CANTAIRITZ E TROBAIRITZ: A Forgotten Attestation of Old Provençal »Trobairitz«

Author(s): Elizabeth W. Poe

Source: Romanische Forschungen, 114. Bd., H. 2 (2002), pp. 206-215
Published by: Vittorio Klostermann GmbH
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27941882
Accessed: 26-06-2016 07:11 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Vittorio Klostermann GmbH is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Romanische Forschungen

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Elizabeth W. Poe/Tulane

CANTAIRITZ E TROBAIRITZ

A Forgotten Attestation of Old Proven?al ?Trobairitz?

In an article published in 1979, Pierre Bee stated categorically that the word
trobairitz is attested neither in the biographies of the troubadours nor in
the Occitano-Catalan grammatical and poetic treatises of the thirteenth and
fourteenth centuries.1 No one, to my knowledge, has questioned this asser
tion. Indeed, it would seem that, since the appearance of that influential essay,
virtually everyone who has written about the trobairitz has taken for granted
that the only known instance of the term is found in the romance of Flamenca
(v. 4577), where, according to some, it could mean simply >inventive< and not
necessarily >female troubadoun.2 There is, however, another occurrence of tro
bairitz - in a late thirteenth-century grammar - where its meaning is, happily,
unambiguous.3

1 ? Trobairitz et chansons de femme. Contribution ? la connaissance du lyrisme f?minin

au Moyen Age,? Cahiers de civilisation m?di?vale 22 (1979): 241 = ?Trobairitz occitanes et
chansons de femme fran?aises,? Perspectives m?di?vales 5 (1979): 60.
2 P. Meyer, ed., Flamenca (Paris: 1901) 169, w. 4576-4577: ?Margarida, tro ben t'es
pr?s/ E ja iest bona trobairis.? M. J. Hubert and M. E. Porter (>7he Romance ofFlamenca<
[Princeton: 1962] 257) translate the line, ?You are very bright and clever.? . St?dtler
{?ltprovenzalische Frauendichtung [1150?1250]: Historisch-soziologische Untersuchungen und
Interpretationen [Heidelberg: 1990] 2-3) understands the word to mean ?eine geschickte,
wortgewandte Frau? but not necessarily a courtly poetess. Meyer himself does not translate
trobairis in his 1865 edition/translation of the text but does offer an explanatory footnote
(356 n. 1), ?F?minin de trobaire, trouv?re ou troubadour.? He does not include the word
in the glossary to that first edition; however, in the 1901 edition, which contains no trans
lation, he lists trobairis in the glossary (408) and defines it as ? [femme] qui sait trouver,
imaginer.? Trobairitz does not appear in F. J.-M. Raynouard's Lexique roman ou dictionnaire
de la langue des troubadours (Paris: 1836?1845), the publication of which preceded Meyer's
edition(s) of Flamenca, but it does show up in E. Levy's Petit dictionnaire proven?al-fran?ais
(Heidelberg: 1909), where it is defined (373) as >femme qui sait trouver, imaginen. It is
included also in Levy's Provenzalisches Supplement-W?rterbuch (Leipzig: 1924), where it is
equated (8: 480) with >Finderin<. The only attestation cited by Levy is FUmenca v. 4577.
3 In presenting a second instance of trobairitz, I cannot claim to have discovered
anything that was not already known to a number of Romance philologists of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including, but undoubtedly not limited to, Paul
Meyer, Adolf Tobler, Camille Chabaneau, Oskar Schultz-Gora, Giulio Bertoni, Joseph
Anglade, and Alfred Jeanroy.

