Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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Minstrels and Troubadours

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Nobody knows if the poets also composed their own music or how they

sang the songs.

It seems likely that, in most cases, a nobleman wrote the poetry and

worked with a trained musician to compose the music. It also seems likely

that most of the music was performed by these trained musicians—the

jongleurs. There were probably exceptions, and certainly there were jon-

gleurs who also wrote poetry. But unlike in modern times, when a singer’s

lyricist is not considered the primary artist, the nobles who wrote the po-

etry were considered the true troubadours.

The ﬁ rst known troubadour was Duke William of Aquitaine, who died in

1126. He may have been imitating Arabic poetry, or he may have been ex-

ercising his own imagination. Beginning at his court, ﬁ ve more generations

of Provençal troubadours spread out over the region. At least half were

nobility, and as many as 15 were noble women. Other troubadours were

trained jongleurs who wrote for their patrons and their ladies.

Bertran de Born and Arnaut Daniel were famous troubadours whose

lives were typical of their time. Bertran de Born was a minor nobleman,

the lord of Autafort (or, in French, Hautefort). He was a vassal of Eleanor,

duchess of Aquitaine (granddaughter of the ﬁ rst troubadour) and queen of

England, and her son Richard I of England. De Born’s political fortunes

went up and down as he sided against the king in a rebellion and then won

back his favor (and his castle). He entered a Cistercian abbey in old age and

died there around 1215. Arnaut Daniel, another proliﬁ c and famous trou-

badour, was probably a professional jongleur, and he seems to have been

well educated. A razo, a troubadour’s introductory legend, claims that Ar-

naut performed for Richard the Lionheart in a competition at his French

castle.

Their songs were written down, though existing manuscripts do not date

to the earliest times. Many songs were written long after they had been

composed. Different versions of the same song can be found in different

collections. The collections of the time were made for aristocrats and are

hand lettered and painted. They gave the lyrics and melodies, but medieval

methods for writing music did not include a good system for indicating

rhythm, so modern musicians who want to sing these songs must guess at

how they went.

Some troubadours wrote very sophisticated poetry in their songs. Ar-

naut Daniel’s work was admired by Petrach, Dante, and, in modern times,

Ezra Pound. He developed the form of the trobar clus, the poetry of allu-

sion and symbol to cloak the direct meaning. Some of the forms of poetry

he pioneered have survived into modern use, including the sestina (which

uses the same six words to end lines in each stanza, but in a different order).

Troubadours preferred complicated rhyme schemes, often repeating rhym-

ing words and whole lines.

A lord and lady sit at ease in their hall and listen to a troubadour. The lady holds a

lapdog and the hall interior appears reﬁ ned and luxurious. The troubadour, as beﬁ ts

his higher standing among musicians, wears neat, ﬁ ne clothing and good shoes. He

plays a viol to accompany his song’s poetic lyrics. This painting probably depicts the

court of King Alfonso X of Castile, who cowrote a book of troubadour songs.

(Gianni Dagli Orti/Corbis)

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502

As the troubadour style spread north into French dialects, the word trou-

badour shifted to trouvère . The earliest identiﬁ ed trouvère is Chrétien de

Troyes, who also wrote epic poems. King Richard I (the Lionheart) also

wrote courtly trouvère songs. As suggested in the legend of Arnaut Dan-

iel’s royal performance, the trouvères had competitions with prizes in the

13th century in northern France. The composer could perform his song or

ask someone else to sing for him.

By the 14th century, the style spread to Germany, where the composers

and performers were known as minnesingers. The ideal of courtly love

became a ﬁ xed part of Northern Europe’s culture, and it continued to in-

ﬂ uence songs, poetry, and popular customs long past the close of the Mid-

dle Ages.

The classic troubadour song described an ideal of unfulﬁ lled love. The

poet has fallen in love with a noble lady whose beauty was perfect and ideal

and whose mind was reﬁ ned and wise. The poet is not able to tell the lady

of his love, but it may be seen in sighs and tears. He suffers, and the truth

of his love is in the depth of his sufferings. His rivals jealously criticize him

to the lady, and he trusts in her noble judgment to disbelieve their lies. He

hopes she will grant benevolence and mercy on his suffering and give her

love to him.

In a culture of arranged marriages, these ideas were very new. The ideal

of courtly love elevated emotion and denigrated marriage, which was often

about property and family alliances. Although arranged marriages were

often happy, they could also involve great disparity in age or temperament.

Divorce was unknown, although some nobility successfully divorced by

petitioning the Pope to dissolve the marriage on the grounds that their

spouse was a cousin. (Eleanor of Aquitaine divorced the king of France this

way and remarried the king of England.)

The noble ladies who talked about courtly love rejected love within a

marriage because the relationship had been forced on them. It was not pos-

sible, they said, to love without free choice. Therefore the only valid love

was love for someone other than one’s spouse. Troubadour songs explic-

itly celebrated adulterous love, although many songs praised this love only

as an ideal, rather than as a sexual relationship. The lady of the songs was

usually a noble and powerful lady, and real adultery with her could be very

dangerous. It is impossible to know how much the songs explored fanta-

sies, rather than telling about actual Provençal social reality.

