct confrontation, akin to a duel.³³ Gossip and reputation, for example in the context of a small community, tend to regulate social status and interaction through the interpersonal bonding effects of conversation. The group's scrutiny and evaluation of its members are based on a drive towards excluding all those it considers unacceptable from the greater group, largely through the individual's sexual and ethical behaviour.³⁴ The regulatory and controlling functions of insult come into play when a member of the community is judged to have infringed the moral codes set by the group.³⁵ Slander, it may argued, is a conceptual interpretation of an insult which enables the addressee to fight back indirectly, by forcing the accusing speaker to recant, rather than replying in kind. It is both an effective weapon and a shield, and is played out in the public, not the private sphere, aiming to re-establish the community's approval of the ‘defamed’ individual in formal terms.

This article will examine defamation in the troubadour sirventes by focusing on the songs of Guillem de Berguedà and Peire Cardenal in relation to surviving legal cases involving the use of rumour and slanderous accusation. All the examples cited at length are attacks on clerics; only one (the case reported by John Mundy) records the accusations brought by monks; the other accusers, all poets, are laymen.

Guillem de Berguedà's invective assaults on unresponding addressees have been traced to genuine conflicts between rival lords in Catalonia by Martín de Riquer.³⁶ His range of insult fits very well into the frame of palabras vedadas (‘forbidden words’) set by the fueros of Castille and León, and has similarities with the approach adopted by the cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer in Luso-Galician lyric. Despite the evident aesthetic success enjoyed by his sirventes, and their inclusion in manuscripts compiled over fifty years later in northern Italy, it is worth considering how much these often vicious personal attacks might have been received as deshonras and cases of iniuria by contemporaries.

Guillem accuses his addressees by deploying four out of the five palabras vedadas. His enemy, the viscount Ramon Folc de Cardona is accused of treachery.³⁷ Sexual promiscuity and homosexuality are an obsession in the cycle of insulting songs addressed to the bishop of Urgel;³⁸ these songs also focus on his genitals, as priapic monstrosity, or as absent, through castration.³⁹ Ugliness occurs either through facial features or through mutilation,⁴⁰ in songs directed against the bishop and Guillem's rival lord, the marquess of Mataplana.⁴¹ Leprosy is not a recurrent device, but the impotence and deformed genitalia that Madero traces as equivalent insults in the cantigas are also found in Guillem's songs.

The song Joglars, no.t desconortz⁴² sets up a line of four specified or named witnesses testifying against Guillem to the king (lines 15-21) in opposition to Guillem's three named supporters (lines 29-35). The song refers to a formal judicial situation, with the king passing judgement on Guillem for his alleged—and unspecified—crimes. It is parodic in the sense that his answer to his detractors is to call them cuckolds and claim to have seduced their wives (lines 20-8): he implicitly accuses them of slander by slandering them in return, through the joglar he has sent, and through the song. The song plays on a systematic removal of seriousness from the fictional situation (a plea from prison for vindication); by mocking and reducing every stage of the procedure it envisages, it constructs an insolent slander on the status of the king and his court, and their right to sit in judgement over him.

One striking aspect of this song is its obsessive recourse to naming witnesses. This is a feature of Guillem's invective songs, in which witnesses are cited for accusations of sexual transgression, especially exposure and sexual assault. It may be argued that this is a device for self-preservation from direct implication in the accusation (and therefore from responsibility for a slanderous accusation), but witnesses are also used to create narratives, and to emulate legal procedure. In Chanson ai comensada,⁴³ one of the bishop of Urgel's victims is named and said to have been torn apart by his monstrous penis, as another named witness has reported:

tant for fort et encorba,
so.m dis Girautz de Jorba,
Bernarda miechpartic.

(28-30)

(He fucks so hard and swells [or stretches?] her so much, so Giraut de Jorba told me, that he split Bernarda in two.)

A further witness, a doctor, is enlisted, to support the story and to provide comic detail:

Morta fora si.l metge
non fos que venc d'Usetge,
qe.l mejan li cosic.

(31-33)

(She would have died if it hadn't been for the doctor, who came from Osseja, for he sewed up her middle.)

References to witnesses are especially intensive when accusations of homosexuality are involved, presumably in order to distance the speaker or poet from direct involvement—and therefore implication—with the bishop:

E'n Arnaut n'auzi clamar, cel de Nahuga,
q'era si espes e gros que tot l'enbuga,
sia dreitz o sia tortz, desus li puga
                    sobre.l dos,
si q'eras l'a preing e gros;
qe.N Raimons de Boixados
m'o ditz e.N Arnautz d'Alos.

