Medieval Editors: Jaufre de Foixa, Bernart Amoros, and Bernard de Clairvaux

Medieval compilers and theorists, when they expressed their principles of textual permanence, more than once cited the poets as the "wise men" whose example they have tried to follow. Jaufre de Foixa, in his Regles de trobar, appeals to authority (in this case, one who abdicates his authority) for a precedent to his own willingness to be corrected:

E si alcuna causa de repreniment hi ha ques eu non entenda, a mi platz fort que la puesquen esmenar segons rayso; car N'Aymerich de Peguilha m'o ensenya en una sua canço dient en axi:

Si eu en soy desmentitz
C'aysso no sia veritatz
No n'er om per mi blasmatz
Si per ver m'o contreditz;

Ans vey sos sabers plus grans
Si·m pot venser d'ayso segons rayso
Qu'eu non say ges tot lo sen Salamo.
                (Marshall 1972, 56)

And if there is any unintentional cause for reproach here, I would be very
pleased if they could emend it according to reason, for Aimeric de
Peguilhan teaches me this [attitude] in one of his songs, speaking thus: "If I
am deceived in this, so that this be not the truth, then no man shall be
criticized by me [on my account] if for the sake of truth he contradicts me;
   rather, I recognize his knowledge as greater if he can win out over me
with reason, for I by no means know all the wisdom of Solomon."

Only someone who "knows the truth" better than Aimeric, then, would venture to correct any false statements in his work; Aimeric authorizes such corrections, implying that criticism itself demonstrates superior knowledge. Jaufre de Foixa extends this principle, a matter of truth, to "any cause for reproach" that might require "emendation" in his treatise. He invites his readers to change his text if they find errors in it (again, the ability to criticize proves wisdom); more interesting, he believes that the troubadour Almeric extended the same invitation. The special privilege of the highly qualified reader here reaches its peak: permission to rewrite the book.

In similar fashion, the medieval compiler Bernart Amoros cites one of the poets, uns savis (a wise man), to confirm his idea that only the best qualified, those most nearly approaching the wisdom of Solomon, should undertake to emend a text: when the emendador "does not have understanding," then even the finest work is likely to be spoiled (see text below, points 7 and 8). In a sense, Bernart Amoros and Jaufre de Foixa share a tolerant view of intelligent, informed "improvements" to the text: Jaufre welcomes emendanon "segons rayso" (according to reason), and Bernart allows it, implicitly, wherever an "emender" has "ben aüt l'entendimen" (truly grasped the intended meaning). Each admits that his own version is not always letter-perfect.

In the light of current thinking about mouvance and transmission, Bernart Amoros's "curieuse note" takes on a significance hardly suspected since its publication by Ernest Stengel (1898, 350).^[6] Bernart's preface to a collection of troubadour songs survives in the paper manuscript a . As a first-person account of how a medieval compiler of troubadour poetry might operate, describing the choices open to him and the prin- 

ciples he followed, the passage from beginning to end offers rare and valuable information about medieval editing—an art that otherwise, in the chansonnier tradition, kept silent about itself and in its very anonymity disavowed its creativity as well as its conservatism, concealing its efforts behind fair copy under authors' names. Matfre Ermengaud—if (as Gustav Gröber believed) he did prepare chansonnier C for copying—prefaced it with no such frank statement of method.^[7] Because of the premises he takes for granted, as well as the ideas he presents as his own personal insight, Bernart Amoros's foreword is reproduced here in full.^[8]

