Gilabert de Próixita
Encyclopedia
Kingdom of Valencia
The Kingdom of Valencia , located in the eastern shore of the Iberian Peninsula, was one of the component realms of the Crown of Aragon. When the Crown of Aragon merged by dynastic union with the Crown of Castile to form the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Valencia became a component realm of the...
poet with twenty-one extant Occitan pieces. He is credited by his first editor with a renovellament (renewal) of Catalan poetry through the incorporation of Italian and French ideas into a model of courtly love
Courtly love
Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....
taken from the classical 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. His last name is variously spelled Próxita, Próxida, and Progita in medieval orthography.
Biography
Gilabert was a member of an old NeapolitanNaples
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...
family, the Procita (or Procida), favourites of the Hohenstaufen
Hohenstaufen
The House of Hohenstaufen was a dynasty of German kings in the High Middle Ages, lasting from 1138 to 1254. Three of these kings were also crowned Holy Roman Emperor. In 1194 the Hohenstaufens also became Kings of Sicily...
and then of Peter III of Aragon
Peter III of Aragon
Peter the Great was the King of Aragon of Valencia , and Count of Barcelona from 1276 to his death. He conquered Sicily and became its king in 1282. He was one of the greatest of medieval Aragonese monarchs.-Youth and succession:Peter was the eldest son of James I of Aragon and his second wife...
, who established them in Valencia. By the fourteenth century they were involved in a local conflict on the side of the Centelles
Centelles
Centelles is a municipality in the comarca of Osona inCatalonia, Spain. It is situated in the upper valley of the Congost River in the south of thecomarca. The municipality is served by the C-17 road...
against the Vilaragut. Gilabert was the fifth son of Nicolau de Próxita and Elvira de Centelles. With his older brothers Olf and Tomàs he participated in the expedition to 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...
under Martin the Humane in 1392. In 1395 he and his brothers took part in John I's
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...
expedition to Sardinia
Sardinia
Sardinia is the second-largest island in the Mediterranean Sea . It is an autonomous region of Italy, and the nearest land masses are the French island of Corsica, the Italian Peninsula, Sicily, Tunisia and the Spanish Balearic Islands.The name Sardinia is from the pre-Roman noun *sard[],...
and Sicily.
On returning from military service abroad to Valencia in 1396 Gilabert became involved in the conflict between the Centelles and the Vilaragut and in May that year was sentenced, along with the factional leaders, to exile by the city council. On 11 November 1398 he and some other knights led a band of Centelles, including forty men-at-arms, in street fighting
Street fighting
Street fighting is a colloquial term used to denote unsanctioned, illegal in some countries, hand-to-hand fighting in public places, between individuals or groups of people....
against Pere de Vilaragut. As a restult, he was imprisoned again and did not regain his freedom until October 1399.
On 4 December 1405, according to a document uncovered in the Arxiu Municipal de València (Municipal Archive of Valencia) by Lluís Cerveró i Gomis, Gilabert died in Genoa
Genoa
Genoa |Ligurian]] Zena ; Latin and, archaically, English Genua) is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria....
while in the service of Pope Benedict XIII
Pope Benedict XIII
-Footnotes:...
. He left behind a widow, Bernarda de Valeriola, who remarried to Guillem Ramon de Centelles, and a daughter Joana. He was buried in the familial chapel of Sant Honorat in the convent of Sant Domingo de València.
Poetry
Gilabert was basically unknown until his poems were published in a modern edition by Martí de Riquer in Poesies (Els Nostres Clàssics: Barcelona, 1954). Many of his poems are found only in the Cançoner Vega-AguilóCançoner Vega-Aguiló
The Cançoner Vega-Aguiló is a chansonnier predominantly carrying Catalan and Occitan pieces, but also some Castilian and Middle French verse.-Bibliography:*Anna Alberni Jordà , PhD thesis, University of Barcelona....
, which has suffered damage to do poor humidity, rendering much of his work illegible to the naked eye. Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet
Ultraviolet light is electromagnetic radiation with a wavelength shorter than that of visible light, but longer than X-rays, in the range 10 nm to 400 nm, and energies from 3 eV to 124 eV...
innovations have, however, permitted this difficulty to be overcome and now his poems have been copied in their entirety. The Vega-Aguiló only records their author as "Próxita", but the library of the Escorial contains a sixteenth-century Occitan 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...
with some works by "Mossèn Gilabert de Próxita, poeta".
Prosody and language
Gilabert used a variety of meters: heptasyllabic, octosyllabic, and most of all decasyllabic. Some poems vary the metre but it is always intentional: Gilabert is second to none among his generation in the perfection of his metre, which appears to be influenced by the standards of the Consistori del Gay SaberConsistori 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:...
in 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...