(And I heard Sir Arnau (the one from Naüja) cry that he was so thick and big that everything … (?) him; whether he be straight or twisted, he climbs on to his back, until he's made him ‘pregnant’ and fat; so Sir Ramon of Boixadors and Sir Arnau d'Alòs told me.)⁴⁴

All the examples cited above are crude descriptions of sexual assault, and display a speaker anxious to dissociate himself from the infamia he inflicts on his addressee. However, the language of accusation used is borrowed from legal procedure. The similar activities of Rogier, a clerk from Poitou, are presented by Guillem in a form directly analogous to the phrasing of the legal record of an accusation made against Pierre de Dalbs, abbot of Lézat, by his own monks in 1254:⁴⁵

Item apud Podium Cerda fuit captus cum quadam muliere et redemit se.c. sol. Melg., et hoc audivit a fratre Andrea.

(Item, he was captured at Puigcerda with some woman and freed himself by paying 100 shillings of Melgueil, and this was heard of by Brother Andrew.)

                    A Serana
                    Part Viana
fon pres ab una putana.(46)

(At Serana, near Viana, he was captured with a whore.)

As John Hine Mundy reports, the case against Pierre de Dalbs assembles thirty-six witnesses to testify his incontinence, lechery, and abuse of power, through anecdotes of which many are evidently heavily fantasized gossip.⁴⁷ In his study of the development of canon law on sexual matters, James A. Brundage notes that, although mandatory clerical celibacy became an accepted law throughout the period, it was still resisted in practice, and concubinage was a commonplace even in the thirteenth century. The treatment of clerical fornication became more lenient in the thirteenth century, except in cases, such as that of Pierre de Dalbs, which were notorious or scandalous.⁴⁸ It is possible that Pierre de Dalbs's case is treated as an example, in order to impress the importance of celibacy on his colleagues.

The crimes listed and described in this case are overwhelmingly against women, but only one woman is called to testify against him; the tenor of the accusations reflects a fascination with the abbot's sexual potency and genitals on the part of men.⁴⁹ The anecdotes that Guillem de Berguedà uses against his addressees reappear in this case as formal testimony, with named witnesses. As a result, it may be inferred that the sirventes might have been received as evidence of his addressees' depravity by his audience. Rather than entertaining invective, these songs could have circulated as conscious libelli famosi and have been used to injure their addressees in a quasi-physical sense.

A set of songs apparently constructed deliberately as a formal accusation is a cycle of three sirventes addressed to Esteve de Belmon and attributed to Peire Cardenal.⁵⁰ The three songs repeat the accusation—that Esteve betrayed part of his familia and massacred them over a meal⁵¹—and accumulate abusive epithets and details, with the aim of bringing him to do penance for this infamia. In terms of palabras vedadas, Esteve is accused of treason:

Esteves, cant penras ta penedensa,
Al capelan, diguas en passïenssa
Dels sirventes que t'ai fach un o dos,
Qu'adoncx poira auzir tas traïssos.(52)

(Esteve, when you're doing your penance, tell the chaplain, while you're about it, one or two of the sirventes I composed for you, for then he'll be able to hear about your betrayals.)

Li retrairay chantan
                    Aitan
Tro en Compostela,
Pes deschaus e ploran, s'en an.(53)

(I will upbraid him so much in song until he goes to Compostella, barefoot and weeping.)

This is not treated with much optimism, however; the speaker also comments that Esteve's penance is feigned and a cover for his crimes.⁵⁴ The speaker threatens him with hanging.⁵⁵ He is also repeatedly called a glutton, ugly through his greed, and divorced from his own soul, which is already damned.⁵⁶ A reference to an equally ugly mistress adds the accusation of sexual transgression to the count.⁵⁷

No legal documents accusing Esteve de Belmont of specific crimes have survived, though Charles Fabre surmised from three charters that Esteve's younger relatives perceived him as a threat once his brother died leaving no male heir.⁵⁸ However, the gradual disappearance of older male relatives over a period of over twenty years can hardly be supposed to prove that they were murdered in the way the songs allege.