Eu Bernartz Amoros clergues scriptors d'aquest libre si fui d'Alvergna don son estat maint bon trobador, e fui d'una villa que a nom Saint Flor de Planeza. E sui usatz luenc temps per Proenza per las encontradas on son mout de bonz trobadors, et ai vistas et auzidas maintas bonas chanzos. (2) Et ai apres tant en l'art de trobar q'eu sai cognoisser e devezir en rimas et en vulgar et en lati, per cas e per verbe, lo dreig trobar del fals. Per qu'eu dic qe en bona fe eu ai escrig en aqest libre drechamen lo miels q'reu ai sauput e pogut. (3) E si ai mout emendat d'aquo q'leu trobei en l'issemple, don eu o tiejn e bon e dreig, segon lo dreig lengatge. (4) Per q'ieu prec chascun que non s'entrameton de emendar e granren que si ben i trobes cots de penna en alcuna letra. (5) Chascuns horns, si truep pauc ne saubes, [no] pogra leumen aver drecha l'entencion. Et autre(s) fail non cuig qe i sia bonamen. (6) Que granz faillirs es d'ome que si fai emendador sitot ades non a l'entencion. (7) Qe maintas vetz, per frachura d'entendimen, venon afollat maint bon mot obrat primamen e d'avinen razo. (8) Si com dis uns savis:

Blasmat venon per frachura
D'entendimen obra pura
Maintas vetz de razon prima
Per maintz fols que-s tenon lima.

(9) Mas ieu m'en sui ben gardatz. Que maint luec son qu'eu non ai ben aüt
l'entendimen, per q'ieu non ai ren volgut mudar, per paor q'ieu non
peiures l'obra. Que truep volgra esser prims e sutils horn qi o pogues tot
entendre, specialmen de las chanzos d'En Giraut de Borneill lo maestre.^[9]

I, Bernart Amoros, cleric, writer of this book, came from Auvergne, from which many good troubadours have come; and I was from a town that has the name Saint Flor de Planeza. And I have spent a long time [traveling] through Provence and through regions where there are many good trou- 

badours, and I have seen and heard many good songs. (2) And I have learned so much in the art of poetic composition that I can recognize and distinguish, in rhymes both in the vernacular and in Latin, by case and by verb, the right trobar from the false. Therefore I say that in good faith I have written this book, correctly, to the best of my knowledge and ability. (3) And I have emended much of what I found in the exemplar, which I consider both good and proper to do, according to correct language. (4) Therefore I beg every man not to undertake to emend a great deal unless you truly find a slip of the pen in some letter. (5) Every man, if he knows too little, will not easily be able to get the intended meaning right. And I do not think that another man's error should properly be there. (6) For it is a great failing in a man who makes himself an emender unless he first has the intended meaning. (7) For many times, through a flaw in understanding, many good verses of the first workmanship and elegant reasoning have come to a bad end. (8) As a wise man says: "Through flaws in understanding of the first razo, pure works often come to be blamed, on account of many fools with erasers in their hands." But I took good care not to do this. For there are many passages where I did not really grasp the intention, and for this reason I did not wish to change anything, for fear that I might make the work worse. For a man will have to be extremely superior and subtle in order to understand everything, especially the songs of Giraut de Bornelh, the master.

In describing his background and travels, Bernart Amoros is not indulging in mere vanity: he is giving his credentials. By using the vida form for his autobiographical introduction, he presents himself as the peer of the troubadours, like them an initiate in the art of lyric composition. He counts on his reader's believing that the proximity of his birthplace to the origin of so many good troubadours, as well as his extensive travels in Provence and Auvergne, enhances his qualifications to distinguish "lo dreig trobar del fats." Certainly trobar was still a living art at the time of Bernart's visits, since it is clear from the passage that Bernart was not limited to traveling from library to library examining manuscripts: not only did he see many songs; he heard them also. He implies that the troubadours' native lands were a particularly abundant and reliable source of their songs; we may infer that each region not only preserved copies of its natives' works (the songs Bernart "saw") but also maintained them in a performing tradition (the songs he "heard").

