Consistori de Barcelona
Encyclopedia
The Consistori de Barcelona (kunsisˈtɔɾi ðə βərsəˈɫonə, kunsisˈtɔɾi ðe βarseˈlonɔ; "Academy of the Gay Science of Barcelona") was a literary academy founded in Barcelona
by John the Hunter
, King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, in 1393 in imitation of the Consistori del Gay Saber
founded at Toulouse
seventy years earlier (1323). The poetry produced by and for the Consistori was heavily influenced by the troubadour
s. The Consistori's chief purpose was to promote "correct" styles and themes and discourage vices (vicis) by awarding prizes in competition to poets who adhered to the "rules" of poetic composition. The names of few poets laureate
have come down to us and despite some excellent descriptions of the Consistori's activities, associated persons and poems are obscure.
At Pentecost
, 31 May 1338, a contest was held at Lleida
before Peter the Ceremonious
, John's predecessor, at which those poems adjudged the best were given awards. A panel of judges was designated in advance by the king. It was to pass judgement super arte dictandi et faciendi pulcra carmina sive cantars: "on the art of speaking and composing beautiful songs, that is, cantars". The winning poets received a rosa d'or (golden rose) and piece of expensive golden satin called diasprell. With its floral prize, the 1338 contest emulated the jocs florals (floral games) already being held in Toulouse and to be held eventually in Barcelona as well.
Much about this event, however, remains unknown: the language of composition was vernacular (cantars), but which vernacular is uncertain (Occitan or Catalan
), and the names of the poets or any portions of their work have not survived. Nonetheless, Martí de Riquer presumes that similar festivals occurred in years prior and recurred in subsequent years, though there are no records. It need not be assumed that such contests took place in the royal presence; they may have been held by the great lords.
At Valencia on 20 February 1393, John the Hunter founded an annual festival (la festa de la Gaya Sciència) to be celebrated in honour of the Virgin Mary on the day of Annunciation
(15 May) or the following Sunday at Barcelona. The festival would included a vernacular poetry contest, modelled after those held in Toulouse, Paris
, and other illustrious cities, and the poems submitted would be judged by Jaume March II
and Luys d'Averçó
, entitled magistros et defensores (teachers and defenders) of poetry.
The document of the king's foundation, which was written up by the scribe Bartomeu Sirvent, also mentions that the initiative for the festival had been March and Averçó's and that they had requested it of the king. The expertise of judges for the festival was also set out by the king, in Latin: gaya vel gaudiosa, et alio nomine inveniendi sciencie, that is, "gay and joyful, and by another name inventive science". The Latin terms gaya ... sciencie and inveniendi sciencie were direct translations of the vernacular terms gay sauber (gay science) and ciència de trobar (science of troubadour composition).
on behalf of the king and sent from Perpignan
to Barcelona, foretelling the king's arrival for the festival and asking the city to commit some funds to it. Jaume March brought the letter before the Consell dels Cents Jurats sometime in the middle of march, but the timing was horrible. The Consell was intriguing against the king and the city had largely rejected his control. Then the Consell dels Trenta sent an embassy to John to report on el fet de la gaya sciència, but the city's response was que les dites joies no sien donades per la Ciutat (that the aforesaid jewellery shall not be donated by the City) and that was the end of the year's floral games.
John died a two months later, having only held two of his planned annual festivals (1394 and 1395). The festival disappeared for two more years until 1 May 1398, when John's successor, Martin the Humane, agreed, from Zaragoza
, to subsidise the Consistori's annual festival, to be held again on Pentecost, with forty Aragonese
gold
florins to cover the cost of the golden and silver prizes for the winners, to be chosen by mantenidors named by the king. On 12 August 1399 at Zaragoza, Martin renominated Jaume March and Luys d'Averçó as rectors, maintainers, and defenders of the Gaya Sciència de Barcelona. Martin's two acts do not refer to the previous efforts of King John and rather seem to treat the Consistori as a new royal foundation distinct from the municipally-run foundation of his predecessor. Martin's 1398 act also made mention of Toulouse and Paris (again) in a lengthy preamble outlining the merits of the various sciences: arithmetic, astrology, dialectic, geometry, law, medicine, music, politics, strategy, composing (trobar), theology, etc. Under Martin a great festa was held in 1408 beneath the walls where the Mirador del rei Martí—a recent addition the royal palace complex—and the Palau del Lloctinent meet in Barcelona.
