Hugues IV de Berzé
Encyclopedia
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....
and trouvère
Trouvère
Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...
from the Mâconnais
Mâconnais
The Mâconnais district lies in the south of the Burgundy wine region in France, west of the River Saône. It takes its name from the town of Mâcon. It is best known as a source of good value white wines made from the Chardonnay grape; the wines from Pouilly-Fuissé are particularly sought-after....
. He participated in the Fourth Crusade
Fourth Crusade
The Fourth Crusade was originally intended to conquer Muslim-controlled Jerusalem by means of an invasion through Egypt. Instead, in April 1204, the Crusaders of Western Europe invaded and conquered the Christian city of Constantinople, capital of the Eastern Roman Empire...
in 1201 and the Fifth Crusade
Fifth Crusade
The Fifth Crusade was an attempt to reacquire Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land by first conquering the powerful Ayyubid state in Egypt....
in 1220. He was the lord of Berzé-le-Châtel
Berzé-le-Châtel
Berzé-le-Châtel is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France.The trouvère Hugues IV de Berzé was the ruler of Berzé-le-Châtel in the early 13th century....
.
Hugues wrote at least five lyric poems that are preserved in various 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. His last one was written to 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....
Falquet de Romans
Falquet de Romans
Falquet de Romans was the most famous troubadour attached to the court of Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, where he garnered a high reputation despite the fact that his career began as a jongleur...
, asking his friend to participate in the Crusade with him outra mar
Outremer
Outremer, French for "overseas", was a general name given to the Crusader states established after the First Crusade: the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Tripoli and especially the Kingdom of Jerusalem...
. Hugues sent his poem with the jongleur Bernart d'Argentau and it forms an important source of information about both poets. According to Hugues, neither he nor Falquet were young at the time. Hugues was dead by August 1220, which provides an ante quem
Terminus post quem
Terminus post quem and terminus ante quem specify approximate dates for events...
date for the poem. Hugues is referred to as N'Ugo de Bersie in the Occitan razo
Razo
Raso is an islet of 8 square kilometers in the Barlavento archipelago of Cape Verde. Raso is flanked by the smaller Branco islet on the west and by São Nicolau island on its eastern side. Raso is uninhabited and is now the only home of the Raso Lark. The Brown Booby and Red-billed Tropicbird visit...
that accompanies the poem in the chansonnier.
His most famous Old French
Old French
Old French was the Romance dialect continuum spoken in territories that span roughly the northern half of modern France and parts of modern Belgium and Switzerland from the 9th century to the 14th century...
work is La Bible au seigneur de Barzil, a poem of 1,029 octosyllable
Octosyllable
The octosyllable or octosyllabic verse is a line of verse with eight syllables. It is equivalent to tetrameter verse in iambs or trochees in languages with a stress accent. It is often used in French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese poetry...
s preaching the reform of the Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
. Hugues was influenced by his time in Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
and by "the certainty of death and the uncertainty of his times", when the Crusades were generally failures and the Cathar
Cathar
Catharism was a name given to a Christian religious sect with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries...
heresy was rampant in southern France
Languedoc
Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...
. Hugues has criticism for all three social classes (nobility, clergy, and peasantry). Hugues's Bible is in the same category as the slightly earlier Bible Guiot of Guiot de Provins
Guiot de Provins
Guiot de Provins was a French poet and trouvère from the town of Provins in the Champagne area. A declining number of scholars identify him with Kyot the Provençal, the alleged writer of the source material used by Wolfram von Eschenbach for his romance Parzival, but most others consider such a...
. La Bible exemplifies "the beliefs of a pious layman with a considerable breadth of worldly experience".