RF 114 (2002)

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Cantairitze trobairitz 207

While recognizing that Bec s error began as a trivial one, I believe nevertheless
that it is important to set the record straight not only because other scholars con
tinue to quote this bit of misinformation4 but also because Pierre Bee himself has
in the meantime reiterated and expanded his spurious claim, calling trobairitz
a ?hapax,? suggesting that it was a ?spontaneous creation? of the anonymous
author of Flamenca, and adding that its technical use as a designation for the
women troubadours is ?relatively recent.?5
trobairitz is cited as an example of an invariable noun in the Doctrina
dacori, written by Terramagnino da Pisa sometime between 1282 and 1296.6
Paraulas i ha encara,
Aysi con horn prims sgara,
Qui se luoygno ab drechura 328

4 J.-Ch. Huchet, ?Les femmes troubadours ou la voix critique,? Litt?rature 51 (1983):

64-65; W. D. Paden, The Voice of the Trobairitz. Perspectives on the Women Troubadours
(Philadelphia: 1989) 13.
5 P. Bec (Chants d'amour des femmes-troubadours [Paris: 1995] 32 n. 1) explains, ?II faut
rappeler que le terme trobairitz n'appara?t qu'une seule fois dans toute la litt?rature occitane,
et encore dans un contexte narratif (Fhmenca, w. 4576-4577), o? il s'agit peut-?tre d'une
cr?ation spontan?e. Le terme est donc pratiquement un hapax et relativement r?cent dans
la critique litt?raire.?
6 Biographical information about Terramagnino is scant. We know that, in addition to
the Doctrina d'acort and at least one Proven?al poem, three verses of which he cites in his
grammar (w. 187-189), he composed a double sonnet in Italian, with an anonymous partner,
who may have been Meo Abbracciavacca. It is generally believed that Terramagnino, who
was evidently a native of Pisa, wrote the Doctrina d'acort in Sardinia, possibly at the behest
of Nino, Judge of Gallura, whom he mentions by name in w. 91-92 of that work. The
terminus post quern for the composition of the Doctrina d'acort is 1282, the year in which
Nino assumed the office of Judge of Gallura. The terminus ante quern is 1296, the year of
Nino's death. See O. Schultz [-Gora], ?Zu Terramagnino von Pisa,? Zeitschrift fur romanische
Phibbgie 12 (1888): 262-263; G. Bertoni, ?Notereile provenzali I: Terramagnino da Pisa,?
Revue des langues romanes 56 (1913): 413-415; G. Bertoni, I trovatori d'Italia (Modena: 1915)
120?122; G. Zaccagnini, ?Notizie intorno ai rimatori pisani del secolo XIII,? Giornale
storico della letteratura italiana 69 (1917): 32-34. The Doctrina d'acort is preserved in a single
manuscript, //(Barcelona, Bibl. Central, 239), which was produced in Catalonia in the late
fourteenth century and which contains nine grammatical and poetic treatises. The manu
script, which was thought to be lost in the nineteenth century, was rediscovered in Madrid
in 1911. P. Meyer based his edition of the Doctrina d'acort (?Trait?s catalans de grammaire
et de po?tique. Doctrina de Cort,? Romania 8 [1879]: 181-210) on an eighteenth-century
copy of H, known as '. The text has been edited several times since Meyer: E. Monaci,
Testi antichi provenzali (Rome: 1888) 6-21; G. Zaccagnini, and A. Parducci, Rimatori siculo
toscani del Duecento, serie prima: Pistoiesi, Lucchesi, Pisani (Bari: 1915) 224-249; A. Ruffinatto,
Terramagnino da Pisa, Doctrina d'acort: Edizione critica, introduzione e note (Rome: 1968);
and J. H. Marshall, The >Razos de troban ofRaimon Vidal and Associated Texts (London:
1972) 29-52,122-128,145-159. All citations in this essay are taken from the Marshall edition
(- The Razos).

RF 114 (2002)

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 208 Elizabeth W.Poe

Sol per us de parladura

En totz los nombres, qar la ienz
Las ditz assatz may avinenz,/
Con cantayritz e amayritz, 332
Emperayritz e trobayritz.7

(There are still other words of which the intelligent person should be aware, which
are correctly used only with flexional endings in all numbers, according to the
usage of the language; people say them that way because they sound better: e. g.,
cantayritz >female singen and amayritz >female loven, emperayritz >em
press< and trobayritz >female poet<).
It is clear from the context that Terramagnino understood trobairitz to be
the feminine equivalent, both morphologically and professionally speaking, of
trobador, for he pairs it here with cantairitz and, a hundred verses further
on, presents the masculine form of the same couple, trobayre e chantayre:

Dels verbals noms sapchatz aqi

Que de tres manieras son, si
Con trobayre e chantayre,
Consirayre e amayre [...].8 432
(Concerning the verbal nouns, know here that they are of three types: e.g., tro
bayre >troubadour< and chantayre >singer<, consirayre >thinker<, and amayre
>lover< [...]).
The analogy is obvious: cantairitz is to cantai re, as trobairitz is to
trobaire.
The location of an instance of trobairitz in the Doctrina d'acort is significant
because, while there is absolutely nothing irregular about the way in which this
word is formed,9 Terramagnino, as a non-native speaker whose acquaintance with
Proven?al was sketchy and bookish, would have been reluctant to invent examples
that he had never seen before.10 Thus, the presence of trobairitz in the Doctrina
dacort presupposes the existence of another, earlier attestation of the word.

7 Marshall, The Razos 38-39.

8 Marshall, The Razos 42.
9 E. L. Adams {Word-Formation in Proven?al [New York: 1913] 51-53) lists approximately
forty feminine agent-nouns in -itz built on Provencal infinitives. He does not include
those for which there already existed a Latin equivalent, such as emperairitz < imperatricem.
Thus, the absence of amairitz from his inventory is explainable; the omission of trobairitz
is harder to justify. He remarks in a footnote (53 n. 5) that the -airitz suffix was ?usually
added to verbs of bad meaning.? Is it possible, then, that trobairitz originally had a
pejorative sense?
10 S. Santangelo {Dante e i trovatori provenzali [Catania: 1921] 99-100) reminds us that
Terramagnino was not striving for originality in any aspect of his grammatical exposition,
?non che per gli esempi di forme staccate, neanche per i passi poetici, e meno ancora per
le regole.? Marshall {The Razos LXXXVIII) characterizes Terramagnino s knowledge of Pro
ven?al as ?imperfect and incomplete,? ?uncertain and fragmentary.? Likewise, G. Gonfroy

RF 114 (2002)

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Cantairitz e trobair?tz 209

We know that Terramagnino da Pisas primary written source ? and we can

safely assume that all of his sources were written11 - was Raimon Vidais Razos de
trobar. In fact, Terramagnino s verse redaction adheres so closely to its model that
we are able to identify the particular version of Raimon s text that he must have
been using: namely, that preserved in MSS Cand Z.12
But Terramagnino does not follow Raimon Vidal in every detail. He opens
his treatise with an invocation of the Trinity and closes with a short prayer of
confession in which he asks for forgiveness of his sins. He greatly reduces and
revamps Raimons tendentious preface, removing, among other things, all allu
sions to the spoken language and to performance; he addresses his readers as
?lovers?;13 he introduces some grammatical terminology not found in the Razos

(?Les grammairiens occitano-catalans du Moyen Age et la d?nomination de leur langue,?