The Consistori lapsed with Martin's death (1410) and the political confusion leading up to the Compromise of Caspe
(1412) prevented its activity, but on 17 March 1413 Ferdinand of Antequera
, who succeeded Martin in accord with the Compromise, confirmed to the Consistori (consistorio, collegio seu cetu inventorum) all that Martin had decreed in 1398, conceded to it the right to elect the four maintainers, and permitted it to meet at any time of the year other than the annual festival. The annual contest was confirmed to occur on 1 May, and Ferdinand became its greatest patron. His ties to Castile
helped increase the accessibility of Catalan (and Occitan) culture and was a catalyst for the first Castilian poetic treatise, the Arte de trovar.
. The opening speech (presuposición) of one of the maintainers (the master of theology, Felip de Malla
) and the declaration of the winner have both been preserved. Both of these speeches were transcribed (and presumably delivered) in a Catalan liberally seasoned with classical and ecclesiastical Latin. Felip displays knowledge of classics, of Pindar
, Alcaeus, Horace
, Catullus
, and Serenus Sammonicus
. Not surprisingly from a master of theology, it is intensely religious:
Felip's speeches are interesting and very erudite, but he shows a penchant for Scholastic
digressions and tolerated only religious poetry dedicated to God or the Virgin. Felip praises Ferdinand, who was apparently present, for lending prestige to the Consistori (collegi). He then presents the theme. In light of the fact that Ferdinand is involved in a war with the James II, Count of Urgell, Felip asks for short, sharp pieces about war, namely, for a sirventes
. Felip's closing speech is similar in style to his opening, being filled with Latin references and lengthy commentary, but absent is the mention of the winner's name or poem. Probably the speech was written in advance of the final judgement before a winner was known.
, who was at Barcelona in 1408. Though written in 1423, it probably describes the Consistori during the era of Martin the Humane as well. Enrique's account of the foundation of the Consistori, however, is a jumble of historical events that took places decades and almost centuries apart:
Enrique is the sole authority for the statement that John the Hunter sent an embassy to the King of France, Charles VI
, evidently before 1393, to request that he send two men from his Consistori at Toulouse to found one at Barcelona. According to Jerónimo Zurita in his Indices rerum ab Aragoniae regibus gestarum (Zaragoza: D. a Portonariis de Ursinus, 1578), in 1388 an embassy was sent to France ut vernaculae linguae celebres poëtae in Hispaniam ex Narbonensis provinciae scholis traducerentur: & studia poëtices, quam gaiam scientiam vocabant, instituerentur. His vero, quorum ingenium in eo artificio elucere videbatur, magna praemia, industriae, & honoris insignia, monumentaque laudis esse constituta ("so that the vernacular language might be celebrated in Spain, translated from the school of the province of the Narbonnaise: and poetic studies, which is called the gay science, instituted"). The story is not implausible, however, and may explain the obscure references to Paris in the acts of John and Martin. It is also plausible that two scholars left Toulouse with the purpose of founding a second academy at Barcelona, considering the history of Occitan literature in Catalonia.
According to Enrique, who is the only source for the organisational structure of the Consistori, it was run by four mantenidors: a knight
, a master of theology
, a master of laws
, and an honourable citizen. Since all other existing documentation shows John and Martin naming two mantenidors, it follows that Ferdinand of Antequera, under whom Enrique was writing, raised it to four. At one point Enrique seems also to say that prizes (vergas de plata, silver rods) were given out each month (cada mes), but this may represent a corruption in the manuscript and should perhaps refer to each year. According to Enrique, the "collegio de Barcelona" lapsed after the death of Martin in 1410. The sixteenth-century Toledan
Álvar Gómez de Castro glossed the Arte de trobar manuscript with the fact that Enrique came into the service of Ferdinand after his election to succeed Martin in 1412 that he procuró la reformación del consistorio y señaláronle por el principal d'ellos ("procured the reformation of the consistory and was marked as the principal among them"). Enrique held a post in the Consistori similar to that of a president, but it is possible that he exaggerated his own importance.
Enrique described the festas of the Gay Science as occurring in two sessions, perhaps on two separate days. At the first session, one of the mantenidors gives a lecture (called the presuposición), then the poets recited their work de la materia a ellos asignada (on the theme assigned to them). The themes were algunas vezes loores de Santa María, otras de armas, otras de amores e de buenas costumbres: sometimes the praises of the Virgin Mary, other times of arms, other times of love and good customs. These three themes were understand by the Romantics
as those of faith (fé), patriotism (patria), and love (amor).