Troubadour music was very popular with ladies. It permitted them to

discuss and express emotion that did not previously have a place in of-

ﬁ cial culture. The poems of female troubadours tended to be more per-

sonal, less ideal, and more deeply emotional than the conventional male

troubadour songs. They expressed hurt feelings, joy, longing, and doubt.

After the troubadour songs opened up the world of emotional expression

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in literature, European poetry never went back to the early medieval fare of

epics. Postmedieval stories and songs were more likely to celebrate personal

lives and feelings long after the troubadour style had faded.

See also: Animals, Fairs, Feasts, Music, Women.

Further Reading

Akehurst, F.R.P., and Judith M. Davis. A Handbook of the Troubadours. Los Ange-

les: University of California Press, 1995.

Aubrey, Elizabeth. The Music of the Troubadours. Bloomington: Indiana University

Press, 1996.

Bogin, Meg. The Women Troubadours. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980.

Chambers, E. K. The Mediaeval Stage. 2 vols. London: Oxford University Press,

1903.

Montagu, Jeremy. The World of Medieval and Renaissance Musical Instruments.

Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 1980.

Norris, Herbert. Medieval Costume and Fashion. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications,

1999.

Seay, Albert. Music in the Medieval World. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall,

1975.

Symes, Carol. A Common Stage: Theater and Public Life in Medieval Arras. Ithaca,

NY: Cornell University Press, 2007.

Van der Werf, Hendrik. The Chansons of the Troubadours and Trouvères. Utrecht:

Oosthoek, 1972.

Monasteries

The Middle Ages could be deﬁ ned as the “Age of the Monastery.” The

presence and inﬂ uence of monasteries shaped Europe tremendously. The

medieval idea of holiness consisted of withdrawing from the world and liv-

ing a life of self-denial. The difﬁ culty was that monasteries had to make

compromises when they began to own property and administer daily liv-

ing for many people. Monasteries often became more similar to the secular

world in their daily life and wealth. The Middle Ages saw a repeated pat-

tern of reform and corruption. A new movement would arise, calling men

or women to the monastic life, and then over time it would become part

of the establishment, only to ﬁ nd itself the target of the next reform move-

ment’s criticism.

Monks all took a vow of poverty, but their institutions received many

donations of land and other goods. By the close of the Middle Ages, about

half of England’s land was owned by some portion of the church, often by

monasteries. Abbots and priors received rent from peasants and town citi-

zens, in addition to the income the monastery derived from selling extra

produce like wine or wool. Although the individuals owned none of it, the

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monks in well-established houses lived in luxury. The popular Robin Hood

tales and other medieval stories poke fun at fat abbots and worldly priors.

When the reputation of monasteries fell too low, a new reform movement

would launch an order with a fresh dedication to poverty.

Monasteries operated outside the church hierarchy; monastic orders were

under the direct oversight of the Pope, rather than the local bishop. The

head of a monastery was an abbot, and his assistant was the prior. When a

monastic order created “daughter houses,” they were often called priories

and were ruled only by a prior, rather than by another abbot. The priories

remained under the oversight of the abbot at the original monastery. Each

monastery had lower ofﬁ cials who oversaw supplies, the scriptorium, or

some other aspect of monastic life. When a monk entered as a novice, he

could move up through a regular chain of promotion to become a prior or

an abbot.

Monastic Orders

The idea of monastic living came from the deserts of Egypt and Syria,

where premedieval hermits lived ascetic lives. Benedict of Nursia, a sixth-

century monk in Italy, wrote his guide for monastic living at Monte Cassino.

The Rule of Saint Benedict became an absolute monastic law during Caro-

lingian times, including the rigid application of diet and dress appropriate

to the mild Italian climate. Further reforms made Benedictine monks recite

such an elaborate liturgy every day that they no longer had time for the

manual labor Saint Benedict had outlined.

The medieval monastic orders varied in how they solved the problems

of rigorous asceticism versus good health and the need for self-supporting

work versus the demands of the liturgy. Over time, the Benedictines be-

came less ascetic and allowed more meat and other luxury foods, while

the Carthusians followed the strictest interpretation of the rule. Carthu-

sian monks lived in unheated cells even in cold climates, and they never ate

meat at all. The Rule of Saint Augustine was even more relaxed; Augustin-

ian canons ate a varied diet and enjoyed more comforts and freedom. The

Cistercians, who were Benedictine monks under the reformed rules of the

monastery at Citeaux, followed an austere diet but did not occupy them-

selves with prayers and singing all day. Cistercians focused on manual labor;

their monasteries became centers of agricultural and industrial innovation.

Monastic orders generally solved the problem of balancing labor and

prayer with two levels of monastic profession. Choir monks had their heads

shaved in a tonsure, a circle of hair around a bald top. They wore the

cowled robe of their order and went barefoot or in sandals. They did not

work but either studied or sang the hours. Choir monks were educated;

they could read and write Latin. In the strictest orders, like the Carthusians,

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the choir monks lived in isolation so that they could pray and contemplate.