When Bernart says that he has "learned so much in the art of composi- 

tion" that he can devezir (make decisions) both "en vulgar e en lati" (in the vernacular and in Latin), he does not necessarily mean only that he has become a good critic, an informed member of poetry's audience. He may also mean that he can versify. Five Latin hexameters bearing his name survive, at the end of a collection of Latin proverbs; they demonstrate that his enthusiasm extends to his having learned to create original lines in the style of what he edited:

Anno milleno ter centum ter quoque deno
Adjuncto terno complevit tempore verno
Dictus Amorosus Bernardus, in his studiosus,
Librum presentem, proverbia mille tenentem,
Milleque quingentos versus hic ordine junctos.^[10]

In the year one thousand three hundred and thirty and three
added, in the springtime, the man called Bernart Amoros, a
devoted student of these matters, completed the present book
containing a thousand proverbs, and a thousand five hundred
lines of verse here adjoined in order.

Bernart knew his contemporaries—both copyists and compilers—better than we know them today, and if he thought it necessary to make a special plea for careful, responsible copying, we can be sure that he expected emendadors by the dozen. He himself was one, and in good conscience. He begs that others correct only "slips of the pen," implying that writers of the day were in the habit of correcting more serious errors, perhaps even the kinds of errors (vicis ) for which the grammarians constantly reproach the anciens trobadors . What saves Bernart Amoros, at least in his own eyes, is that he made his emendations "in good faith," following both "correct language" and "the intended meaning." In his view, one must resort to mechanical transcription when one has not understood the passage. He admits that this has been his practice "especially with the songs of Sir Giraut de Bornelh the master." But how does Bernart proceed when he does understand the passage before him and finds it "flawed"? He emends "much." And it requires all the powers of this learned man, who has taken pains not only to learn the grammar but also to listen to as many songs as possible in their native lands, and who can write original verse if necessary, to make these emendations "rightly, to the best of my knowledge and ability."^[11]

Sylvia Huot, who has recently commented on Bernart Amoros's pref- 

ace, argues that this late-thirteenth-century text reflects an attitude that "can exist only within the framework of a written literary tradition; It is foreign to the semi-improvisational oral tradition." The case for this conclusion is well-stated in Huot's book: "For Bernart, vernacular and Latin poetry alike exist as a written tradition, governed by strict rules of poetic and grammatical form. His concern with textual emendations further reflects a consciousness of the poem as having a fixed form, composed by a gifted individual; the task of the copyist is to restore and preserve the work of the masters" (1987, 333). Yet Bernart's concern is not so much with preserving the literal utterances of the gifted individual (and Giraut de Bornelh is the only poet Bernart mentions as particularly deserving of non-emendation) but with preserving the "rightness" of the poem. As for the claim that Bernart's attitude belongs exclusively to a written tradition, we should not discount Bernart's "seeing and hearing" of many songs. It may be that in his "fieldwork" he conceived of himself as seeking the "right" version of any given song, assuming that the "right" version would of course coincide with the "authentic" or "authorial" version. Nonetheless, Bernart obviously was exposed to the "semi-improvisational oral tradition" and was keenly aware of the existence of variant versions.

It is unlikely that Bernart Amoros's plea for literal copying by the tasteless scribes of posterity reflects a sudden, late upsurge in zealous emendation. Even in the twelfth century we find much concern about the reproduction of musical texts. Bernard de Clairvaux addresses the preface of his treatise on song (De cantu ) both to future copyists and to future singers: "omnibus transcripturis hoc Antiphonarium, sive cantaturis in illo" (to all those who will transcribe this Antiphonary, or who will stag in it). St. Bernard apparently detects mouvance in the traditional antiphonary of the Cistercians and wishes to correct this situation, finding it unseemly for laudes Deo . Observing that the songs have long been entrusted to those who sang them,

Cantum quem Cisterciensis Ordinis ecclesiae cantare consueverant, licet
gravis et multiplex absurditas, diu tamen canentium commendavit
auctoritas

The song which the assemblies of the Cistercian order are accustomed to 
sing—though granted it is a serious and manifold absurdity—has never-
theless for a long time been entrusted by authority to those singing it, 

he urges that some regularity be adopted in singing by monks who, in all other respects, follow the Rule:

Dignum siquidem est, ut qui tenent Regulae veritatem, praetermissis al-
iorum dispensationibus, habeant etiam rectam canendi scientiam, re-
pudiatis eorum licentiis, qui similitudinem magis, quam naturam in can-
tibus attendentes, cohaerentia disjungunt, et conjungunt opposita; sicque 
omnia confundentes, cantum prout libet, non prout licet, incipiunt et ter-
minant, deponunt et elevant, componunt et ordinant. Unde nemo miretur
aut indignetur, si cantum aliter quam huc usque audierit, in plerisque mu-
tatum invenerit. (Migne 1844–1902, vol. 182, cols. 1121ff.)

