Analysis of manuscripts: A 160r (Perdigons), Da 183v (Perdigons), E 168 (Perdigo). In ADa four stanzas of the song are soldered onto BdT 370.2, the latter consisting of two stanzas; BdT 370.5 does not appear in either of the Indices. The attribution in ADa is implicit, preceding 370.2. Da’s version does not appear in BdT. − The manuscripts divide E - ADa in their number and order of stanzas; A also lacks v. 48 and Da v. 6 and vv. 27-30. Despite A’s lacunae Lewent prefers to use this ms. as base where possible, holding nevertheless to E’s stanza order (which is indeed more logical). Although his reasons are not explicit, his preference probably derives from his interpretation of stanza III where there is a fundamental difference of sense between E and ADa, and where in my view ADa are facilior. Otherwise the differences concern minor variants and a few individual errors. Base: E.

Order and amount of material:

Critical apparatus:

I.  4 mi menet E, menon Da    5 pel lonc A, perloc Da    6 missing Da    9 acordatz ADa    10 non Da.

II.  missing ADa.

III.  21 Ar ADa    22 quei Da    23 si autrem uol acuillir ADa    24 nim ADa    25 valen missing Da    26 missing Da    27 quan] dels l. A, missing Da    28 desamparatz A, missing Da    29 missing Da    30 fassen capteins a. A, missing Da.

IV.  32 ses (ges Da) pertant non cuich (cuic Da) d. ADa    33 qancar ai A, qanc cars ai Da    34 lo b. mi (me Da) deffen ADa    35 lai] la Da    37 que] on ADa    38 es mermatz Da    39 sobrepoiatz ADa.

V.  42 q. qui Da    43 noi prendatz ADa    48 missing A    50 sals ADa.

VI.  52 enantar E.

VII.  missing ADa.

VIII.  missing ADa.

Dating and historical circumstances:

The only relatively secure date for Perdigon’s other songs relates to the three-way tenso with Ademar II of Poitiers and Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, BdT 392.15 (Ruth Harvey and Linda Paterson, The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens: A Critical Edition, 3 voll., Cambridge 2010, vol. III, p. 1082). This was composed after 1187-1189, when Raimbaut left Boniface’s court to spend nearly a year in Provence; Linskill places it in 1196, Saverio Guida, Trovatori Minori, Modena 2002, p. 91 and Ernest Hoepffner, «La Biographie de Perdigon», Romania, 53, 1927, pp. 343-364 (p. 348) in 1195-1196. − The present song is sent to a certain Arias (67), mentions the support Perdigon can expect from a member of the Baux family (34), and praises a king of Aragon and another king, Alfonso (51-54), enjoining them to act together «in peace» against the «renegades» (59-60). The member of the house of Baux is either Guillem III (1173-1218, not IV as Chaytor 1926, p. III proposed: see Florian Mazel, La Noblesse et l’Eglise en Provence, fin Xe-début XIVe siècle. L’exemple des familles d’Agoult-Simiane, de Baux et de Marseille, Paris 2002, p. 629), or his brother Uc (1171-1240), with whom he had a special friendship (Chaytor 1926, p. III). According to Stefano Asperti, BEdT, Arias is almost certainly a Galician, though not the troubadour Ayras Moniz de Asme (see the note to 67). − King Alfonso is almost certainly Alfonso VIII of Castille (1159-1214), since he is the only one for whom the epithet d’emperador is appropriate (his grandfather styled himself el Emperador: see Manuel Recuero Astray, Alfonso VII, Emperador: el imperio hispanico en el siglo XII, León 1979). The king of Aragon here is unlikely to be another Alfonso, since as Lewent observes, Perdigon would have referred to the rei n’Anfos in some other way, such as «the other king Anfos». He can hardly be his grandson James I (1213-1275) either, since it was only after 1230 that he was sufficiently old and established to be performing deeds justifying praise of his reputation and to be joining forces with Alfonso of Castile against the Muslims. The king of Aragon is therefore almost certainly Peter II (1196-1213) (see Lewent, pp. 676-678). − The renegatz have been identified with the Albigensians (Chaytor 1926, p. IV and Lewent p. 678), and the Muslims (Hoepffner, «La biographie», p. 350). Lewent arrives at his conclusion through a process of elimination: he can identify no community in Spain which would justify the epithet renegatz. He links this identification to Perdigon’s ties to the house of Baux and his vida which refers to him singing a crusade song against them (Biographies des troubadours: textes provençaux des XIIIe et XIVe siècles, ed. Jean Boutière and Alexander H. Schutz, second edition by Jean Boutière and Irénée-Marcel Cluzel, Paris 1973, p. 414). He also offers details to demonstrate that before Peter II of Aragon’s intervention on their side at Muret in 1213 the king showed himself to be an enemy of the heretics, in 1197 issuing a severe expulsion order against those who had fled to his lands. He adds that Alfonso of Castile had a firm foothold in the Midi, taking over Gascony, his wife’s inheritance, for a period during 1204-1206. But he concedes (p. 680) that there is no historical support for the troubadour’s wish to see the two kings uniting in peace to combat the Albigensians. He comments that at no time during their reigns were these rulers actually enemies, but there were sometimes tensions, for example over territorial boundaries, and he suggests that perhaps there existed such tensions at the time of composition of Perdigon’s piece, or that the poet simply wanted to say that he wished Alfonso of Castile, who hitherto had taken no part in opposition to the heretics, should join Peter in fighting against them. − While this identification of the renegatz with the southern heretics is not impossible, evidence to support any potential interest in combatting them on the part of Alfonso of Castile is weak, and moreover the focus of Perdigon’s song is on «the kingdoms» (vv. 47 and 71), which can only refer to the kingdoms of Spain. The name of the dedicatee Arias also points to Iberia. − As Hoepffner declares (pp. 350-351), the renegatz could apply to Muslims: the song could have been composed as Alfonso VIII of Castile was joining forces with Peter of Aragon, Sancho VII of Navarre and Alfonso II of Portugal to fight against the Almohad rulers, the fight culminating in the Christian victory of Las Navas de Tolosa on 16 July 1212. He therefore concludes that the song must date from before 1212 and the victory of Las Navas de Tolosa, since the unity desired by Perdigon had come into effect. He too concedes that no conflict between Peter and Alfonso is known at this time, but suggests that as Perdigon was on the spot, he may have known of some temporary conflict which was almost inevitable among neighbours. − Another possibility, of which Lewent and Hoepffner were unaware, is raised by Guida’s commentary on Gavaudan’s song Senhors, per los nostres peccatz (BdT 174.10, vv. 34-36): ab Luy venseretz totz los cas / cuy Bafometz a escarnitz / e·ls renegatz outrasalhitz. Guida sees these as the Leonese (Il trovatore Gavaudan, ed. Saverio Guida, Modena 1979, pp. 49-51 and Canzoni di crociata, p. 384, n. to 34-36, also on Rialto). Immediately after Alfonso VIII of Castile’s defeat at the battle of Alarcos on 18 July 1195, Alfonso IX of León joined forces with al-Mansūr against Castile, committing himself so deeply as to provoke his excommunication by Celestine III in October 1196, which was followed in April 1197 by exhortations to fight him as an Infidel and lay waste his kingdom. Guida also mentions an alliance between the Muslims and Sancho VIII of Navarre (pp. 49-50), who fought against Christians alongside al-Nasir and maintained an alliance with the Almohad dynasty until 1198 to defend his kingdom against Alfonso of Castile’s territorial ambitions. He observes that Gavaudan cannot be referring to the Navarrese as renegatz as he includes them in his list of those opposing the Muslims; but as far as Perdigon’s song goes, both of these episodes provide possible candidates for the renegatz. Perdigon’s stanza VI could be a response to the Pope’s call to fight the Leonese as infidels. If so, the song would date from 1196-1197. This could explain the desire for unity between the rulers of Castile and Aragon, since there had in fact been sufficient discord between them before Alarcos to the extent of vitiating an anti-Muslim alliance: see Stefano Asperti’s discussion of the dating of our piece on BEdT, and Julio González, El Reino de Castilla en la época de Alfonso VIII, 3 voll., Madrid 1960, vol. I, pp. 820-834. Between the defeat at Alarcos on 18 July 1195 and the death of Alfonso II of Aragon on 26 April 1196 Folquet de Marselha composed a song summoning the kings of Aragon and Castile fight for God (see BdT 155.15 on Rialto and the notes to the translations). Guida (Canzoni di crociata, p. 382, n. 37-44) observes that the faith the troubadour places in Alfonso of Aragon in Folquet’s piece was justified among other things by his committed efforts to bring peace between the Iberian rulers after the defeat at Alarcos, a necessary preliminary to any attempts at reconquista. Perdigon’s wish to see the kings acordatz...en patz fits very well with this earlier dating, in other words shortly after the accession of Peter of Aragon at the end of April 1196, whether in renewed efforts against the Muslims, for whom the designation renegatz might be accepted, or more plausibly against the renegade Leonese, given Gavaudan’s contemporaneous allusion to them by this term.

Textual notes:

2. Lewent’s correction to the singular bon cug is unnecessary.

5. As Lewent observes, the expression per luec meaning ‘bisweilen’ is not attested in the dictionaries, but the sense must be right, since per sazos is found with the same sense in VI, 8 (his edition, p. 674).

9. Lewent prefers ADa’s acordatz since autreiatz recurs in v. 20 with the same sense and form, whereas acordatz in 58 has a different sense and case.

16. Lewent silently corrects leis to lei; similarly 51 Arago to Aragon, 54 eisamen to eissamen, and 56 honor to s’onor.

20. Lewent misreads leis as lieis.

21-30. Chaytor combines the readings of E and A (essentially the same as Da) in 23-24 (si autre·m vol acuillir / ni·m rete per chausimen) and translates: «Mais cela me paraîtra (un acte de) fermeté, si l’on me voit abandonné et quitté, si un autre me reçoit et me retient par grande faveur: car les vaillants champions ont plaisir à accomplir, avec de pauvres déshérités, victimes du malheur, de splendides actions d’éclat». Lewent follows A, with 21-24 reading Ar parra d’afortimen / qi·m ve laissar e guerpir, si autre·m vol acuillir / ni·m reten per chausimen, translating «Jetzt wird es, wenn einer sieht, wie ich verlassen und aufgegeben werde, von Entschlossenheit zeugen, wenn ein anderer mich aufnimmt und mich aus Güte behält. Denn die (wirklich) trefflichen Helfer finden Gefallen daran, an den verlassenen Armen, in denen das Unglück offenbar wird, ausgezeichnete Hilfeleistungen zu vollführen». The version of ADa generates a sort of chanson de change, with the troubadour threatening to abandon one lady for another. E’s version seems more subtle: the troubadour is saying that if other people see him as abandoning his lady (because, as he has made clear in the previous stanzas, he has been away from her too long and he is concerned that she may want to break off her agreement with him), it will act as a strengthening of their agreement if she explicitly chooses to go on retaining him, because it is particularly praiseworthy to do good to someone who is both suffering from deprivation and apparently being at fault in some way. In other words, this is an artful way of giving reasons why the lady should reinforce their bond rather than destroy it.

31. Chaytor translates Qui.m laissa as «Si elle m’abandonne», wrongly.

32. delir is not in PD, but see LR, III, 23 ‘détruire, effacer’, transitive only. Lewent translates «glaube nicht, mich zu vernichten», correcting to no·m.

43. For se prendre albir de alc. ren see SW, I, 48 (referred to by Lewent). For the repetition of the que of a noun clause after an insertion, see Frede Jensen, Syntaxe de l’ancien occitan, Tübingen 1994, § 779.

48-50. Chaytor «aussi devez-vous considérer que l’homme trompé vit en sûreté et c’est l’autre [le trompeur] qui en court le blâme»; Lewent «drum merket wohl, daß der Betrogene selig und der andere (der Betrüger) schuldvoll lebt», neither of which makes much sense. I take these lines to be amplifying the compliment to Fins Jois: Perdigon says she does what in fact he hopes she will do.

52. Ms enantar is clearly a scribal slip.

56. Chaytor and Lewent emend to creis s’honor without comment, though this is unnecessary: «honour» can be understood in an absolute sense.