After the first session, the poems were put into writing and taken by the mantenidors for secret deliberations (the jurat), where the poems were examined for fidelity to the rules and their faults were carefully enumerated. Stress was laid upon the identification of vicis (vices, faults) in the esteemed llibres de l'art (books of the art), the treatises carried by the mantenidors. The second session was held after the judgement was passed and there the winner was declared and the prizes awarded.
and the Renaissance
in Italian
and the work of Ausias March
associated with the zenith of medieval Catalan. Martín de Riquer is highly critical of the negative influence of the Toulousain academy on Catalan poetry through the exportation occitanisms and support of an outmoded literary language. For its thematically limited, narrow conception of art and imposing rules for form and content, he compares it to French neoclassicism
and its "tyranny of the monotonous alexandrine
". All these bad influences continued their negative effect from Barcelona, where the rhetorical style of Toulouse was copied. The picture of judges marking of "vices" in the margins of the poems submitted for competition is emblematic of the "tyranny" the rules held over creativity. In these respects the Consistori was much like a medieval university
. It was also more bourgeois, being essentially created by citizens for citizens, with their tastes and their concerns in mind. The essential difference between the activities and the poetry of the Consistori and that of the earlier troubadorus is that the latter composed (originally) in a courtly environment and share courtly tastes and concerns. In this respect the movement mirrored that of the dolce stil novo in Italy, but it was less successful. The failure of the city of Barcelona to support the Consistori and its falling back on royal patronage in 1396 best exemplifies the problems of consciously continuing the troubadour tradition in an atmosphere that was not made for it.
Few poems have survived from the Consistori's contests, preserved in chansonnier
s with other troubadour songs. The Cançoner dels Masdovelles is one of the most important songbooks, yet only three songs can be connected to the Consistori de Barcelona with any certainty. Gilabert de Próxita wrote Le souvenirs qu'amors fina me porta, a secular song on love, in the manner of the troubadours. According to its forty-second line, it was presented al novell consistori (to the new consistory), probably the re-creation of Martin the Humane. Andreu Febrer composed Sobre.l pus naut element de tots quatre, an astrological and mythological panegyric
for an unnamed queen of Sicily. It alludes to the cossistori, but this may be a reference to some competition held in Sicily
. Another troubadour with surviving work presented at Barcelona is Guillem de Masdovelles
, who also competed (and won) at Toulouse. His canso
of love Pus li prat son de verdura guarnit was "coronada" (crowned) the winner at a contest in Barcelona. It is interesting to note that Guillem's work is written in an Occitan sprinkled with catalanisms and Andreu's in Catalan with occitanisms. Apparently, the language of the poetry presented at the Catalan consistori was not constant (besides being romance). Guillem's nephew, Joan Berenguer de Masdovelles, did translate his uncle's winning poem from llemoví (Occitan) into Catalan. Joan Berenguer's translations of his uncle's Occitan works demonstrates the conscious use of a literary idiom as opposed to the language of conversation and the consciously archaic nature of occitanisms in Catalan writing.
literature in Catalan. The Consistori, or more specifically the Gay Science that it fostered in the Iberian peninsula, extended its influence slowly over Castile
and Portugal
to the west. Enrique de Villena's Castilian Arte de trovar was probably written with the intention of exhorting its dedicatee, the Marqués de Santillana
, to found and patronise a Consistori in Castile modelled after the Barcelonan example:
Somehow anyways the Marqués did absorb the concept of the Gay Science, for he wrote to Duke Pedro of Coimbra
a famous letter, Prohemio e carta, which extols the divinely inspired, charismatic yet frenetic nature of the gaya sçiençia. This conception of the troubadours' art was fundamentally altered by the infusion of neoplatonism
that came with the Renaissance and Italian influence. Nonetheless, Spanish poetry of the fifteenth century, moreso than anywhere else, sought to emulate classic Occitan poetry. Alfonso the Magnanimous in particular, despite his classicism, brought a distinctly medieval, Occitan, and troubadour-esque poetry to Naples
with his 1443 conquest. This Spanish literary tradition at Naples remained outside Renaissance currents. In Spain, troubadour scholarship got off to a quick start in the sixteenth century, but the influence of the Consistori can hardly be spoken of past the mid-fifteenth century.
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
by John the Hunter
John I of Aragon
John I , called by posterity the Hunter or the Lover of Elegance , but the Abandoned in his lifetime, was the King of...