If in fact it is proper that those who uphold the truth of the Rule, ignoring 
the directions of others, yet still have true knowledge of how to sing, refus-
ing the liberties taken by those men, who, paying more attention to simili-
tude than to nature in songs, disjoin coherences and conjoin opposites; 
and thus, confounding everything, as they will and not as they should, they 
begin and end the song, lower and raise it, put it together and put it in 
order. Thus, no one is astonished or indignant if he hears a song different 
from the way it was in the past, and finds changes in several places.

St. Bernard is speaking both of the melodies and of the words to these church songs; he finds an "excusatio facilis" (easy excuse) for "mutatio litterae" (change in the letter) in the fact that most of the repeated phrases in the antiphonary are nowhere to be found in the Scriptures. His desire to establish a fixed text for nonscriptural material, and the weight of the opposition to fixity in song that his preface is designed to overcome, show how deeply ingrained must have been the distraction between divinely inspired texts (to be reproduced prout licet ) and mere human, transitory utterances (to be reproduced prout libet ). Yet Bernard de Clairvaux seeks to give his own edition of the antiphonary some of the lustre and integrity of a sacred text. Like Bernart Amoros, the saint explains that he has made many necessary changes and now desires that no one after him undertake the same charge.

Raimon Vidal, in the Razos de trobar, observes that troubadour poetry has captured the imagination, and the memory, of the listening public. Audiences are not mere audiences—they participate. Everyone from the highest walk of life to the lowest has taken a daily interest in poetry, both composing and singing it: 

Totas genz cristianas, iusieuas et sarazinas, emperador, princeps, rei, duc,
conte, vesconte, contor, valvasor, clergue, borgues, vilans, paucs e granz,
meton totz iorns lor entendiment en trobar et en chantar, o q'en volon
trobar o q'en volon entendre o q'en volon dire o q'en volon auzir; qe greu
seres en loc negun tan privat ni tan sol, pos gens i a paucas o moutas, qe
ades non auias cantar un o autre o tot ensems, qe neis li pastor de la mon-
tagna lo maior sollatz qe ill aiant an de chantar. Et tuit li mal e·l ben del 
mont son mes en remembransa per trobadors. Et ia non trobares mot [ben] 
ni mal dig, po[s] trobaires l'a mes en rima, qe tot iorns [non sia] en re-
membranza, qar trobars et chantars son movemenz de totas galliardias.
                (cited in Poe 1984, 69)

All people—Christians, Jews, and Saracens, emperors, princes, kings,
dukes, counts, viscounts, contors,  vavasseurs, clerics, bourgeois, peasants,
small and great, every day apply their attention to poetry and song, either
that they want to compose it or they want to understand it or they want to
recite it or they want to listen to it; so that you could hardly find yourself
in any place so private or so isolated, be there few or many people, that
you would not hear singing one person or another or all of them at once,
for even the shepherds of the mountains, the greatest amusement that they
have is to sing. And all the goods and evils of the world have been placed in
remembrance by the troubadours. And never will you find anything, well
or badly said, once a troubadour has set it to rhyme, which will not forever
be in memory, for poetic composition and singing are movements of all
gladness.