La Licorne 4 [1980]: 50) judges Terramagnino s language to be ?si incertaine, notamment
? la rime, qu'on ne peut en d?duire pour son auteur qu'une connaissance m?diocre - et
uniquement livresque - de l'ancien occitan.?
11 Marshall ( The Razos LXXXVII-LXXXIX) emphasizes that Terramagnino's knowledge of
Proven?al was ?derived, in all probability, from two sources only: from the Razos de trobar
and from the study of troubadour poems in one or more chansonniers.* For Terramagnino,
?troubadour songs were primarily written texts, to be perused and dissected.? He was an
?antiquarian? who viewed Provencal as ?a dead language, to be studied through the docu
ments it had left behind and with the help of an eighty-year-old treatise which may well
have had in his eyes the status of a classic.? Curiously, Marshall contradicts himself on this
point, for, earlier in his Introduction (XXXV), he has stated, ?The troubadour quotations
in the Doctrina d'acort derive from the author's memory, from his consultation of one or
more chansonniers, and from intelligent use of the Razos de trobar in a MS close to CL. The
first two of these sources were of greater importance than the third. ? I regard it as extremely
unlikely that Terramagnino relied on his memory for any of these citations.
12 The Razos de trobar is preserved in four manuscripts: (Florence, Laurenziana XLI.
42), otherwise known as troubadour manuscript P; C (Florence, Riccardiana, 2814) =
troubadour manuscript a, which is a sixteenth-century copy of the late thirteenth-century
chansonnier of Bernart Amoros, the original of which is lost; H (see n. 6, above); and L
(New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, 831), which was produced in Italy at the end of the
thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century. Marshall (The Razos) has edited
and H as independent but closely related versions and has treated the C- and L-versions
together as a separate text. Consult Marshall {The Razos IX-XIII) for a fuller discussion of
the manuscript tradition. Santangelo is convinced that Terramagnino was using a version
of the Razos de trobar that was longer and more complete than any of those that have
survived. It is this same, now-lost version of Raimon Vidais Razos de trobar with which,
according to Santangelo, Dante was familiar. D'A. S. Avalle {La letteratura medievale in
lingua d'oc netta sua tradizione manoscritta [Turin: 1961] 142-144) has refuted Santangelo's
argument, as has Marshall {The Razos 161-166). Marshall (The Razos XXVIII) believes that
Terramagnino was working, not directly from either the C- or Z-versions as we know them,
but from their ? immediate common ancestor. ?
13 Terramagnino refers to his readers in the third person as ?lovers? in v. 4 and addresses
them in the vocative in w. 55-56, 367, 415, and 803.

RF 114 (2002)

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 210 Elizabeth W. Poe

de trobar;14 he declines selected nouns in all cases, singular and plural;15 he

devises several simple illustrative sentences of his own;16 for the most part, he
avoids quoting the troubadour verses already employed by Raimon, choosing
others instead.17 Although Terramagnino retains many of the individual lexi
cal items adduced by his predecessor to exemplify various parts of speech and
morphological patterns, he omits and adds a few.18 As it happens, tro bai ritz

14 Unusual terms include anar (the form of a word), chart or chantar (the vernacular),
cors (pattern of declension), primier (singular). Among the more standard terms employed
by Terramagnino but not by Raimon Vidal are barbarism, oraci?n, part d oraci?n, solecism.
See Marshall (The Razos 173-179) for an Index of Technical Terms.
15 This is particularly amusing in the instance of chantai ritz (Marshall, The Razos 39),
which, like trobairitz, is the same in the singular and plural of all cases: ?Nominativo
chantayritz, G. chantayritz, D. chantayritz, A. chantayritz, V. O chantayritz, A. ab chan
tayritz, etc. Et pluraliter chantayritz, G. chantayritz, D. chantayritz, [A. chantayritz], V. O
chantayritz, A. ab chantayr?tz, ses o senes chantayritz, etc.?
16 Two or three of these sentences have been taken as referring to Terramagnino s personal
situation. The first (v. 143), ?E bon mi saupr' anar vas Piza? has been adduced as evidence
that Terramagnino was writing this grammar at a time when he was far away from his native
Pisa and that he was homesick. If we accept Bertoni s rather fanciful reading (?Notereile?
414,1 trovatori 121-122), ?Ben m'es en/per ?au anar vas Piza,? we even learn the means of
transportation required for Terramagnino's return. The necessity of a boatride would lend
weight to the hypothesis that the grammarian was on an island. As Bertoni (?Noterelle?
413, / trovatori 121) has observed, ?Terramagnino? itself is not so much a proper name as
a nickname adopted by this transplant from the mainland. Another sample sentence (w.
91-92), ?Cavalliers melur/ per iutge Ogolim de Galur,? has been interpreted as a flattering
reference to Nino, Judge of Gallura, hence as an indication that Terramagnino was working
for that local official. A third (v. 90), ?Seigner suy del castell de Vic,? has been noted by
scholars as having possible autobiographical content, but Vic is too common a name for
this statement to be very instructive.
17 Of the more than forty citations of troubadour verse in the Doctrina dacort, only four
(from three poems) are the same as those found in the Razos de trobar. Santangelo main
tains that Terramagnino took all of his verse citations from the full text of Raimon Vidais
Razos de trobar, of which the surviving versions are but abridgements. Marshall, however,
argues - and most other scholars would agree - that these quotations did not come from
the Razos de trobar but rather from a chansonnier. In other words, Terramagnino had at
his disposal not only a version of the Razos de trobar, which was closely related to that
preserved in MSS C and L but also one or more chansonniers (or possibly a florilegium of
extracts from troubadour songs). It is probably no mere coincidence that the vast major
ity of the citations in the Doctrina dacort are taken from songs occurring in troubadour
MS D (Modena, Biblioteca Estense, a R. 4.4)? Perhaps Terramagnino had access to one
of the source-collections used in the compilation of that manuscript. Marshall ( The Razos
XXX-XXXV) offers some suggestive comments concerning the provenance of these verse
citations.
18 Marshall (The Razos XXIX n. 5) lists these additions, the most notable of which in the
present context are amayritz (v. 332), trobayritz (v. 333), trobayre (v. 431), and consirayre,
amayre (v. 432).