, King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, in 1393 in imitation of the Consistori del Gay Saber
Consistori del Gay Saber
The Consistori del Gay Saber , commonly called the Consistori de Tolosa today, was a poetic academy founded at Toulouse in 1323 to revive and perpetuate the lyric school of the troubadours.-Foundation:...
founded at Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
seventy years earlier (1323). The poetry produced by and for the Consistori was heavily influenced by the troubadour
Troubadour
A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....
s. The Consistori's chief purpose was to promote "correct" styles and themes and discourage vices (vicis) by awarding prizes in competition to poets who adhered to the "rules" of poetic composition. The names of few poets laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
have come down to us and despite some excellent descriptions of the Consistori's activities, associated persons and poems are obscure.
Prehistory and origins
Pentecost
Pentecost is a prominent feast in the calendar of Ancient Israel celebrating the giving of the Law on Sinai, and also later in the Christian liturgical year commemorating the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples of Christ after the Resurrection of Jesus...
, 31 May 1338, a contest was held at Lleida
Lleida
Lleida is a city in the west of Catalonia, Spain. It is the capital city of the province of Lleida, as well as the largest city in the province and it had 137,387 inhabitants , including the contiguous municipalities of Raimat and Sucs. The metro area has about 250,000 inhabitants...
before Peter the Ceremonious
Peter IV of Aragon
Peter IV, , called el Cerimoniós or el del punyalet , was the King of Aragon, King of Sardinia and Corsica , King of Valencia , and Count of Barcelona Peter IV, (Balaguer, September 5, 1319 – Barcelona, January 6, 1387), called el Cerimoniós ("the Ceremonious") or el del punyalet ("the one...
, John's predecessor, at which those poems adjudged the best were given awards. A panel of judges was designated in advance by the king. It was to pass judgement super arte dictandi et faciendi pulcra carmina sive cantars: "on the art of speaking and composing beautiful songs, that is, cantars". The winning poets received a rosa d'or (golden rose) and piece of expensive golden satin called diasprell. With its floral prize, the 1338 contest emulated the jocs florals (floral games) already being held in Toulouse and to be held eventually in Barcelona as well.
Much about this event, however, remains unknown: the language of composition was vernacular (cantars), but which vernacular is uncertain (Occitan or Catalan
Catalan language
Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...
), and the names of the poets or any portions of their work have not survived. Nonetheless, Martí de Riquer presumes that similar festivals occurred in years prior and recurred in subsequent years, though there are no records. It need not be assumed that such contests took place in the royal presence; they may have been held by the great lords.
At Valencia on 20 February 1393, John the Hunter founded an annual festival (la festa de la Gaya Sciència) to be celebrated in honour of the Virgin Mary on the day of Annunciation
Annunciation
The Annunciation, also referred to as the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin Mary or Annunciation of the Lord, is the Christian celebration of the announcement by the angel Gabriel to Virgin Mary, that she would conceive and become the mother of Jesus the Son of God. Gabriel told Mary to name her...
(15 May) or the following Sunday at Barcelona. The festival would included a vernacular poetry contest, modelled after those held in Toulouse, Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, and other illustrious cities, and the poems submitted would be judged by Jaume March II
Jaume March II
Jaume March was a Catalan language poet.Brother of Pere March and uncle of Arnau March and the renowned Ausiàs March, Jaume's family had been lawyers and officers of the court of the kingdom of Aragon. Born in Valencia he was seemingly the eldest son, and inherited the family's possessions around...
and Luys d'Averçó
Luys d'Averçó
Luys d'Averçó or Luis de Aversó was a Catalan politician, naval financier, and man of letters. His magnum opus, the Torcimany, is one of the most important medieval Catalan-language grammars to modern historians...
, entitled magistros et defensores (teachers and defenders) of poetry.
The document of the king's foundation, which was written up by the scribe Bartomeu Sirvent, also mentions that the initiative for the festival had been March and Averçó's and that they had requested it of the king. The expertise of judges for the festival was also set out by the king, in Latin: gaya vel gaudiosa, et alio nomine inveniendi sciencie, that is, "gay and joyful, and by another name inventive science". The Latin terms gaya ... sciencie and inveniendi sciencie were direct translations of the vernacular terms gay sauber (gay science) and ciència de trobar (science of troubadour composition).