61-66. Chaytor first translated «si vous bâtissez avec honneur votre tour, faites attention, si vous voulez bien travailler, de parfaire l’oeuvre et de ne pas le défaire», commenting «Je ne puis expliquer cette allusion». Lewent (p. 675), judging «your tower» to be meaningless, decided to print vostr’ator and translated «wenn ihr eure Vorbereitungen trefft, so achtet wohl auf die Ehre, ob ihr es auch gut macht, damit ihr das Werk fertig bekommt und es nicht vernichtet!». He saw ator as a verbal noun from atornar and maintained that there could be no phonological objection to the form of the word: «Gegen die lautliche Form des Worts läßt sich kaum etwas einwenden, da auch tor neben torn durchaus gebräuchlich ist. Sonstige Belege für aprov. ator vermag ich freilich nicht beizubringen. Doch verweise ich auf afrz. ator (Godefroy I, 480) = préparatif, ce qui sert à s’équiper (nfrz. atour nur noch im Sinne von “weiblicher Putz”) und nprov. atour (Mistral I, 165) = ajustement, ornement, atour». In his revised edition Chaytor retained tor and understood it as ‘return’ («si vous voulez faire votre retour avec honneur»). While it is certainly tempting to understand tor as ‘return’, or alternatively ‘circuit’ or ‘rounds’ (PD torn, tor, ‘tour, révolution; retour; mesure qui se prend en faisant le tour du poing; circuit; enceinte des murs d’une ville...’, despite Lewent’s comment on the phonology the only secure examples of the form tor for such senses are in Aigar et Maurin (ed. Alfred Brossmer, Erlangen 1902), El [=E·l] fils del rei fait son tor per cambon, v. 17 (also v. 96); compare Daurel e Beton (ed. Charmaine Lee, Parma 1991 and Rialto, v. 1627), e fetz son torn mol gen, describing the turn after a charge made by a horseback warrior in a joust or mêlée. The form/word tor also appears in Pirot’s edition of Guiraut de Calanson’s Fadet joglar (ed. François Pirot, Recherches sur les connaissances littéraires des troubadours occitans et catalans des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, Barcelona 1972, p. 568): Apren mestier / de simïer / e fai los avols escarnir; de tor en tor / Sauta e cor / mas garda que la corda tir! (vv. 61-66), where LR, V, 377 translates tor as ‘tour d’adresse’; Pirot «Apprends le métier de montreur de singe et (fais railler les mauvais?); de tour en tour saute et cours, mais fais attention que la corde soit tendu!». The reading in ms. Da for v. 61 is de tor en torn, which perhaps lends support to the interchangeability of the two words, but while there are many examples on COM of the noun torn rhyming with jorn, jor being well-attested as an alternative for the latter, and several of torn meaning ‘tower’, for example la torn Mascaro (Chanson de la croisade contre les Albigeois, ed. Eugène Martin-Chabot, 3 voll., Paris 1931-1961, vol. II, 172.100; cf. Chastels d’Amors, in Vincenzo De Bartholomaeis, Poesie provenzali storiche relative all’Italia, 2 voll., Roma 1931, vol. II, pp. 303-311, vv. 91 and 128), I have been unable to find any evidence of tor other than meaning ‘tower’ rhyming in -or, even in variants. In his notes to Fadet joglar (p. 586) Pirot has nothing to say about tor, but it would seem to refer to something concrete, in other words a ‘tower’ of some sort: compare Guiraut Riquier’s Declaratio (ed. Valeria Bertolucci Pizzorusso, «La Supplica di Guiraut Riquier e la Risposta di Alfonso X di Castiglia», Studi Mediolatini e Volgari, 14, 1966, pp. 10-135, vv. 138-141): E tug li tumbador / en las cordas tirans / o en peiras sautans / son «ioculatores» («e tutti colori che fanno salti sulle corde tese o su pietri mobili»). For this reason I have adopted Lewent’s solution. − Unlike previous editors, however, I take si in v. 61 as emphatically introducing an imperative, rather than ‘if’: compare LR, V, 223 ‘certainement, assurément’, SW, VIII, 649, 1 «zur Einleitung eines Wunschsatzes dienend» and 224, 3 «einen Haptsatz einleitend», and Jensen, §§ 650 and 735. − In addition, the object pronoun in l’obratz suggests the idea of working on the song, in other words fashioning or decorating it (PD ‘faire, fabriquer, confectionner; construire; mettre en oeuvre; ouvrer, façonner...; obrat ouvré, façonner, orné, garni de broderies’). Since Fillol must be the performer, this would imply working on the singing performance rather than changing the text: Perdigon is urging him to suit the notes to the words, to make the melody complement and not garble them.

67. For Arias, see Istvan Frank, «Les troubadours et le Portugal», Mélanges d’études portugaises offerts à M. Georges Le Gentil, Lisbon 1949, pp. 201-226, p. 204, who states that this is a «seigneur proprement portugais» though considers a possible identification with the Galego-Portugese troubadour Ayras Moniz de Asme, as was suggested by earlier scholars, as highly unsure. In fact the chronology does not fit: see Vicenç Beltran, «Los trovadores en las cortes de Castilla y León. I. Bonifaci Calvo y Ayras Moniz d’Asme», Cultura neolatina, 40, 1985, pp. 45-57.

69. mesclatz: probably because of its mixture of canso and sirventes elements (as Lewent believes).

72. Alvar: «parece mejorado su fino valor».

[LP, lb]