Could this cycle have been received, and responded to, as slander? It certainly defames its addressee, alleging repeated instances of infamia and striving to ruin his reputation among the listeners. The songs are presented as evidence against Esteve, to be recited to the confessor and destined to force the addressee to repent. On the basis of a case recorded in 1303, in the Var, this would seem to be the case.⁵⁹

In 1302, Jean Nicolas of Pignans (Var) composed an insulting song, ‘libellum famosum seu cancionem’, against a local clerk called Rogier, and sang it while people were dancing, in the main square as well as other parts of town. Rogier accused Jean Nicolas of defamation and brought a case, not to his local seigneurial court but to the royal court at Le Luc, where he was judged by the visiting judge of Draguignan to have indeed been defamed, and the poet was fined ten pounds. The provost of Pignans, who was the local seigneur, complained that his authority had been overlooked, and appealed to the appeals judge at Aix, who confirmed the sentence. A further appeal to the juge mage of Provence brought confirmation of the previous two sentences and the Latin record of the case, which includes the song and describes it as a libellus famosus.⁶⁰ The phrasing of the report is worth noting (italics mine):

Item, quare constat dicto judici quod Johannes Nicolaus de Piniaco, ausu suo temerario, in vituperationem et injuriam Rogerii clerici de Piniacensis ecclesie et infamiam ejusdem, ex certa scientia seu ex proposito, quemdam libellum famosum seu quamdam cancionem inferius denotatam fecit et composuit contra dictum Rogerium clericum, cujus libelli famosi seu cancionis tenor dignoscitur esse talis.⁶¹

(Item, it is noted by the aforesaid judge that Jean Nicolas of Pignans, by his rash act, in vituperation and insult to Roger, a clerk of the church of Pignans, and to inflict infamy on him, out of knowledge or design, composed and created this defaming letter [lampoon, libel?] or song written below against the said Roger, clerk, the course [or content?] of which defaming letter or song is distinguished as follows.)

The song cited is made up of five three-line stanzas in aab,⁶² with an uneven heptasyllabic metre, and an inconsistent treatment of rhyme. It names Roger in the first line and threatens him with damnation if he does not repent of his purported crime, which appears to be of robbing the town of Pignans of its wealth:

Rogier, bona foras natz
Si rendias los tortz c'aves fatz
Am tal que cascum los perdoni;
Car si aco vos non fatz
En enfern anas tot clar,
Laïns a mal aventura.
Pinzans as escaitivat,
As almornas l'as gitat.
Tant n'as fag de desmesuras.
Si n'avias iiij perbestatz(63)
Non rendras los tortz qu'aves fatz
Per sobras de desmesuras.
Si tos tortz non vols desfar,
A Dieu merce deves clamar
Com aquel los ti perdoni.(64)

(Rogier, you would have been well born if you repaired the wrongs you have committed so that everyone could forgive them. For if you do not do this, you will directly to Hell, to have a bad time in there. You have made Pignans wretched, reduced it to begging alms, so many immoderate things have you done. If you had four provostships,⁶⁵ you would not repair the wrongs you have committed through an excess of immoderate things. If you don't want to undo the wrongs you're committed, you'll have to cry mercy to God, that he might forgive you.)

The song is clearly aimed at invective rather than aesthetic effect, and its accusations depend on a local knowledge of the activities of Rogier. However, it presents a strong example of a libellus famosus as contemporaries understood it. Rogier's reputation is pilloried in public; he is attacked for his morals (desmesura) as well as threatened with damnation. The threat of Hell and separation from the blessed was a commonplace in ecclesiastical maledictions,⁶⁶ and carried a powerful charge. It is also notable that this song, like the cycle attributed to Peire Cardenal, aims to bring Rogier to amend his ways and do reparation, presumably either through penance or through amends.

While the convoluted legal procedure around the song appears to be the product of a technicality rather than the song (though Helmholz notes that defamation cases often brought about clashes between jurisdictions, especially between royal and ecclesiastical courts),⁶⁷ it is clear that this petty lampoon is considered serious enough for three judges who are strangers to the locality to pass and confirm a sentence which inflicts a sizeable fine on Jean Nicolas. Furthermore, the veracity of the song is not examined: the infamia and injuria it inflicts are considered sufficient grounds for punishment, and the grievance expressed by its author appears to be irrelevant to the case. This is despite the fact that, according to P. Meyer, a number of Provençal coutumiers demanded that a defaming accusation should be proved by the defamer.⁶⁸ The words are damaging and a ‘bad example’, regardless of their relation to observable fact.