Competitions
The first recorded contest held by the Consistori de Barcelona was held probably on 28 March 1395 with the king in attendance. He had only been in Barcelona since 25 March. This festival is known from a letter the king wrote, which he sent on 19 February 1396 recording the bella festa ... a honor de la dita gaya ciència, the prizes for which were provided by the municipal government. There is no record of the names of the winners, the prizes, or their poems. The letter of 1396 was written in Catalan by Bernat MetgeBernat Metge
Bernat Metge was a Catalan humanist, best known as the author of Lo Somni .He held a position at the court of Joan I of Aragon, and, following some troubles, once more served Martí of Aragon....
on behalf of the king and sent from Perpignan
Perpignan
-Sport:Perpignan is a rugby stronghold: their rugby union side, USA Perpignan, is a regular competitor in the Heineken Cup and seven times champion of the Top 14 , while their rugby league side plays in the engage Super League under the name Catalans Dragons.-Culture:Since 2004, every year in the...
to Barcelona, foretelling the king's arrival for the festival and asking the city to commit some funds to it. Jaume March brought the letter before the Consell dels Cents Jurats sometime in the middle of march, but the timing was horrible. The Consell was intriguing against the king and the city had largely rejected his control. Then the Consell dels Trenta sent an embassy to John to report on el fet de la gaya sciència, but the city's response was que les dites joies no sien donades per la Ciutat (that the aforesaid jewellery shall not be donated by the City) and that was the end of the year's floral games.
Zaragoza
Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
, to subsidise the Consistori's annual festival, to be held again on Pentecost, with forty Aragonese
Kingdom of Aragon
The Kingdom of Aragon was a medieval and early modern kingdom in the Iberian Peninsula, corresponding to the modern-day autonomous community of Aragon, in Spain...
gold
Gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...
florins to cover the cost of the golden and silver prizes for the winners, to be chosen by mantenidors named by the king. On 12 August 1399 at Zaragoza, Martin renominated Jaume March and Luys d'Averçó as rectors, maintainers, and defenders of the Gaya Sciència de Barcelona. Martin's two acts do not refer to the previous efforts of King John and rather seem to treat the Consistori as a new royal foundation distinct from the municipally-run foundation of his predecessor. Martin's 1398 act also made mention of Toulouse and Paris (again) in a lengthy preamble outlining the merits of the various sciences: arithmetic, astrology, dialectic, geometry, law, medicine, music, politics, strategy, composing (trobar), theology, etc. Under Martin a great festa was held in 1408 beneath the walls where the Mirador del rei Martí—a recent addition the royal palace complex—and the Palau del Lloctinent meet in Barcelona.
The Consistori lapsed with Martin's death (1410) and the political confusion leading up to the Compromise of Caspe
Compromise of Caspe
The Compromise of Caspe made in 1412 was an act and resolution of parliamentary representatives on behalf of the Kingdoms of Aragon and Valencia and the County of Barcelona, to resolve the interregnum commenced by the death of King Martin I of Aragon in 1410 without a legitimate heir, in Caspe.The...
(1412) prevented its activity, but on 17 March 1413 Ferdinand of Antequera
Ferdinand I of Aragon
Ferdinand I called of Antequera and also the Just or the Honest) was king of Aragon, Valencia, Majorca, Sardinia and Corsica and king of Sicily, duke of Athens and Neopatria, and count of Barcelona, Roussillon and Cerdanya...
, who succeeded Martin in accord with the Compromise, confirmed to the Consistori (consistorio, collegio seu cetu inventorum) all that Martin had decreed in 1398, conceded to it the right to elect the four maintainers, and permitted it to meet at any time of the year other than the annual festival. The annual contest was confirmed to occur on 1 May, and Ferdinand became its greatest patron. His ties to Castile
Kingdom of Castile
Kingdom of Castile was one of the medieval kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. It emerged as a political autonomous entity in the 9th century. It was called County of Castile and was held in vassalage from the Kingdom of León. Its name comes from the host of castles constructed in the region...
helped increase the accessibility of Catalan (and Occitan) culture and was a catalyst for the first Castilian poetic treatise, the Arte de trovar.
Speeches of Felip de Malla
In February 1413, one month before Ferdinand's privilege, the Consistori held one of its best-recorded competitions at the Palau Reial MajorPalau Reial Major
The Palau Reial Major is a complex of historic buildings in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. It was a residence of the counts of Barcelona and, later, of the Kings of Aragon. It is composed of three distinct edifices:...
. The opening speech (presuposición) of one of the maintainers (the master of theology, Felip de Malla
Felip de Malla
Felip de Malla was a Catalan prelate, theologian, scholastic, orator, classical scholar, and poet. He was a confidante of the kings Martin the Humane, Ferdinand of Antequera, and Alfonso the Magnanimous...
) and the declaration of the winner have both been preserved. Both of these speeches were transcribed (and presumably delivered) in a Catalan liberally seasoned with classical and ecclesiastical Latin. Felip displays knowledge of classics, of Pindar
Pindar
Pindar , was an Ancient Greek lyric poet. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian described him as "by far the greatest of the nine lyric poets, in virtue of his inspired magnificence, the beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich...
