Where Troubadours were Bishops

The Occitania of Folc of Marseille (1150-1231)

Nicole M. Schulman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136064982
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Using one man as a lens, a man known variously as Folquet, Folques, Folco, and Folc, it will examine some of the important changes and developments of the period from a new, more human, perspective.

1.

Marseille: Husband, Merchant, and Troubadour

“Sitot me soi a tart aperceubutz,
aissi cum cel qu'a tot perdut e jura
que mais non joc — a gran bonaventura
m'o dei tener car me sui conogutz
del gran engan qu' Amors vas mifazia;
c'ab bel semblan m'a tengut en fadia
mais de detz ans — a lei de mal deutor
c'ades promet mas re no pagaria.”¹

ACORDING TO FOLC'S VIDA,
Folquet was from Marseille, the son of a Genoese merchant named Ser Anfos. When the father died, he left Folquet a great deal of wealth. Folquet sought a good reputation and genuine worth, and so he occupied himself with worthy noblemen; he lodged with them, gave to them, and served them (coming and going on their account). He was well liked and honoured by King Richard, by Count Raimon of Toulouse, and by Sir Barrai of Marseille, his own lord.
Folquet composed and sang well, and was a very attractive man. He courted Sir Barral's wife, making songs for her and pleading for her love, but he was never able to win her favour. She wouldn't grant him any of love's tokens, which is why he complains incessantly about love in his songs.
It transpired that the lady died, and so did her husband Sir Barrai, who had accorded so much honour to Folquet. King Richard also died, as did the count of Toulouse and King Amfos of Aragon. And it was on account of his grief over these deaths that Folquet renounced the secular world; he gave himself up to the Cistercian order, along with his wife and two sons. He was later made the abbot of a wealthy abbey in Provence, called Thoronet, which he managed so well that he was made the bishop of Toulouse, where he died.²
Leaving aside for the moment the details of Folc's later life, his renunciation of the world and subsequent ecclesiastical career, the vida provides quite a bit of information. Is it reliable? Let us go through its claims point by point, assessing them from a textual viewpoint and comparing them to external evidence. The first statement, that Folc was from Marseille, seems obvious since he was known as “Folquet de Marseille.” Although his cognomen could theoretically represent a family name, a later contemporary of Folc's, John of Garland, specified that Folc had indeed been a “civis Marsiliae.”³ Since John worked with Folc in Toulouse from 1229 until Folc's death, and appears to have been a great admir-er of the bishop, his information probably came from Folc himself and should be trustworthy.⁴
The second point the vida makes, that Folc was the son of a merchant, also seems accurate. It is supported by the comments of another troubadour who called Folc, “a merchant who made a foolish oath when he swore to not compose songs,” in one of his sirventes, or satirical songs.⁵ Of course the author meant to be insulting, and he may have called Folc a merchant as an insult, but this insult would have had little wit or meaning had there been no truth to the accusation. The audience would have known what kind of background Folc pos-sessed, since this jab was written around the time Folc renounced writing love songs, and both they and the author were his contemporaries.⁶
The vida claims that Folc's merchant father was named Anfos, and was Genoese. There is external evidence linking Folc's name with Anfos. There is a Marseille charter from 1178 where a man named Folc Anfos appears as a wit-ness.⁷ This man could either be Folc or a relative of Folc (either an uncle or his father in all probability); it seems too great a coincidence that he is unrelated. Stronski tried to link Anfos to a recognized Genoese merchant family, but his findings are tenuous.⁸ Nevertheless, there are other reasons to believe that the vidds claim is true. The vida uses the honorific “sier” or “ser” for Folc's father in all but one of the manuscripts. In Occitan the male honorific is “En” or “N “ before a vowel. “Sier” is an Italian form, used to denote Italian people.⁹ The Italian honorific is limited to his father, while the Occitan “En” is used for Folc in all the documents which attach an honorific. Moreover, Anfos appears to have been a much more common name in Genoa than Marseille. One Genoese cartulary contains ten men named Anfos who were active in Genoese trade.¹⁰ A comparable collection of notarial documents from Marseille contains none.¹¹ Unfortunately none of the Genoese men shows any signs of being related in any way to the Fole in Marseille. They are not trading with Marseille, nor do the records substantially link any of the other men named Anfos to anybody named Folc.