This attitude is even more striking in a case from 1324, recorded in the Inquisition Register of Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers.⁶⁹ This case concerns the posthumous condemnation for heresy of a knight, Bertrand de Taïx, who had been called before the Inquisition half a century before, and had later expressed anticlerical opinions at home, in the market square and in church. One witness, Jean Davy, reports that twenty years previously, he witnessed a knight, Guillaume Saisset, reciting a cobla against priests in church while watching his brother, the then bishop, celebrating Mass. He says that Bertrand de Taïx asked Guillaume to teach him the song, adding that priests nowadays were even more corrupt than at its time of composition. This caused Jean Davy to tell him to be quiet, wherupon Bertrand asked him to learn the cobla for him.⁷⁰ The men knew the song to be old, but none referred to its composer, and all appear to have learned it orally. A further witness, his nephew, states that Bertrand de Taïx taught him the song, and reproduces the same text later in the manuscript, with a few variants and an extra line.⁷¹ It is striking that Jean Davy, an old man by 1324, is vague about the year and the season of the Mass, but does remember one stanza of a song accurately.⁷²

The events reported are said to have occurred around the year 1304, and concern the first stanza of a song extant in eleven troubadour manuscripts, attributed to Peire Cardenal, Clergue si fan pastor.⁷³ This sirventes is a contrafactum of a Peire Vidal canso, Ben viu a gran dolor,⁷⁴ itself parodied by Torcafol.⁷⁵ The text dictated by Jean Davy, described as a cobla (‘unam coblam talem contra clericos’), is given below. The nephew's version differs in line 1, ‘Li clercs se fan pastor’, and adds an eighth line, ‘mays pels cas que temia’, which I have inserted.⁷⁶

Clerges se fan pastors
E son galiadors
E par de gran sanctor
Qui les vetz revestir
E pres me asouevir
Que'n Alengris un dia
Ad un partec venia
[Mays pels cas que temia]
Pel de moto vestic
Pueys mariet e trasic
Tot quan li abelic.

(Clerks become pastors [shepherds] and they are deceivers, and they appear to be very holy to whoever sees them dressed up, and I find myself remembering that Sir Alengris one day was coming to a sheepfold; [but because of the dogs he feared] he put on a sheepskin, then he damaged and stole everything he liked the look of.)

The text in Lavaud's edition is slightly, but not drastically, different:

Clergue si fan pastor
E son aucizedor;
E par de gran sanctor
Qui los vei revestir,
E.m pren a sovenir
Que n'Ezengris un dia,
Volc ad un parc venir:
Mas pels cans que temia
Pel de mouton vestic
Ab que los escarnic,
Puois manget e traïc
Tot so que li.abelic.

(Clerks become pastors, but they are killers; and they look very holy to whoever sees them dressed up, and I find myself remembering that Sir Ysengrin, one day, wanted to get into a sheepfold, but because of the dogs he feared, he put on a sheepskin, then he ate and stole all he liked the look of.)

The Lavaud edition uses the versions in manuscripts ADbCIKJR, for which this is the first stanza. All these versions have aucizedor, ‘killers’, in the place of galiadors in line 2.⁷⁷ However, the C and R texts have den alengri and de nalengri as variants for line 6, otherwise variants on n'Ezengris, ‘Ysengrin’,⁷⁸ which indicates that the text circulating in the Languedoc in the later fourteenth century was analogous to the one learned by Guillaume Saisset around the year 1300.

The witnesses to this song describe it as blasfemias ‘blasphemy’, against clerks;⁷⁹ Bertrand's nephew alleges this was also slander: ‘Item dixit quod ipse frequenter audivit dictum Bertrandum blasfemantem et maledicentem clericos, et inter alia audivit dictum Bertrandum dictentem istam coblam’ (‘Item: he says he himself often heard the said Bertrand blaspheming against and slandering clerks, and among other things he heard Bertrand recite this cobla’). The other depositions restricted Bertrand's complaints to vituperation, vituperando clerum.⁸⁰

The songs by Jean Nicolas de Pignans and Peire Cardenal illustrate an association between sung poetry and legally recognized crimes of slander. While the song composed against Rogier is not a consciously crafted poem, Peire Cardenal's attack on clerks occupies a middle point between the social sphere of reputation and the textual sphere of the troubadour chansonnier. This song, admittedly divorced from its author's name, is treated as blasphemy or slander on the political role of clerks, depending on the intentions and interpretation given by the performer; it bridges the gap between Jean Nicolas's lampoon and Guillem de Berguedà's cycles of invective against identified addressees.

