Marcabru

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Marcabru - Illustration from Bibliothèque Nationale, MS cod. fr. 12473, 13th century

Marcabru (mostly in French literary histories and encyclopedias: Marcabrun ) is one of the most famous troubadours of the 12th century. His work, written in Old Occitan , has survived relatively well with over 40 song texts ascribed to him, including four with notes.

Life and work

Nothing specific is known about his life. The two short biographies (vidas) in Old Occitan that have survived appear to have been developed from certain of his poems; In other words, they are not historically founded and, moreover, differ greatly from one another. According to the shorter of the two, he would have been the son of a poor Gascon named Marcabruna ("brown [liver -?] Stain") and spoke badly of women and love. According to the other, more detailed, he would have been laid in front of the door of a rich man named Aldric del Vilar as a foundling, raised by him under the name “Pan perdut” (lost bread) and instructed in poetry and composition by the musician and troubadour Cercamon . Later he took the name Marcabru, by which he became known. After all, he was killed by the Counts of Gascony, about whom he had said many bad things.

The hypotheses that modern philology has put forward from scattered information and allusions in its texts as well as from other indications are somewhat more well-founded than the vidas mentioned. According to this, Marcabru would indeed come from Gascony and come from small backgrounds. In the 1130s he was evidently related to the court of Count Wilhelm X. of Aquitaine (the son of the first troubadour), who resided mainly in Poitiers . In 1137 he could have followed Wilhelm's daughter, Eleonore , to Paris when she married the French King Louis VII . Obviously he did not stay there long, but went to northern Spain, where he joined Alfonso VII of León and Castile , the ruler of one of the small kingdoms there, who were preparing to activate the Reconquista , i.e. H. the reconquest of the Arab-Islamic parts of Spain. In the 1140s he also wrote political poetry for the court of Alfonso (the Occitan was probably sufficiently understood by his target group), in which he called for participation in that intra-Spanish crusade, which he describes as a "laundry room" (lavador), which the souls purify as well as a crusade to the Holy Land.

Overall, Marcabru was clearly not uneducated and was active in almost all lyrical genres of the time. Although he was recognized as an author by his contemporaries, he was obviously difficult as a person and enjoyed the role of critic and satirist. B. denounced the “false” love of noble men and women, which only served to gain pleasure, or denounced the hypocrisy of church people.

Marcabru is also significant as the author of the oldest known pastourelles and above all as one of the creators of the deliberately hermetic style of poetry, the so-called “trobar clus” (closed poetry), which came into fashion after him. The oldest surviving crusade song ( Pax in nomine Domini! ) In the Provencal language also comes from Marcabrus pen , probably even the oldest vernacular cross song ever.

literature

Web links

Commons : Marcabru  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ingrid Hartl: The enemy image of the crusade poetry. The encounter between Christians and Muslims. Bern et al. 2009, p. 87 (= Viennese works on Germanic antiquity and philology, vol. 40, edited by Helmut Birkhan).
personal data
SURNAME Marcabru
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Marcabrú (Spanish)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION troubadour
DATE OF BIRTH 12th Century
DATE OF DEATH 12th Century