RF 114 (2002)

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Cantairitz e trobair?tz 211

is one of those additions. It is absent from the corresponding passage in the CL

version of the Razos de trobar:19

Enqara i ha paraulas qi s'alongon per totz los cas singulars e plurals per us de pariadura, et
qar se dizon plus avinen, a[i]ssi qom emperaritz, chantariz, ballaritz, et totas celias qi son
d'aqesta semblanz [a] .20

(There are still other words which use flexional endings in the singular and plural
of all cases, according to the usage of the language and because they sound better:
e.g., emperaritz >empress<, chantariz >(female) singen, ballaritz >(female)
dancen, and all the words that look like these.)
Terramagnino must have deemed trobair?tz to be a word with which his
readers were familiar. Based on the assumption that he was working directly
from a model similar to the CX-version of the Razos de trobar, we can conjecture
that he preferred trobair?tz to the relatively uncommon ballai ritz (female
dancer).21
The fact that Bee and others have overlooked Terramagnino s use of trobair
?tz is probably to be explained by the bad press that the Doctrina dacort has
received in modern times. It has usually been dismissed as being nothing more
than a poor imitation of the Razos de trobar. Paul Meyer, the first editor of the
text, was unyielding in his criticism of it. ?Cet opuscule [...] nest gu?re autre
chose qu'une mise en vers des Razos de trobar de Raimon Vidal.? ?Terramagnino
est un grammairien peu intelligent. Il ne comprend pas toujours son mod?le
et dans aucun cas il ne se montre capable de le perfectionnera ?II n'y aurait

19 It is absent also from Uc Faidit s Donatproensalzs well as from the Leys d'amors. Under
words in -itz, Uc Faidit cites no feminine agent-nouns at all; thus, his omission of tro
b ai ritz is of no particular significance. As for the Leys d'amors, the suffix -itz is not one
of those treated.
20 Marshall, The Razos 152.
21 That ballai ritz was a rare word is supported by the observation that the Italian
and Catalan scribes who made the extant copies of the Razos de trobar seem to have had
difficulty with it. The inscribe read the word as badairis, which, as the lectio difficilior,
may be correct; the Z-scribe, as ballairitz; the C-scribe, as ballatnz. (The //-scribe
omitted this whole section.) It would appear that the common source for the CZ-version
of the text contained ballairitz, which was already a simplification from badai ritz
and which the C-scribe further simplified to ballantz. Thus, it is probable that what
Terramagnino encountered in his exemplar was ballairitz, for which he substituted
trobairitz. ballairitz is absent from Raynouard but appears in Levy (SWr. m), where
it is defined as >Tanzerin<. The only instance cited is, ?Assi qom empera[i]ritz, chanta [i] ritz,
ballati]ritz,? which is precisely the passage from the Z-version of Raimon Vidais Razos
de trobar. Similarly, badai ritz does not occur in Raynouard but is listed in Levy (SW
i: n8), where it is defined as >Gafferin<. The only instance cited is, ?Aisi com emperairis
chantairis, badairiz,? which is obviously the alternate reading (the ^-version) of the same
passage given under ballairitz. If there are other attestations of either ballairitz or
badai ritz, I am unaware of them. Both words are listed among Adams's forty feminine
agent-nouns in -itz.