, Alcaeus, Horace
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:...
, Catullus
Catullus
Gaius Valerius Catullus was a Latin poet of the Republican period. His surviving works are still read widely, and continue to influence poetry and other forms of art.-Biography:...
, and Serenus Sammonicus
Serenus Sammonicus
Quintus Sammonicus Serenus was a Roman savant, tutor to Geta and Caracalla who became fatally involved in politics, and an author of a didactic medical poem, Liber Medicinalis , probably incomplete in the form in which we have it, as well as many lost works...
. Not surprisingly from a master of theology, it is intensely religious:
|
|
Felip's speeches are interesting and very erudite, but he shows a penchant for Scholastic
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
digressions and tolerated only religious poetry dedicated to God or the Virgin. Felip praises Ferdinand, who was apparently present, for lending prestige to the Consistori (collegi). He then presents the theme. In light of the fact that Ferdinand is involved in a war with the James II, Count of Urgell, Felip asks for short, sharp pieces about war, namely, for a sirventes
Sirventes
The sirventes or serventes is a genre of Occitan lyric poetry used by the troubadours. In early Catalan it became a sirventesch and was imported into that language in the fourteenth century, where it developed into a unique didactic/moralistic type...
. Felip's closing speech is similar in style to his opening, being filled with Latin references and lengthy commentary, but absent is the mention of the winner's name or poem. Probably the speech was written in advance of the final judgement before a winner was known.
Description of Enrique de Villena
One of the best descriptions of the Consistori de Barcelona is found in the Arte de trovar of the Castilian writer Enrique de VillenaEnrique de Villena
Enrique de Aragón , Marquess of Villena, was a medieval Spanish writer, theologian and poet. He was also the last legitimate descendant of the royal house of Aragón and the counts of Barcelona. When political power was denied to him, he turned to writing and was reputed to be a great...
, who was at Barcelona in 1408. Though written in 1423, it probably describes the Consistori during the era of Martin the Humane as well. Enrique's account of the foundation of the Consistori, however, is a jumble of historical events that took places decades and almost centuries apart:
|
|
Enrique is the sole authority for the statement that John the Hunter sent an embassy to the King of France, Charles VI
Charles VI of France
Charles VI , called the Beloved and the Mad , was the King of France from 1380 to 1422, as a member of the House of Valois. His bouts with madness, which seem to have begun in 1392, led to quarrels among the French royal family, which were exploited by the neighbouring powers of England and Burgundy...
, evidently before 1393, to request that he send two men from his Consistori at Toulouse to found one at Barcelona. According to Jerónimo Zurita in his Indices rerum ab Aragoniae regibus gestarum (Zaragoza: D. a Portonariis de Ursinus, 1578), in 1388 an embassy was sent to France ut vernaculae linguae celebres poëtae in Hispaniam ex Narbonensis provinciae scholis traducerentur: & studia poëtices, quam gaiam scientiam vocabant, instituerentur. His vero, quorum ingenium in eo artificio elucere videbatur, magna praemia, industriae, & honoris insignia, monumentaque laudis esse constituta ("so that the vernacular language might be celebrated in Spain, translated from the school of the province of the Narbonnaise: and poetic studies, which is called the gay science, instituted"). The story is not implausible, however, and may explain the obscure references to Paris in the acts of John and Martin. It is also plausible that two scholars left Toulouse with the purpose of founding a second academy at Barcelona, considering the history of Occitan literature in Catalonia.
According to Enrique, who is the only source for the organisational structure of the Consistori, it was run by four mantenidors: a knight
Knight
A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....
, a master of theology
Master of Theology
A Master of Theology is an advanced theological research degree offered by universities, divinity schools, and seminaries.-North America:In North America, the Master of Theology is considered by the Association of Theological Schools to be the minimum educational credential for teaching...
, a master of laws
Master of Laws
The Master of Laws is an advanced academic degree, pursued by those holding a professional law degree, and is commonly abbreviated LL.M. from its Latin name, Legum Magister. The University of Oxford names its taught masters of laws B.C.L...
, and an honourable citizen. Since all other existing documentation shows John and Martin naming two mantenidors, it follows that Ferdinand of Antequera, under whom Enrique was writing, raised it to four. At one point Enrique seems also to say that prizes (vergas de plata, silver rods) were given out each month (cada mes), but this may represent a corruption in the manuscript and should perhaps refer to each year. According to Enrique, the "collegio de Barcelona" lapsed after the death of Martin in 1410. The sixteenth-century Toledan
Toledo, Spain
Toledo's Alcázar became renowned in the 19th and 20th centuries as a military academy. At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 its garrison was famously besieged by Republican forces.-Economy:...