But few of these amateurs know how to compose properly ("la drecha maniera de trobar"), so Raimon must take it upon himself to set them straight. As for his own book, Raimon is equally conservative and monumentalist: "Per qu'ieu vos dig qe en neguna ren, pos basta ni ben ista, no·n deu om ren ostar ni mais metre" (Therefore I tell you that in no detail, since it suffices and is good as it stands, should a man take anything out or put in anything more). Let the public wreak havoc on troubadour poetry, but let it leave untouched the manual for undoing that havoc! Raimon Vidal's Razos have been dated by Jeanroy at ca. 1200—half a century before the writing of the earliest extant troubadour songbook. We may notice that in Raimon's list of all the things people want to do to poetry—hear it, understand it, compose it, recite it—we do not see the words read and write . The song was a matter for remembranza —memory. 

If troubadour poetry was "a dying art" after 1254 in its native land, surely it continued to be a living art in its adoptive patriae —in Italy, Catalonia, northern France—in the regions, that is, where most of the early chansonniers were compiled. Ferrari de Ferrara, Bernart Amoros, and Miquel de la Tor were all, to some extent, practicing poets as well as makers of books. Ferrari de Ferrara

fo giullar et intendez meill detrobar proensal the negus om che fos mai en
lombardia e meill entendet la lenga proensal e sap molt be letras e scriuet
meil ch'om del mond e feis de molt bos libres e de beil.... Mas non fes
mais .II. cancos e una retruensa mais seruentes e coblas les el asai de las
meillor del mon e fe un estrat de tutas las cancos des bos trobador del mon.
                (Teulié and Rossi 1901–1902, 13:60–61)

was a longleur and understood better how to compose poetry in Proveçal
than any man who was still living Lombardy, and he better understood
the Proveçal language and knew letters very well and wrote better than
any man in the world and made some very good and beautiful books. . . .
But he only composed two love songs and one  retruensa,  but he composed
plenty of sirventes and coblas,  some of the best in the world, and he made a
selection of all the love songs of the good troubadours of the world.

The sixteenth-century scholar Giovanni Barbieri, according to his book on the origins of rhymed poetry, had the same text, with a few additions, on page 5 of his libro slegato (Barbieri 1790, 84). In the biography of Peire Cardenal (d. ca. 1272), Miquel de la Tor solemnly certifies that he personally wrote the sirventes of Peire following the vida, that he was in Nimes when he wrote it, and (as if he knew Peire) that the poet was more than a hundred years old when he died. Beyond that, the only trace of Miquel's work is preserved in Barbieri's testimony, and that only in a book published more than two hundred years after Barbieri wrote it.^[12] Barbieri quotes poetry from a book he calls the "Libro di Michele" and cites the following statements from it (Italian phrases are Barbieri's):

Maistre Miquel de la Tor de Clarmon del Vernhesi escrius aquest libre estant en Monpeslier &c.

E ne scrisse ancora delle sue in soggetto del suo amore, di cui dice in una Canzone:

En Narbone era plantatz
L'albre quem fara murir,

Et en Monpesher es cazatz
En molt bon luec se nes mentir.
                (Barbieri 1790, 120–121)

"Master Miquel de la Tor, from Clermont in Alvernhe, wrote this book
while he was in Montpellier etc." And he wrote more of his own [poetry]
on the subject of his own love, of which he says in a canso: "In Narbonne
was planted the tree which will make me die, and in Montpellier it [the
tree] fell, in many a good place and that's no lie."

Like Bernart Amoros, these men in their biographies evince the conviction that to compile and copy troubadour lyric poetry one should be able to compose it. Ferrari de Ferrara tried his hand at various genres but specialized in the sirventes (political satire)—yet his compilation is one of cansos . Miquel de la Tor, scholar though he was, adopts the ethos and idiom of the poet/lover ("que·m fara murir") with his boast that his song (the "tree," the body of knowledge he has mastered in Montpellier) has been well distributed ("es cazatz en molt bon luec"). Poets and compilers, these men's expertise in troubadour poetry came not only from reading but also from performing and listening to others perform.