RF 114 (2002)

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 212 Elizabeth W. Poe

pas grande utilit? ? dresser le vocabulaire d'un aussi mauvais ?crivain.?22 Both
Tobler and Chabaneau, in reviewing Meyer s edition, were similarly disdainful of
Terramagninos effort.23 Tobler quipped that the interest of the Doctrina dacort
?liegt mehr darin, da? sie ist, als in dem, was sie ist? and declared it to be vastly
inferior to Las Razos de trobar. In like vein, Chabaneau described Terramagnino
as an Italian poet who ?na fait que mettre en m?chants vers proven?aux les Razos
de trobar de R. Vidal.? It is little wonder then that most purely literary scholars
have not occupied themselves with the Doctrina dacort.
If tro bai ritz has become in our day the standard designation for the women
troubadours, we have Oskar Schultz-Gora and Joseph Anglade to thank.24 Schultz
Gora employed the Proven?al word as an economical alternative to ?provenza
lische Dichterinnen? in his 1888 edition of their poems.25 Anglade, in his Histoire
sommaire de la litt?rature m?ridionale, published in 1921, classified Beatrix de Die

22 Meyer, ?Traitis? 182, 210. Ruffinatto (56 . 32) takes issue with Meyer: ?Inutili e fuori
luogo ci paiono i giudizi di valore come quello espresso dal Meyer, >Terramagnino ? un
grammatico poco intelligentem? Santangelo (95) too defends the Doctrina dacort, remark
ing, ?Questo trattato io credo non sia stato finora valutato come meriterebbe. Il Meyer,
che lo trasse da un codice di Madrid, lo giudic?, un po' in fretta, opera di un grammatico
poco intelligente, senza chiedersi se il testo che aveva dinanzi fosse tutt' intera la redazione
originale di Terramagnino, o non piuttosto una riduzione. Forse chi esaminasse attenta
mente la Doctrina, verrebbe a conclusioni diverse.? More recent attempts to revalorize
the Doctrina dacort have been made by S. Asperti (Cario I d'Angi? e i trovatori [Ravenna:
1995] 184?188) and L. Leonardi (Guittone d'Arezzo. Canzoniere. Isonetti d'amore del codice
laurenziano [Turin: 1994] XVI).
23 A. Tobler, Zeitschrift f?r romanische Philologie 3 (1879): 310; C. Chabaneau, Revue des
hngues romanes 16 (1879): 83-85.
24 St?dtler (2 n. 3) and A. Rieger ( Trobairitz. Der Beitrag der Frau in der altokzitanischen
h?fischen Lyrik. Edition des Gesamtkorpus [T?bingen: 1991] 6) are in agreement that it was
Schultz-Gora who introduced the term trobairitz into modern discourse on the women
troubadours. A. Rieger ( Trobairitz 6) traces the use of the term in modern times, beginning
with Schultz-Gora and Anglade. She draws attention to the fact that A. Jeanroy (?Les fem
mes po?tes dans la litt?rature proven?ale aux XIIe et XIIIe si?cles,? in M?langes de philologie
offerts ? Jean-Jacques Salverda de Grave, ed. A. Jeanroy et al. [Groningen: 1933] 186,187,189,
190, 190-191 = La po?sie lyrique des troubadours [Toulouse: 1934] I: 312, 313, 315, 316) puts
trobairitz in quotation marks. The reader interested in questions of this kind may wish
to consult the introduction to U. M?lk's Romanische Frauenlieder (Munich: 1989), which
examines, among other things, the history of the use of the terms Frauenlied and chanson
de femme.
25 The exact citation from Schultz [-Gora] (Die provenzalischen Dichterinnen [Leipzig:
1888] 1) reads, ?An der allgemeinen poetischen Bewegung, welche das s?dliche Frankreich
des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts beherrschte und die von so hoher Kulturbedeutung f?r das
ganze Mittelalter wurde, nahmen auch Dichterinnen in ziemlich stattlicher Anzahl teil.
Unter der grossen Schar der Trobadors freilich verschwinden sie fast, und w?hrend ?ber das
Leben und die Werke jener eine Reihe von Einzelforschungen und Gesamtuntersuchungen
vorliegt, hat man den trobairitz bis jetzt weniger Beachtung geschenkt.?