Álvar Gómez de Castro glossed the Arte de trobar manuscript with the fact that Enrique came into the service of Ferdinand after his election to succeed Martin in 1412 that he procuró la reformación del consistorio y señaláronle por el principal d'ellos ("procured the reformation of the consistory and was marked as the principal among them"). Enrique held a post in the Consistori similar to that of a president, but it is possible that he exaggerated his own importance.
Enrique described the festas of the Gay Science as occurring in two sessions, perhaps on two separate days. At the first session, one of the mantenidors gives a lecture (called the presuposición), then the poets recited their work de la materia a ellos asignada (on the theme assigned to them). The themes were algunas vezes loores de Santa María, otras de armas, otras de amores e de buenas costumbres: sometimes the praises of the Virgin Mary, other times of arms, other times of love and good customs. These three themes were understand by the Romantics
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
as those of faith (fé), patriotism (patria), and love (amor).
After the first session, the poems were put into writing and taken by the mantenidors for secret deliberations (the jurat), where the poems were examined for fidelity to the rules and their faults were carefully enumerated. Stress was laid upon the identification of vicis (vices, faults) in the esteemed llibres de l'art (books of the art), the treatises carried by the mantenidors. The second session was held after the judgement was passed and there the winner was declared and the prizes awarded.
Poetic content and style
The isolation and their classicism of the Consistoris (of Toulouse and Barcelona) cut them off from the literary movements giving life to other vernaculars, such as the dolce stil novoDolce Stil Novo
Dolce Stil Novo , or stilnovismo, is the name given to the most important literary movement of 13th century in Italy. Influenced by both Sicilian and Tuscan poetry, its main theme is Love . Gentilezza and Amore are indeed topoi in the major works of the period...
and the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
in Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
and the work of Ausias March
Ausiàs March
Ausiàs March was a Valencian poet who was born in Gandia towards the end of the 14th century. He was the son of Pere March, nephew of Jaume March II, and cousin of Arnau March....
associated with the zenith of medieval Catalan. Martín de Riquer is highly critical of the negative influence of the Toulousain academy on Catalan poetry through the exportation occitanisms and support of an outmoded literary language. For its thematically limited, narrow conception of art and imposing rules for form and content, he compares it to French neoclassicism
French literature of the 17th century
17th-century French literature was written throughout the Grand Siècle of France, spanning the reigns of Henry IV of France, the Regency of Marie de Medici, Louis XIII of France, the Regency of Anne of Austria and the reign of Louis XIV of France...
and its "tyranny of the monotonous alexandrine
Alexandrine
An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter comprising 12 syllables. Alexandrines are common in the German literature of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe and Shakespeare, by whom it was supplanted...
". All these bad influences continued their negative effect from Barcelona, where the rhetorical style of Toulouse was copied. The picture of judges marking of "vices" in the margins of the poems submitted for competition is emblematic of the "tyranny" the rules held over creativity. In these respects the Consistori was much like a medieval university
Medieval university
Medieval university is an institution of higher learning which was established during High Middle Ages period and is a corporation.The first institutions generally considered to be universities were established in Italy, France, and England in the late 11th and the 12th centuries for the study of...
. It was also more bourgeois, being essentially created by citizens for citizens, with their tastes and their concerns in mind. The essential difference between the activities and the poetry of the Consistori and that of the earlier troubadorus is that the latter composed (originally) in a courtly environment and share courtly tastes and concerns. In this respect the movement mirrored that of the dolce stil novo in Italy, but it was less successful. The failure of the city of Barcelona to support the Consistori and its falling back on royal patronage in 1396 best exemplifies the problems of consciously continuing the troubadour tradition in an atmosphere that was not made for it.
Few poems have survived from the Consistori's contests, preserved in chansonnier
Chansonnier
A chansonnier is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings of songs, hence literally "song-books," although some manuscripts are so called even though they preserve the text but not the music A chansonnier is a manuscript or...
s with other troubadour songs. The Cançoner dels Masdovelles is one of the most important songbooks, yet only three songs can be connected to the Consistori de Barcelona with any certainty. Gilabert de Próxita wrote Le souvenirs qu'amors fina me porta, a secular song on love, in the manner of the troubadours. According to its forty-second line, it was presented al novell consistori (to the new consistory), probably the re-creation of Martin the Humane. Andreu Febrer composed Sobre.l pus naut element de tots quatre, an astrological and mythological panegyric
Panegyric
A panegyric is a formal public speech, or written verse, delivered in high praise of a person or thing, a generally highly studied and discriminating eulogy, not expected to be critical. It is derived from the Greek πανηγυρικός meaning "a speech fit for a general assembly"...
for an unnamed queen of Sicily. It alludes to the cossistori, but this may be a reference to some competition held in Sicily
Kingdom of Sicily
The Kingdom of Sicily was a state that existed in the south of Italy from its founding by Roger II in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of southern Italy...