For these reasons we must now challenge the accepted theory (of Gröber, Avalle, and Marshall) that all the poetry anthologized in the chansonniers descends exclusively from authorized Liederblätter (song sheets) distributed, multiplied, and modified only through repeated copying from copies .^[13] There is no proof that twelfth-century jongleurs habitually referred to written copies as they sang their renditions; indeed, there is evidence that many of these performers were illiterate (Paden 1979, 4–5; Paden 1984, 97–98). It is also, as Hendrik van der Werf points out, very likely that some copies were taken down from performances rather than from written texts. The act of transcription itself, given medieval methods of reading, may have tended to reenact performance. Van der Werf, in his study of variants in musical notation, observes that

there was no one prescribed way of performing a certain chanson, nor was there the uniformity in musical notation that we know now. Furthermore, we may conclude that the scribes did not copy at sight symbol for symbol. Instead, the differences between certain manuscripts suggest that a scribe may have sung to himself a section from the draft in front of him—not necessarily the melody of exactly one entire line—and then copied from memory what he had heard rather than what he had seen. Consequently he 

put himself in the position of a performer notating his own performance.
                (1972, 30)^[14]

Bernart Amoros implies strongly that the correctness of the text he writes owes as much to the fact that he has "seen and heard" many songs as to "so qu'ieu trobei en l'issemple" (that which I found in the exemplar). Might not a copyist, familiar with a song as song more than as tuneless poetry, also sing the words to himself as he wrote, copying what he sang rather than what he saw? Might not he sing, moreover, what he had heard in preference to what he had read? The adaptability of spelling to conform to the scribe's own pronunciation of the language would surely not detract from this point of view: one might cite, for example, the "nonidentical twin" manuscripts G and Q in their presentation of the poems of Rigaut de Berbezilh: the six songs are given in exactly the same order, with a line-for-line correspondence that suggests a case where both copies were made from the same original, yet there is almost no letter-for-letter correspondence in their spelling (Bertom 1912, 187–196; Bertoni 1905, 85–90).

Our modern literalism, influenced by the printing press, conceives of the "faithful copy" in quite a different sense from Bernart Amoros's transcription "en bona fe" (in good faith). It is true that "matters of editorial technique" need to come more to the attention of readers of troubadour poetry; it is also true that "at least in certain kinds of lyric poetry, the exact letter of the text matters a very great deal indeed" (Marshall 1975, 11). But do those "certain kinds of lyric poetry" to which Marshall refers properly include all troubadour songs, early and late, whether they forbid the jongleur to camjar lo ver or request that he improve it? This exactitude, this reverence for the "well-wrought Urn," for these "letters" and "texts," certainly is essential to our modern conception of lyric poetry. Nonetheless, we now have reason to doubt that the troubadours defined "lyric poetry" exactly as twentieth-century poets do. Marshall believes that written composition and purely written transmission allow us to reconstruct an authentic original text; underlying this belief are the assumption that such a text once existed and the hope that, like modern poets, the troubadours strove to perfect one original version and then, through written circulation, to claim it as inviolable literary property:

in so far as we can reconstruct the textual history of individual poets or songs, that history seems to be one of written texts, without interference (or with no demonstrable interference) from memorial transmission. So far 

as we can now ascertain, written copies were in circulation virtually from the moment of composition and formed ultimately the basis for the manuscript collections which have come down to us. (Marshall 1975, 14)

Since, as a matter of fact, "demonstrable interference from memorial transmission" is evident not only in the quality of variants in the chansonniers but also in the testimony of the troubadours themselves, we should reexamine this reconstructed "textual history . . . of written texts." A crucial question in evaluating the poets' own ideas of a "faithful copy" is the extent to which their own use of writing, and of other methods of promoting literalism and fixing their words, made the exact letter of the text matter to them. As we shall see, the twelfth-century poets know about writing but show little sign of using it either to compose or to fix their texts. They occasionally use "fixative' rhyme schemes, but only 10 to 20 percent of the time. They frequently speak to the addressee as to a future reciter of the song, and they occasionally ask for the kind of emendation "in good faith" that will, if necessary, "improve" their lyrics.