RF 114 (2002)

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Cantair?tz e trobair?tz 213

as the first trobair?tz with respect both to her age and to her talent.26 Several years
later, in Les Troubadours de Toulouse, he remarked, concerning Na Lombarda:

Nous ne citerons pas ici les autres troubadours de Toulouse; les chapitres suivants leur sont
consacr?s. Nous rel?verons seulement le nom d'une femme po?te, d'une trobair?tz, comme
on disait alors. Elle s'appelait dame Lombarde.27

?Comme on disait alors?! How could Anglade be so confident that trobair?tz

is what women troubadours were customarily called in the Middle Ages? Cer
tainly it was not merely from having seen the word once in Flamenca.18 The fact
of the matter is that both he and Schultz-Gora knew of its occurrence in the
Doctrina dacort as well, for, as authors of modern grammars of Old Proven?al,
both of them naturally consulted all of the surviving medieval treatises on the
language, including Terramagninos. Anglade makes explicit reference to the
Doctrina dacort in his bibliography.29 Schultz-Gora does not,30 but we can be
sure that he too had studied this grammar thoroughly because, in the very same
year that Die provenzalischen Dichterinnen appeared, he published an article in
which he resolved several textual problems contained in Meyers 1879 edition of
Terramagninos work.31

26 J. Anglade (Histoire sommaire de la litt?rature m?ridionale au Moyen-?ge [Paris: 1921] 80

and 80 n. 1) writes, ?II ne nous reste de cette trobair?tzque cinq poesies.? ?Elle est, par la date
et par le talent, la premi?re trobair?tz; les po?tesses m?ridionales sont au nombre de 21.?
27 J. Anglade, Les Troubadours de Toubuse (Toulouse: 1928) 21-22.
28 A. Rieger (Trobair?tz 6) observes correctly that Schultz-Gora uses the word in Die
provenzalischen Dichterinnen, ?as being so self-evident that we can assume that it was cir
culating already at that time in Romance-Studies circles.? Since, however, Anglade does not
indicate where he found the term, she assumes that he knew it uniquely from Flamenca.
29 J. Anglade, Grammaire de l'ancien proven?al ou ancienne bngue d'oc (Paris: 1921) XVIII.
Anglade (216): ?II faut ajouter aux monosyllabes invariables les noms f?minins termin?s
en -itz (correspondant ? une terminaison latine -icem): amairitz, emperairitz, governairitz,
pecairitz, perditz [sic], trobair?tz, mudairitz, cantairitz, trichairitz. Il n'y a qu'une quarantaine
de compos?s de ce genre.? In a footnote (216 . ), Anglade refers the reader to Adams, p. 52.
It should be recalled that trobair?tz is not on Adams's list of forty (see n. 9, above).
30 Schultz-Gora, Altprovenzalisches EUmentarbuch. Vierte vermehrte Auflage (Heidelberg:
1924). The first edition, published in 1906, predates Anglade's grammar. Schultz-Gora
(EUmentarbuch 108 ?156) includes trobair?tz as an illustration of a feminine agent
noun: ?Von den zugeh?rigen mit -trix gebildeten Femininen sind nach dem Vorbilde
von imperatricem > emperairitz, peccatricem > peccairitz, amatricem > amairitz erwachsen:
trichairitz >Betr?gerin<, trobair?tz und weiter vendeiritz, serveiritz (serviritz).?
31 Specifically, Schultz-Gora (?Zu Terramagnino?) determined that w. 91-92, which
Meyer had been unable to decipher, refer to Nino de' Visconti. Based on this identifi
cation, he established a later, more precise date of composition for the Doctrina d'acort.
Meyer (?Traitis? 182) had assigned the Doctrina d'acort to the third quarter of the thirteenth
century. Anglade (GrammaireXVIII), who states that the Doctrina d'acortwas ?composed
between 1270 and 1280? either had not read Schultz-Gora's article or did not accept his
finding.