To conclude, there would seem to be grounds for supposing a link between certain sirventes and defamation. The cycles of insults composed by Guillem de Berguedà and Peire Cardenal emulate formal legal accusations brought in cases against errant men in positions of authority. They formulate accusations which fall within the definitions of slanderous terms given by the coutumiers, constitutions and fueros of contemporary Europe. Should their victims have wished to bring a case against them for slander, they, like Rogier of Pignans and the Inquisition at Pamiers, would probably have been successful—it is worth noting that none of the judges in these cases demands evidence proving the accusations cited. While the chansonniers preserve these songs in a frame of aesthetic effect and entertainment, it is probable that in performance, they may have had other, more dangerous, implications.

Notes

1. See the historical study by Martin Aurell, La Vielle et l'épée: Troubadours et politique en Provence au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1989). For an attempt to link the sirventes with political propaganda, see Antonio Torres-Alcalá, ‘Del libelo político al sirventés provenzal: una analogía’, Romance Quarterly, 38 (1991), 49- 58. Two studies of the political sirventes worth mentioning are Karen Wilk Klein, The Partisan Voice: A Study of the Political Lyric in France and Germany, 1180-1230 (The Hague, 1971), and Eliza Miruna Ghil, L'Age de Parage: Essai sur le politique et le poétique en Occitanie au XIIIe siècle (New York, 1989).

2. Biographies des troubadours: Textes provençaux des XIIIe et XIVe siècles, ed. Jean Boutière, A. H. Schutz and I.-M. Cluzel, 2nd edn (Paris, 1973), iii A, K version.

3. Emil Levy, Petit dictionnaire Provençal-Français (Heidelberg, 1973), p. 233. This is broader than the earlier definition of Maldich as censure or scolding (Tadel) in Emil Levy, Provenzalisches Supplement-Wörterbuch, 8 vols (Leipzig, 1894-1924), V, 57-8. The word maldizedor also features (ibid., V, 59).

4. Arrigo D. Manfredini, La diffamazione verbale nel diritto romano (Milan, 1979), p. v.

5. Biographies, ed. Boutière and Schutz, iii B, A version.

6. Ibid., lxii A, 6, and xcii, 6.

7. Laura Kendrick, ‘Criticism of the Ruler, 1100-1400, in Provençal, Old French and Middle English Verse’ (unpub. Ph.D diss., Columbia University, 1978), p. 1. Kendrick alleges that certain English kings may have had offending poets mutilated, but it is difficult to distinguish between the act of treason and the song itself in such cases: e.g. the blinding of Luc de la Barre by Henry I in 1124, ‘pro derisoriis cantionibus et temerariis nisibus’ (‘for his scurrilous songs and rash escapades’) (The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford, 1969-80), VI, 352-4). I should like to thank Judith Green for this reference, and for discussion of this point.

8. Biographies, ed. Boutière and Schutz, xi, Ab and O.

9. Alfred Pillet and Henry Carstens, Bibliographie des troubadours (Halle 1933) (hereafter PC) 404, 5; Angelica Rieger, Trobairitz: Der Beitrag der Frau in der altokzitanischen höfischen Lyrik (Tübingen, 1991), no. 45, line 18.

10. PC, 461, 94; Adolf Kolsen, Zwei provenzalische Sirventese nebst einer anzahl Einzelstrophen (Halle, 1919), pp. 17-18; quoted in Angelica Rieger, ‘Was Bieiris de Romans Lesbian? Women's relations with each other in the world of the troubadours’, in The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours, ed. William D. Paden (Philadelphia, Pa, 1989), pp. 73-94 (p. 84). I have changed their translation of the last line.

11. E.g. a curse on those who break the Pax Dei, in a document from Limoges, dated 1031, uses the term: ‘Maledicti ipsi et adiutores eorum in malum; maledicta arma eorum et caballi illorum’ (‘Cursed be they and their assistants in evil; cursed be their weapons and their horses’); cited by Mario Mancini in Metafora feudale: per una storia dei trovatori (Bologna, 1993), pp. 43-4.

12. Manfredini, Diffamazione verbale, pp. v, 1.

13. Quintilien: Institut oratoire, ed. Jean Cousin, 7 vols (Paris, 1976), iii, 7, 19-22; Rhétorique à Hérennius, ed. Guy Achard (Paris, 1989), iii, 6, 10-11; 7, 13-14; 8, 15, esp. 1, 8, and 10.