. Another troubadour with surviving work presented at Barcelona is Guillem de Masdovelles
Guillem de Masdovelles
Guillem de Masdovelles was a Catalan soldier, courtier, politician, and poet. His family came from the Penedès, but he was active in Barcelona, where he became a civic leader. His fifteen poems are preserved alongside the work of his nephew, Joan Berenguer, in a chansonnier compiled by Joan...
, who also competed (and won) at Toulouse. His canso
Canso (song)
The canso is a song style used by the troubadours. It consists of three parts. The first stanza is the exordium, where the composer explains his purpose. The main body of the song occurs in the following stanzas, and usually draw out a variety of relationships with the exordium. The canso can end...
of love Pus li prat son de verdura guarnit was "coronada" (crowned) the winner at a contest in Barcelona. It is interesting to note that Guillem's work is written in an Occitan sprinkled with catalanisms and Andreu's in Catalan with occitanisms. Apparently, the language of the poetry presented at the Catalan consistori was not constant (besides being romance). Guillem's nephew, Joan Berenguer de Masdovelles, did translate his uncle's winning poem from llemoví (Occitan) into Catalan. Joan Berenguer's translations of his uncle's Occitan works demonstrates the conscious use of a literary idiom as opposed to the language of conversation and the consciously archaic nature of occitanisms in Catalan writing.
Legacy and influence
The Consistori of Barcelona is generally considered a transitionary period in Catalan literature, away from the prestigious treatment of Occitan and the pervasiveness of occitanisms and towards an independent Catalan poetry. In many respects it is the last phase of medieval literature and of the troubadours, opening the way to what can be considered RenaissanceRenaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
literature in Catalan. The Consistori, or more specifically the Gay Science that it fostered in the Iberian peninsula, extended its influence slowly over Castile
Kingdom of Castile
Kingdom of Castile was one of the medieval kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula. It emerged as a political autonomous entity in the 9th century. It was called County of Castile and was held in vassalage from the Kingdom of León. Its name comes from the host of castles constructed in the region...
and Portugal
Kingdom of Portugal
The Kingdom of Portugal was Portugal's general designation under the monarchy. The kingdom was located in the west of the Iberian Peninsula, Europe and existed from 1139 to 1910...
to the west. Enrique de Villena's Castilian Arte de trovar was probably written with the intention of exhorting its dedicatee, the Marqués de Santillana
Íñigo López de Mendoza, marqués de Santillana
Don Íñigo López de Mendoza y de la Vega, Marquis of Santillana was a Castilian politician and poet who held an important position in society and Literature during the reign of John II of Castile....
, to found and patronise a Consistori in Castile modelled after the Barcelonan example:
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Somehow anyways the Marqués did absorb the concept of the Gay Science, for he wrote to Duke Pedro of Coimbra
Infante Pedro, Duke of Coimbra
The Infante Peter, 1st Duke of Coimbra KG , was a Portuguese infante of the House of Aviz, son of King John I of Portugal and his wife Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt. In Portugal he is better known as Infante D. Pedro das Sete Partidas [do Mundo], "of the Seven Parts [of the...
a famous letter, Prohemio e carta, which extols the divinely inspired, charismatic yet frenetic nature of the gaya sçiençia. This conception of the troubadours' art was fundamentally altered by the infusion of neoplatonism
Neoplatonism
Neoplatonism , is the modern term for a school of religious and mystical philosophy that took shape in the 3rd century AD, based on the teachings of Plato and earlier Platonists, with its earliest contributor believed to be Plotinus, and his teacher Ammonius Saccas...
that came with the Renaissance and Italian influence. Nonetheless, Spanish poetry of the fifteenth century, moreso than anywhere else, sought to emulate classic Occitan poetry. Alfonso the Magnanimous in particular, despite his classicism, brought a distinctly medieval, Occitan, and troubadour-esque poetry to Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
with his 1443 conquest. This Spanish literary tradition at Naples remained outside Renaissance currents. In Spain, troubadour scholarship got off to a quick start in the sixteenth century, but the influence of the Consistori can hardly be spoken of past the mid-fifteenth century.