.
Though Gilabert wrote in literary Occitan, clearly inspired by and learned from the classical troubadours, his language is not devoid of Catalan influences, especially where the adopted idiom lacks a solution to a problem. For all this he has a richer vocabulary than his contemporary Catalans.
Theme
Gilabert's surviving poetry is uniform in theme. It is a subjective treatment of love and the various states it gives rise to in the poet. His poetry is completely impoverished of references or allusions to anything historical or objective and it is never narrative or anecdotal. The sole "facts" which can be gleaned from his total œuvre are that he was a knight, his wife came from a higher social stratum, and one of his poems was presented to a novell consistori (new consistory), probably the Consistori de BarcelonaConsistori de Barcelona
The Consistori de 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 . The poetry produced by and for the Consistori was heavily influenced...
, founded 1393.
The themes that dominated Occitan poetry at the turn of the thirteenth century dominate Gilabert's poetry at the turn of the fourteenth, in a peculiarly exaggerated form. He is greater than the troubadours, however, in his originality of his details and the accuracy of his expression. To the lady to whom he pledges vassallage he also presents himself a humble and loyal servant, willing to do whatever pleases her, even allowing himself to be killed. Gilabert is essentially feudal in his terminology.
Gilabert dwells on the cruelty (cruseltat granda) of the lady and the llanguiment (disease) of the poet, his love, which pushes him to extremes (like death) and obsession. This drove him to greater heights of poetic eloquence than most of his Catalan contemporaries. This obsessiveness he shares with Andreu Febrer. The lines
Mas ya d'uymay sots en la derraria,
que ma dolor e mos mals cesseran;
car per vos muyr, d'on per mort fineran
los gran turme[n]ts que·m donatz cascun dia.
Ja no us porets ab me plus deportar . . .
from Pus que vos play, dompna, que res no us dia were almost certainly on the mind of Jordi de Sant Jordi
Jordi de Sant Jordi
Jordi de Sant Jordi was born in the Kingdom of Valencia. He was Chamberlain at the court of King Alfons V of Aragon but is best known for his poetry....
when he began his famous Stramps.
Style
Gilabert, despite his expressiveness and subjectivity, is not an introspective poet. He can be repetitive and artificial. Though he sometimes loses himself in lengthy and wordy explanations he does not stray into the trobar ricTrobar ric
The trobar ric , or rich form of poetry, was a trobadour style.It was distinguished by its verbal gymnastics; its best exponent was Arnaut Daniel. Despite the fact that it outlasted trobar clus it always played a secondary role to trobar leu....
, as does his contemporary Andreu Febrer. His writing is grammatically impeccable. Most of his images and metaphors are not original, like the "Castell d'Amor" (castle of love), but are current for his time. His military allusions are more effective because they stem from personal experiences. Other ornaments of Gilabert's poetry, evidence of the scope of the poet's reading, are the story of the bird burned by flying near the sun and the foolish alchemist
Alchemy
Alchemy is an influential philosophical tradition whose early practitioners’ claims to profound powers were known from antiquity. The defining objectives of alchemy are varied; these include the creation of the fabled philosopher's stone possessing powers including the capability of turning base...
.
For two poems Gilabert adopted a French-style ballade
Ballade
The ballade is a form of French poetry. It was one of the three formes fixes and one of the verse forms in France most commonly set to music between the late 13th and the 15th centuries....
, then new to Catalonia: Mals perladors vulh per tostemps maldir and Lo cor e·lhs huelhs m'an lo cors mis en pena. The themes, such as lausengiers (the jealous), remain troubadour-esque and the works pulse with the semicavalleresc ambient of c. 1400 Valencia.
There is similarity between Gilabert's phrase de valor coronada and Dante's
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
coronata e vestita d'umilitate, but the coronation is the only commonality. Dante's "humility" gives the sense of virtue, but Gilabert's "valour" is purely feudal/chivalric in tenor. He considers himself de la mainada ("of the mesnada") of his dona (lady), as he was of the king's and the faction's during his military career. He is closer to his classical troubadour forebearers of c. 1200 than the Italians of his own day, though his poetry displays a familiarity with Dante. In Dona del mon no·s pens que per amors Gilabert endeavours to keep the lady's name (and their love) a secret, lest she have others who believe they are loved by her. He inserts certain words in the poem specifically for this lady to whom it is dedicated, and whom he has been serving for nine years. A parallel exists between Gilabert's unnamed lady and Dante's donna-schermo of the Vita nuova
Vita Nuova
Vita Nuova Holdings Ltd is a British company based in York that provides technology for embedded systems and distributed applications based upon the unique operating system Inferno. It also distributes the Plan 9 operating system....
.