RT 114 (2002)

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 214 Elizabeth W. Poe

Terramagnino da Pisa was a contemporary of the poets of the doke stil

novo?2 and his grammar of Provencal was very much a product of that milieu.
Guittone d'Arezzo himself may have been instrumental in commissioning the
Doctrina d acort? Terramagnino was an admirer of Guittone, and both were
prot?g?s of Nino Visconti. Guittone composed a canzone and a sonnet in Nino's
honor; Terramagnino, for his part, makes a flattering reference to him in the
Doctrina d"acort and may even have written two coblas esparsas in Proven?al, which
are addressed to that same Judge of Gallura.34 Indeed, it is not inconceivable that
Dante, whose personal friendship with Nino has been immortalized in the eighth
canto of the Purgatorio, learned the language of the troubadours from studying
the Doctrina d acort?
As intriguing as such speculations may be, they are less germane to our pres
ent purposes than the observation that Terramagnino wrote his grammar at ap
proximately the same time that MS H, with its ?chansonnier de trobairitz,? was
being compiled.36 The coincidence in late thirteenth-century Italy of the word
trobairitz with the preparation of little books devoted uniquely to their work
bears witness to the special status accorded to these women poets by Italian stu
dents and collectors of Proven?al verse.
Conclusion. Flamenca provides the earliest but not the only surviving instance
of the word trobairitz; while perhaps not a common household term, it is
no hapax. In the Doctrina d'acort, trobairitz is attested with the unequivocal
meaning of >poetess<, the feminine equivalent of tro bad or. The word existed
both in southern France (Flamenca) and in Italy (Doctrina d acort) in the second
half of the thirteenth century. Its appearance in the Doctrina dacort suggests that
it occurred also in one of the written sources from which Terramagnino da Pisa
took his examples. This could have been a now-lost version of Raimon Vidais
Razos de trobar, a rubric, or a narrative or lyric text by or about one of these

32 D. Rieger (?Die Trobair?tz in Italien. Zu den altprovenzalischen Dichterinnen,? Cul

tura Neolatina 31 [1971]: 217) was the first modern scholar of whom I am aware to see a
connection between the doke stil novo and the peculiarly Italian interest in the trobair?tz
in the second half of the thirteenth century.
33 Leonardi XVI.
34 The poetic texts mentioned here are to be found in G. Contini, Poeti del Duecento
(Milan and Naples: 1961) 1: 235-240; F. Egidi, Le rime di Guittone d'Arezzo (Bari: 1940)
sonnet 214 on p. 254; Contini I: 328-330; A. Kolsen, Zwei provenzalische Sirventese nebst
einer Anzahl Einzehtrophen (Halle: 1919) 27; and Monaci 95, respectively.
35 F. Beggiato, ?Terramagnino da Pisa,? in Enciclopedia dantesca (Rome: 1976) 5: 581
582.
36 D. Rieger 208-210; J. H. Marshall, ?Trois fragments non identifi?s du chansonnier
proven?al H,? Romania 97 (1976): 403; A. Rieger, ?Insel cor port, dona, vostra faisso. Image
et imaginaire de la femme ? travers l'enluminure dans les chansonniers de troubadours,?
Cahiers de civilisation m?di?vale 28 (1985): 389-390; E. W. Poe, Compilano. Lyric Texts and
Prose Commentaries in Troubadour Manuscript H (Vat. Lat. $207) (Lexington KY: 2000):
107,123-124,124 . , 251-252.

RF 114 (2002)

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 Cantairitz e troba?ritz 215

female poets. Terramagninos citation of this word strengthens the hypothesis

that there was in Italy in the generation before Dante a tendency to regard the
trobairitz as a distinct group of poets and their poems as constituting a genre
unto itself.

RF 114 (2002)

This content downloaded from 128.42.202.150 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 07:11:17 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms