...an excerpt from a booklet from one of our publications... 0028

MURMUR MORI

“It was then, in the west, when the Provençal language flourished, well esteemed and predominant over all the idioms of that area.”

Pietro Bembo, “Prose della volgar lingua” (I, 8) - year 1525

Provençal was, in the 12th and 13th centuries, the language of courtly poetry. Its cradle was the Provence region, bordered to the north by the Druidic islands and Nordic countries such as Brittany, England, Wales, and Scotland, cloaked in ancient Celtic mists; to the south, it reached Spain and Italy. This new and fascinating literary culture captivated the European continent for almost two centuries: poems were imitated in Greece, Hungary, and Bohemia; French chivalry fascinated Germany and Scandinavia, and, as Carducci wrote, Italy, which was so intimately connected with southern France—so close in relationships, memories, blood ties, and language—was completely overrun. Provençal poetry flourished, and its lyrical forms blossomed in songs whose echoes could be heard in Piedmont and Montferrat, in Lunigiana, in Lombardy and Liguria, in Tuscany, and then also in Bologna, Ferrara, Naples, all the way down to Palermo, within the Hohenstaufen empire.

Among the greatest Provençal troubadours were those who lived the Italian life, fighting with verses and swords for Italian lords, singing for Italian women.