The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade, and: Where Troubadours were Bishops: The Occitania of Folc of Marseille (1150–1231) (review)

These two books reflect the flourishing state of studies of the Albigensian crusade in terms of both historical and literary sources. Both take as their subject matter a shadowy but important figure, in order to analyse his historical and cultural context. Schulman studies Folc of Marseille or Toulouse, a troubadour who later became an important figure in the Albigensian crusade and the prosecution of heresy in Toulouse. Despite his fame and poetic output, Folc remains a cipher. Accordingly, Schulman takes him as her focal point in chapters that explore specific questions, such as the nature of noble patronage for a bourgeois troubadour (Chapter 1), or why a successful layman should seek admission to the Cistercian order (Chapter 2). The other three chapters narrate the major periods of Folc's episcopal career, and the four appendices include a selection of poems with translations (Appendix A), and a diplomatic edition of the razos and vidas associated with Folc's poetry (Appendix B). Her book is informative and well-researched. Despite her ambitious attempt to marry poetry and chronicles, her focus is ecclesiastical history, emphasizing Folc's role in the foundation of the women's 'monastery' at Prouille, for example, over his attitude towards heresy, which is slightly glossed over. Graham-Leigh, meanwhile, adopts a more polemical approach in her exploration of the myths woven since the thirteenth century about Raimon-Rogier de Trencavel, allegedly murdered by the French in a crusade waged against the Cathar heresy. She spends Chapter 1 demolishing 'conspiracy theory' approaches to this region and period (this was written before the publication of the Da Vinci Code, but it should be required reading for any of its more starry-eyed readers). In Chapters 3-8, Graham-Leigh explores the Trencavels' history throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, concluding that they fell victim to their own ambitions to comital status, as well as their political isolation as vassals of the king of Aragon, and their failure to support the Cistercian order as much as their neighbours. Both books make a convincing case for the crucial role played by the Cistercians in causing and pursuing the Albigensian crusade. Graham-Leigh's study offers an exploration of a lineage rather than an individual. Unfortunately she happens to place much emphasis on one planh by Guillem Augier Novella taken from an anthology. This is serious because she mistakes its French 'title' in an anthology for its incipit, and repeats this mistake throughout, even as a chapter heading, as evidence that the poem depicts the communal mourning supposed from other sources: 'A people grieving for the death of their lord' (pp. 2, 30-32, 113, 166). She rests a detailed argument concerning the dating and identity of this troubadour on this poem. In fact, there is a standard edition of this troubadour, Il Trovatore Guillem Augier Novella, by Monica Calzolari (Modena, Mucchi, 1986), which would have helped. The incipit in Calzolari's edition is 'Quascus plor e planh son damnatge', and the sense of stanza one is that everyone weeps over his own sorrows, except for the poet, who weeps for the murdered viscount. I do not wish to criticize the rest of this study, which is valuable and solidly researched, but anyone wanting to get a clear idea of troubadour poetry in this period should not use this book as a source (for example Sordello is described as an exiled man of Languedoc, which would have surprised Dante a little). On the other hand, Schulman's book attempts to read the troubadour 'Folquet de Marseille' within its own linguistic and literary terms as well as what we know of the traces he left in history, an exercise that is valuable in itself.