14. Ovide: Contre Ibis, ed. Jacques André (Paris, 1963); Ovide: Tristes, ed. Jacques André (Paris, 1968), iv.

15. Theodosiani Libri XVI cum constitutionibus sirmondianis, ed. Thomas Mommsen (Berlin, 1905), ix, 34. Justinian's Corpus iuris civilis, ix, 36. Gratian's Decretum (c. 1140) seals the transition. See Jean Gaudemet, ‘Le droit romain dans la pratique et chez les docteurs aux XIe et XIIe siècles’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 8 (1965), 365-80 (p. 374).

16. R. H. Helmholz, Select Cases on Defamation to 1600 (London, 1985), pp. xvi-xix; Corpus iuris Canonici, ed. A. Friedberg, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1879-81), II, v, 2, cols 747-9; v, 36, cols 878-80.

17. Helmholz, Select Cases, pp. ix-xv, xxvi-xxix.

18. Ibid., p. xv.

19. Ibid., pp. xxxix-xl, xv, xviii.

20. Ibid. pp. xxi-xxiv. James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago and London, 1987), pp. 253, 207.

21. Imperatoris Iustiniani institutionum: libri quattuor, ed. J. B. Moyle, 4th edn (Oxford, 1903), IV, 4, pp. 532-7, De iniuriis, covers all forms of injury and insult.

22. Helmholz, Select Cases, pp. xx, xvi. For Gratian's treatment of infamia, see Brundage, Law, Sex, p. 253.

23. Helmholz, Select Cases, pp. xlviii-l.

24. Marta Madero, ‘L'injure et le corps en Castille aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles’, in L'Invective au moyen âge: France, Espagne, Italie (Paris, 1994), pp. 231-48 (p. 231). See also Marta Madero, Manos violentas, palabras vedadas: la injuria en Castilla y León, siglos XIII-XV (Madrid, 1992).

25. Siete Partidas, cited in Madero, ‘L'injure’, p. 231.

26. Ibid., pp. 234-5.

27. Ibid., pp. 236-9.

28. Manfredini, Diffamazione verbale, p. 3.

29. Maria Ana Ramos, ‘La satire dans les Cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer: les pêchés de la langue’, Atalaya, 5 (1994), 67-84 (p. 68).

30. Helen Solterer, The Master and Minerva: Disputing Women in French Medieval Culture (Berkeley, Calif., 1995), p. 16.

31. Helmholz, Select Cases, p. xiv.

32. J. A. Sharpe, Defamation and Sexual Slander in Early Modern England: The Church Courts at York (York, 1980).

33. Solterer, Master and Minerva, p. 17, citing Evelyne Larguèche, L'Effet injure: De la pragmatique à la psychanalyse (Paris, 1983), p. 7.

34. Sharpe, Defamation, pp. 19-23.

35. See Charles P. Flynn, Insult and Society: Patterns of Comparative Interaction (Port Washington, NY, 1977).

36. Guillem de Berguedà, ed. Martín de Riquer, 2 vols (Poblet, 1971) (hereafter de Riquer), I, 44-100, 125-45.

37. PC, 210, 12; de Riquer v, 20, 29-30.

38. PC, 210, 7, 21, 15 and 4; de Riquer, vi; VII, 33-5; viii; ix, 9.

39. De Riquer vi, 16-17, 28-30; vii, 3-7; viii, 19-20.

40. Ibid., xi, 53-5; x, 15-20.

41. PC 210, 8, 18 and 1; de Riquer, x, xi, xii.

42. PC, 210, 12; de Riquer, iv. De Riquer, I, 58-62, discusses the song.

43. PC, 210, 7; de Riquer, vi.

44. PC, 210, 21; de Riquer, vii, 15-21. De Riquer, II, 82-3, discusses line 16 and concludes that enbugar, meaning ‘to imbibe’, or abreuver, is the correct term, rather than Levy's suggestion of embugar, related to the Italian imbucare, to put (Provenzalisches Supplement-Wörterbuch, II, 365-6). He suggests: ‘que era tan gordo y grueso que todo le pringa’.