¹² Since Genoa was one of the most mercantile cities in Europe, the num-ber of potential merchants named either Folc or Anfos is too great to draw any firm conclusions.¹³ Nevertheless, there is nothing in any of Folc's songs, or any of the other troubadours' songs, which would lend itself to the interpretation that Folc was of Genoese extraction, or that his father was called Anfos. In other words, there is no evidence that this information could have come from a misunderstanding by the vida's author of passages in the troubadour's oeuvre, and there is no obvious reason why the biographer should have chosen to invent it; it is not like the details of his love life which provide romance and spice to the narrative.
The view that Folc's father was a Genoese merchant is certainly historically credible. Like the other Mediterranean cities, Marseille witnessed a great boom in population and economic activity in the twelfth century. Although this period is poorly documented, when the documentation becomes more plentiful in the thirteenth century, one sees that the population growth was, at least in part, fueled by immigrants.¹⁴ Most of those engaged in commerce seem to have been of Italian origin.¹⁵ While Marseille and Genoa enjoyed stormy relations throughout the twelfth century, there was a ten year peace between them from 1138-48.¹⁶ Although we do not know exactly when Folc was born, it seems likely that it was between 1145 and 1155.¹⁷ Therefore, if Folc's father did emigrate from Genoa to Marseille during this ten year peace, Folc would have grown up as a first generation immigrant in Marseille. What the impact of Folc's heritage would have been is impossible to gauge since immigrant assimilation in medieval cities is a topic that needs much further study. Nevertheless, the tensions between Genoa and Marseille that reemerged following the ten year peace would have made any open identification with his father's birthplace injudicious for Folc.¹⁸
Since the vida has proven accurate thus far, it seems likely that its claim that Folc became wealthy following the death of his father is also grounded in reality. Mercantilism made fortunes and established families in the twelfth century, so it is certainly credible that Folc's father could have been rich.¹⁹ Moreover, Folc alludes to his wealth in his songs.²⁰ For example, he says that “Men say I'm rich and that things are going well for me,” which is pretty straightforward.²¹ It is true that the term “ric” can connote other things aside from financial wealth.²² However, Folc makes it clear that, in this instance, he does mean ric in the mon-etary sense, since he immediately proceeds to explain that a man who is ric but joyless possesses less than a pauper who has his heart's desire.²³ In fact the idea that wealth does not bring happiness is one which appears in another of his songs. Here he plays with the duality of the term “ric” saying, “the world does not have the possessions which could enrich me without you.”²⁴ The implication is that although he might be wealthy in a material sense, he lacked the inner wealth of joy from his lady's love. In another song he expands on this concept saying, “wealth or poverty exist in the mind.”²⁵
The image of Folc as the son of a prosperous Genoese merchant is hardly a new interpretation of his origins. There remains, however, one more aspect to his personal life that deserves comment before shifting out attention, like the vida itself, to his professional career. The vida records that Folc was married and had two children.²⁶ This is a part of his life that is easily ignored when one reads of his alleged amorous exploits. His vida and razos explain his career through a series of passionate affairs, none of which so much as allude to his wife and kids back home. Should we therefore doubt that they existed? Aside from the sheer unlikeliness that Folcs biographer should have invented such an unromantic detail about his life (which is not alluded to in any of Folc's songs), there is exter-nal evidence which proves their existence. John of Garland mentions them.²⁷ Moreover, an entry in the cartulary of the monastery of Berdoues reveals that the children were male, and were named Anfos and Peire; they were both monks at the Cistercian monastery of Grandselve, near Toulouse, in 1210.²⁸ It is not sur-prising that there is no similar record for their mother; since she was a woman she was much less likely to appear in records.²⁹ Moreover, as we do not even know her name, it would be very difficult to search for her.
Folcs vida barely mentions his family, presumably because their existence was irrelevant to his public persona as a troubadour. Nevertheless, we cannot conclude that his family was unimportant either to Folc or to h...