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I. Per lenire il dolore e la tristezza che ho nel cuore, e per la ferma fiducia che ho in Dio, comincio un sirventese contro la grande follia che il clero ipocrita commette sotto un’apparenza di bene. Loro sono bravi a parlare, ma io vedo, senza alcun dubbio, che si comportano in modo malvagio in tutto ciò che fanno, e questo mi procura il più grande dolore, perché chi parla affermando la legge di Dio dovrebbe fare il bene e seguire la retta via; ma l’avidità rende l’uomo bugiardo.
II. Catone dice che è da considerarsi deplorevole per un insegnante quando la sua propria colpa lo condanna; e chi è più eminente commette un peccato più grave quando sbaglia di quanto fa un uomo di poca importanza. Chi predica di aver fiducia in Dio e di fare il bene per amor Suo ha parlato bene, certamente, ma lasciate che chi è rimproverato chieda a colui che ha parlato così perché egli commetta ogni tipo di atto disdicevole; perché la virtù non porta un coltellaccio e non colpisce o rompe o compie atti omicidi.
III. O chierici ipocriti! Bugiardi, traditori, spergiuri, ladri, fornicatori, miscredenti! Ogni giorno commettete apertamente così tanti misfatti che avete sviato il mondo intero. San Pietro non ha mai posseduto un capitale in Francia o praticato l’usura, ma ha agito scrupolosamente nel rispetto della legge. Non mi pare che voi facciate lo stesso: voi scomunicate ingiustamente la gente per denaro, revocate l’interdetto e aggirate gli impedimenti, e poi la gente deve pagare per ottenere l’assoluzione.
IV. Non credano gli ascoltatori insensati [che tutti conosciamo] che io biasimi tutti i chierici ma [devono capire che biasimo] solo quelli ipocriti; d’altra parte non devono supporre che parlo così perché li temo (i chierici), ma [lo faccio] perché vorrei che riconciliassero i re che sono in guerra e in conflitto, in modo che possano fare il passaggio in Terra Santa entro l’anno, e il papa con loro, e possano ottenere così tanto che la cristianità ne abbia motivo di gaudio; e sarebbe molto meglio così, perché costa caro avere uomini che combattono qui (letteralmente i combattenti costano caro qui).
V. Ora è giusto, dopo che li ho biasimati, che li lodi per il bene che fanno, dicendo: per amore di Nostro Signore essi rifiutano gli abiti colorati e il vasellame d’argento; che Dio li preservi dalla malattia e dalle preoccupazioni, visto che non mostrano nessun orgoglio o amore dello sfarzo, né bramano la ricchezza o i giochi amorosi – ma non hanno altro dio! Inoltre fanno vedere un cambiamento, perché l’anima va verso il riposo dell’anima e la carne alla tomba.
VI. Sirventese, vai con la più grande gioia a Seillons, dal mio più intimo amico provenzale tra i viventi, indubbiamente, perché è lì che vanno i miei sirventesi, e auguragli che il merito che lo sostiene lo protegga dai chierici ipocriti, che sono pronti a fare il male e falsi e mendaci.
I. To soothe the sorrow and grief I have in my heart, and because of the firm trust I have in God, I begin a sirventes against the great madness hypocritical clergy commit beneath fair seeming. They are good at speaking, but I see without the slightest doubt that they act wickedly in everything they do, and I feel deep grief at this, for anyone who argues in support of God’s law ought to do good and follow the straight path; yet greed makes a man a liar.
II. Cato says it is considered a deplorable thing for a teacher when his own fault condemns him; and the more eminent man who fails at something commits a greater fault than does a man of no importance. Anyone who preaches that we should have trust in God and do good for love of Him has spoken well, certainly, but let the rebuked man ask the one who has spoken like this why he commits any disreputable act; for virtue does not bear a cutlass, and does not strike or break or do murderous deeds.
III. You hypocritical clergy! You liars, traitors, perjurers, thieves, whoremongers, unbelievers! Every day you openly commit so many evil deeds that you have led the whole world astray. St Peter never banked capital in France or practised usury, but acted scrupulously within the law. You do not seem to do so: you wrongly excommunicate people for money, then you lift the interdict, then you offer no impediment, then people have to pay to be granted absolution.
IV. Those foolish listeners [that we all know about] should not imagine I blame all clergy, but [realise I blame] only the hypocritical ones; on the other hand they should not suppose I speak like this because I fear them (the clergy), but [I do so] because I would like them to reconcile the kings who are at war and in conflict, so that they might make the passage to the Holy Land this very year, and the Pope with them, and to achieve so much that Christendom should have cause to rejoice; and this would be much better, for it's costly to have men fighting here (literally for warriors are costly here).
V. Now it is quite right, since I have spoken blame of them, that I should praise them, saying: for love of our Lord God they refuse richly-coloured clothes and silver vessels; may God preserve them from sickness and care inasmuch as they show no pride or love of pomp, or hanker after riches or love-games – but they have no other god! Afterwards they display change, for the soul goes to the soul’s resting-place and the flesh to the charnel-house.
VI. To my undoubtedly closest Provençal friend who is alive today, and with the greatest of joyfulness, go, sirventes, to Seillons, for that is where my sirventes make their way, and say, may the merit that sustains him in the meantime protect him from hypocritical clergy, for they are quick to do evil, and false and mendacious.
6 enuey or possibly euuey 25 . p . 31 nom crezāṭz (=crezam), though the expunctuation mark under the ‘t’ is uncertain, silh with the ‘h’ written above, entendeṛdor or entendoṛdor with the first ‘r’ expunctuated and ‘dor’ inserted above the line 38 the second ‘p’ of papabels is corrected over a ‘b’ 49 can or cam | y ueian.
8. mostran: for mostraire as a rhetorical, quasi-legal term see Linda Paterson, Troubadours and Eloquence, Oxford 1975, pp. 14-15.
12. I follow the suppletion proposed by Contini (also Routledge): for other possibilities see Routledge’s note, and Contini’s objections (p. 141, n. 12). Contini identifies the allusion from Book I, 30 of the Disticha Catonis, which Routledge quotes more fully: Que culpare soles, ea tu ne feceris ipse: turpe est doctori, cum culpa redarguit ipsum.
14. Routledge prints qu’us without explanation, thus rendering the line hypometric.
17-18. I follow Lewent («A propos», pp. 40-41) in seeing lo repres as subject of deman (subjunctive), and quo to be equivalent to cui o. Contini («Encore à propos de Bertrand Carbonel», p. 192) accepted this in his response to Lewent’s review article, though argued that lo should be emended to le: «Or, la concordance fondamentale des mss. R et f me semble encore auourd’hui un indice suffisant pour attribuer à Carbonel la déclinaison le/lo de l’article masculin». Joseph Anglade, Grammaire de l’ancien provençal ou ancienne langue d’oc, Paris 1921, p. 211 gives lo and le as alternatives for the nominative, and I prefer not to emend. – Unlike previous editors I take dis as a preterite, as in the previous line.
25. Kolsen prints enfr’ansa, «unter einem Weihkessel», citing OF ancel ‘bénitier’: «So wäre dann ansa als pars pro toto zu dem Sinne von”Topf”, “Weihkessel” gekommen» (p. 207). Lewent (pp. 42-43) responds that even if ansa could have the sense Kolsen alleges, which he doubts, the idea of hiding money under a stoup seems highly unconvincing, given that a stoup is placed at the entrance to a church and hence visible to everyone, and is usually in stone so one could not hide anything either in or under it.
26-27. tenc drech la balansa: literally «held the scales level»; since scruples were originally very small weights on the scales, permitting close accuracy, I have chosen to incorporate this idea into my translation. – The sense of liautat here is not ‘loyauté’, the only translation given in PD, and so understood by Contini («il maintint en équilibre la balance de loyauté»), but ‘lawfulness’: compare SW, IV, 357, 1 lei ‘Gesetz’, leis ‘weltliches Gerecht’, 358, 1 leial ‘Recht u. Billigkeit entsprechend’, 2 ‘der gestezlichen Vorschrift entsprechend, gesetzmässig, rechtmässig’; also Leslie Topsfield, Chrétien de Troyes. A study of the Arthurian romances, Cambridge 1981, p. 170, who defines leiautatz «in its wider meaning of obedience to the law of a natural or ethical code», and his article «Malvestatz versus Proeza and Leautatz’ in L’Esprit Créateur, 19, 1979, pp. 37-53. Routledge, evidently dissatisfied with the sense given in Contini’s translation, ends the sentence at the end of the line and translates «il a plutôt tenu droit la balance. Vous ne faites même pas semblant d’être honnêtes».
29-30. In 29 Kolsen prints nos datz empachier, with no variant, and translates the lines as «dann (wieder) bringt ihr uns in Verlegenheit»; Contini «et ne mettez plus d’entrave»; Routledge «et vous n’y mettez plus d’entrave». The empachier does not necessarily refer to excommunication, but may evoke the Church’s willingness to grant dispensations to marital impediments; at any rate, as Contini, I see these lines as a list of different examples of the clergy’s cavalier treatment of the law. In consequence I interpret pueis in 30 as ‘then’, rather than ‘since’ (Routledge) where the logical connection with what precedes it would be unclear.
31-32. Previous scholars read crezatz, which Contini emends to crezan, and Kolsen and Routledge retain. They emend silh to si and takes fol entendedor to refer to the poet (Kolsen «Haltet mich nicht für so unvernünftig (“für einen so törichten Versteher”), dass ich sämtliche Priester tadle»), which then necessitates allotting a different subject (the clercx) to the following verb vazan (33). For creire + noun clause not introduced by que compare the examples in Frede Jensen, Syntaxe de l’ancien occitan, Tübingen 1994, §§ 592 and 595. Contini’s interpretation makes the better sense. It is easy to see how a scribe wrongly interpreted a titulus abbreviation, in the case of both crezan and non; as I cannot see the force of .m in Contini’s no.m («Que les auditeurs inintelligents ne s’imaginent pas que je blâme tous les clercs») I correct. – The demonstrative silh appears to refer to critics who have blamed Carbonel for attacking the clergy.
40. Kolsen gives no variant or note. Contini translates as «car il y a encore ici de [vaillants] guerriers»; Routledge «car les guerriers sont toujours ici», glossing in his note «[au lieu d’être déjà partis en Terre Sainte]?», but adding that in the context of war between kings being an impediment to crusading, the sense may rather be «et cela vaudrait mieux que de continuer à se faire la guerre ici», as Kolsen suggested («Das wäre besser, als dass sie sich hier noch immer befehden»).
41-48. Routledge refers here (note to 42) to Martin Aurell, La Vielle et l’épée. Troubadours et politique en Provence au XIIIe siècle, Paris 1989, pp. 222-223, who claims that Carbonel is distinguishing between the bad clergy and the Spirituals, those inspired by Fransiscanism who «prônent un retour à la pauvreté évangélique dans un contexte eschatalogique» (p. 220). While the troubadour may well have such clergy in mind, the stanza is heavily ironic, as Contini recognised (p. 142, n. 41 ff.), noting similar ironies in Peire Cardenal (see now BdT 335.60, stanza IV, ed. Sergio Vatteroni, Il trovatore Peire Cardenal, 2 voll., Modena 2013, vol. II, poem 60, p. 727). Routledge does not translate e de pezanza (45), or mas (48), and Contini skates over mas with «n’ayant pas d’autre dieu». I take mas to be undercutting the apparent praise of the previous lines. Kolsen translated mas autre dieu non an as «Aber andere haben keinen Gott», which is grammatically possible but makes little or no sense. The point is that of course the clergy despise all wordly pleasures – but this is actually all they truly worship!
49-50. Ms. can or cam | y ueian: Kolsen read mueian which he emended to mueron («wenn sie sterben»). Contini and Routledge (who repeats can y vei in his variants instead of what is in the ms.) read as I do and emend to can y vei («lorsque j’y prête attention», «quand j’y pense»), but this is feeble and does not explain the extra syllable -an. Kolsen’s can mueron does not account for the descender. I hasard the conjecture that the original reading may have been camjamen, where an obscured ‘j’ could have been mistaken by a copyist for a ‘y’ and the ame obscured and guessed at. While this may seem a bold move it does have the advantages of, firstly, accounting for the descender on the first letter and right number of syllables with their beginning and end in accordance with the ms. reading, and secondly, linking with the theme of money elaborated in stanza II. Here camjamen, ‘exchange’, would play on the idea of the hypocritical clergy’s illegitimate monetary transactions, and also on the change that will overtake them at the moment of death. – The word armier is the sole attestation on COM in this sense, the other being ‘armourer’. Did Carbonel invent it? It is tempting to see some sort of punning going on here: could armier suggest armari («the soul is lost in the treasure-cupboard»)? Or are the clergy being compared with armourers who make money out of war?
54-55. The dictionary examples and definitions of entrenan with respect to time, ‘auparavant, jadis’ (PD, LR, II, 97), ‘zuvor’ (SW, III, 86) seem to require a past tense of sostener, and Kolsen and Contini emend to sostenc. Contini (following Kolsen) translates, «lui dire qu’il protège, à l’abri des clercs hypocrites, le Mérite dont il a été le soutien dans le passé». Routledge retains sosten and translates «lui dire que c’est le mérite qu’il soutient depuis longtemps qui le protège contre les faux clercs», though he wrongly treats gart as indicative. For entrenan as ‘in the meantime’ compare Jaufre, ed. Charmaine Lee, www.rialto.unina.it/narrativa/jaufre/jaufre-iv.htm, 4626-4632, «Seiner, per Dieu vos o deman», / Dis l’ostes, «e per amistat, / Que de so que i es adobat, / Entrenans sol un pauc manjes, / Que ja no·us en destorbares, / Qu’enantz c’om aia aresat / Vostre caval, auretz manjat». ‘In the meantime’ and the present tense may reinforce a certain urgent or precarious topicality to the wish, which would fit the dating scenario suggested above. – For the repetition of the conjunction que see Oskar Schultz-Gora, Altprovenzalisches Elementarbuch, Heidelberg 1936, p. 133, § 191.
Edition, english translation and notes: Linda Paterson; italian translation: Luca Barbieri. – Rialto 17.iii.2014.
R 102v (103v) (Bertran carbonel; blanks staves above stanza I).
Critical editions: Gianfranco Contini, «Sept poésies lyriques du troubadour Bertran Carbonel de Marseille», Annales du Midi, 49, 1937, pp. 5-41, 113-152, 225-240, II, on p. 117; Adolf Kolsen, «Des Trobadors Bertran Carbonel Sirventese “Per espassar” und “Tans rics clergues” (BGr. 82, 12 u. 16)», Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur, 62, 1938, 203-211, p. 203 (review Kurt Lewent, «A propos d’une récente édition de quelques poésies lyriques de Bertran Carbonel», Annales du Midi, 51, 1939, pp. 37-48; cfr. «Encore à propos de Bertrand Carbonel», Annales du Midi, 51, 1939, pp. 191-194); Michael J. Routledge, Les poésies de Bertran Carbonel, Birmingham 2000, XII, p. 49.
Other editions: François-Juste-Marie Raynouard, Choix des poésies originales des troubadours, 6 voll., Paris 1816-1821, vol. IV, p. 284; Henri Pascal de Rochegude, Le Parnasse occitanien, Toulouse 1819, p. 240; Carl August Friedrich Mahn, Die Werke der Troubadours, in provenzalischer Sprache, 4 voll., Berlin 1846-1886, vol. III, p. 153.
A few elements of the text are unclear (see Critical apparatus). Line 12 up to and including cant appears to have been initially omitted and then squashed into the right-hand side of the column, which may explain how two syllables have been left out. As elsewhere, the scribe of ms. R seems to have been more or less indifferent to traditional inflexions (10, 14, 19, 24, 39, 42, 51) and even els for nom. pl. ilh (42, 46), which Contini regularises (and Routledge does in 42 but not 46), though I do not: see Ruth Harvey and Linda Paterson, The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens: A Critical Edition, 3 voll., Cambridge 2010, vol. I, pp. xxii-xxvi.
Versification: a10 b10 b10 a10 c10’ c10’ d10 d10 e10 e10 (Frank 592:4), -or, -an, -ansa, -an, -ier; five coblas unissonans and one six-line tornada. The versification is identical in all respects to that of a canso of the same troubadour, BdT 82.2; a canso of Lanfranc Cigala (BdT 282.16) has the same metrical shape but different rhymes.
The sirventes cannot be dated with certainty, but it seems plausible to place it between Frederick’s excommunication in 1245 and before Barral’s withdrawal from opposition to Charles of Anjou in March 1250.