45. John Hine Mundy, Men and Women at Toulouse in the Age of the Cathars (Toronto, 1990), pp. 52-63.

46. PC, 210, 22; de Riquer, xviii, 56-8.

47. Mundy, Men and Women, pp. 52-4, 61, 64.

48. Brundage, Law, Sex, pp. 404-5; see also pp. 251-3, 314-18, 401-5.

49. Mundy, Men and Women, p. 63. On the exclusion of women from testifying, except in cases of sexual crimes and adultery, e.g., by the custom law of Toulouse, see ibid., pp. 22-7, and Henri Gilles, Les Coûtumes de Toulouse (1286) et leur premier commentaire (1296) (Toulouse, 1969), articles 33, 36, 39.

50. PC, 335, 19, 68 and 65; Les Poésies complètes du troubadour Peire Cardenal, ed. René Lavaud (Toulouse, 1957) (hereafter Lavaud), xvi, xxvi, xxvii.

51. Lavaud, xvi, 56-8; xxvi, 4-7; xxvii, 24-32.

52. Lavaud, xxvii, 41-4.

53. Ibid., xxvi, 10-14.

54. Ibid., xxvii, 33-40.

55. Ibid., xxvii, 28-32; xvi, 41-4, 49-51.

56. Ibid., xvi, 1-4, 34-6; xxvii, 25-7; xvi, 23-6.

57. Ibid., xvi, 38-9.

58. Charles Fabre, ‘Esteve de Belmont’, Annales du Midi, 21 (1909), 5-25.

59. Marseilles, Archives départementales des Bouches-du-Rhône, MS B 421, published by Louis Blancard with a commentary and notes by Paul Meyer, ‘Rapport sur deux communications de M. L. Blancard, correspondant au ministère’, Revue des sociétés savantes des départements, 4e série, 10 (1869), 478-94. It is mentioned in Clovis Brunel, Bibliographie des manuscrits littéraires en ancien provençal (Paris, 1935), p. 35 n. 112 b. I should like to thank Isabel Torres for help with the Latin text.

60. Blancard and Meyer, ‘Rapport’, pp. 487-9. The term appears to derive from the Theodosian Code (ed. Mommsen, ix, 34, 1, De famosis libellis).

61. Blancard and Meyer, ‘Rapport’, pp. 489-90.

62. István Frank, Répertoire métrique de la poésie des troubadours, 2 vols (Paris, 1966), I, 87a.

63. Blancard writes quatre, but Meyer notes the text reads iiij, and suggests an emendation to iii (‘Rapport’, p. 481 n. 1). The manuscript is unclear, but seems to give either jiii or iiij.

64. Meyer suggests emending lines 2, 11 and 14 to the second person singular, which would restore the lines to a regular seven-syllable metre. He also suggests line 3 should read ‘am tal qu'om los ti perdoni’ (‘Rapport’, p. 481 n. 3).

65. Perbestatz = prebostat or perbostat, = prévôté (‘provostship’) (Levy, Petit Dictionnaire, p. 159).

66. Michel Zimmermann, ‘Le vocabulaire latin de la malédiction du IXe au XIIe siècle: construction d'un discours eschatologique’, Atalaya, 5 (1994), 37-56.

67. Helmholz, Select Causes, pp. xxiv-xxvi; see also p. xviii.

68. See the coûtumes of Montpellier and Carcassonne, in Archives Nationales, Layettes du trésor des chartes, 5 vols (Paris, 1863-1909), I, ed. Alexandre Teulet, pp. 257, 274.

69. Registre d'Inquisition de Jacques Fournier (1318-1325), ed. Jean Duvernoy, 3 vols (Toulouse, 1965), III, 318-20, 328-9.

70. Ibid., III, 320.

71. Ibid., III, 328-9.

72. Ibid., III, 318.

73. PC, 335, 31; Lavaud, xxix.

74. PC, 364, 13; Les Poésies de Peire Vidal, ed. Joseph Anglade (Paris, 1923), xxxviii.

75. PC, 162, 4; I Sirventesi di Garin d'Apchier e di Torcafol, ed. Fortunata Latella (Modena, 1994), ii; see also ibid., pp. 140-1, where she suggests that Peire Cardenal copied Torcafol.

76. Duvernoy, Registre, III, 319.

77. Neither word appears in Levy, Provenzalisches Supplement-Wörterbuch. The Petit Dictionnaire cites galiador as ‘trompeur’ (p. 201).

78. Lavaud, p. 171.

79. Ibid., p. 320.

80. Duvernoy, Registre, III, 319.