The same monastery had a larger group of lay brothers; they did not wear

tonsures or cowled robes but had taken monastic vows. The lay brothers

could be illiterate, but they had to be good workers. Lay brothers plowed,

milked the sheep and cows, butchered pigs and smoked bacon for sale to

the community, or even smelted iron or fulled cloth. Monasteries with

large lay communities usually had more acreage and were self-supporting.

They grew most of their own food and kept up a cash product like wine,

wool, or cheese.

Each order had begun with a movement for reform when the previously

dominant order’s compromises began to seem too worldly. The Benedic-

tine monasteries were the original movement in Europe, and they spread

through the Christian world until there were Benedictine monasteries in

every country, even in newly Christian Sweden. The abbey at Cluny, France,

was the model for the best practices of the Benedictines; their closest imita-

tors were often called Cluniacs. Benedictine monks wore black robes and

plain shoes.

The Augustinian Canons were created in order to bring non-monastic

clergy into line with Benedictine rules. The Rule of Augustine was less as-

cetic and strict, since those who lived by it had not chosen to become full

monks. Canons were supposed to be serving in the world, not cloistered

in a monastery. Although their rule was not as strict as Benedict’s, the im-

position of a uniform rule on clergy who were not monks was a reform in

itself.

The Cistercian Order began in 1098 when a group of Benedictine monks

set out to make a more primitive, more rigid life. A charismatic young monk

named Bernard, later Saint Bernard, joined them. The primitive, fanatical

character of their monastery attracted many who felt the religious life ought

to be stringent in its devotion. By 1152, there were over 300 monasteries

modeled after Bernard’s abbey at Clairvaux. They fully developed the dis-

tinction between choir monks and lay brothers, since such stringent devo-

tion could only be practiced by a few. The choir monks wore undyed wool,

so they were sometimes called White Monks, although their everyday robes

were natural gray. They wore sandals, as Benedict had originally directed,

rather than shoes.

The Carthusian monks began as a small monastery in the foothills of

the Alps in 1109. They lived as hermits, praying and contemplating in in-

dividual cells with food passed through a window. The choir monks only

saw each other for church services; the work was done by lay brothers.

The only work the choir monks did was copying and mending books. Al-

though Carthusians ofﬁ cially wore white robes, in the Middle Ages they

were known for wearing coarse, dirty clothes and hair shirts. This strenu-

ous life of devotion attracted some, and the Carthusian Order also grew,

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though not as rapidly as the others. Their monasteries were called charter-

houses in English.

Although the Benedictine Order had taken in women as nuns, the Cis-

tercian monks resisted, considering women a sinful distraction. Some con-

vents grew up individually, including the French Fontevrault, where Eleanor

of Aquitaine died, or Sempringham in England, which became a model for

other English convents. In the early 1200s, many well-to-do young women

in France and Germany, and particularly in Flanders, were drawn to a life

of poverty. They did not join existing convents, but they lived together,

refusing to own anything. They were known as Beguines. In 1233, Pope

Gregory IX took them under his direct protection.

The next wave of monastic reformers criticized the way other monks

withdrew from the world, leaving the poor ignorant and helpless. The Men-

dicant Orders, the friars, began as wandering preachers, rather than as clois-

tered monks. Saint Francis of Assisi was the ﬁ rst; he was a wealthy young

man who had a dream that compelled him to seek a religious life. He gave

up his possessions and wandered, barefoot in a rough brown robe, preach-

ing. By 1209, companions had joined him, dressing like him in natural

brown or gray robes and sandals, and an order began. The Franciscan friars

were the last ofﬁ cial order commissioned by the Pope, who felt there were

too many orders springing up. The rule of their order forbade them to own

possessions, especially land, so they had to beg. By the time of Francis’s

death in 1226, Franciscans had carried his vision as far as Spain, Hungary,

and England. But after his death, the order, now ruled from Paris, changed

In the foreground, Carthusian monks

are ﬁ shing with lines and nets. Behind

them, the monastery’s chapel towers

over the red roofs of the lesser build-

ings. Monasteries were often built in a

square with a wall to contain the

monks and keep out the world’s

distractions. In an age of great uncer-

tainty, the monastic life offered more

peace and security. (Ann Ronan

Pictures/StockphotoPro)

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its rule and permitted only educated men to join. In England, Franciscans

were called Greyfriars.

Dominican friars began as an answer to the simple poverty of the Ca-

thar preachers. Saint Dominic, a Spaniard, began to walk about the Cathar

strongholds of southern France in 1206. His followers also spread through-

out Europe; they adopted the Rule of Augustine, but with a lifestyle of wan-

dering preaching. Like the Franciscan friars, as time passed, the Dominicans

settled into priory houses and became establishment monks, often attached

to universities. Their ofﬁ cial robe style was white, with a black-cowled

mantle, so that in England they were called Blackfriars. Thomas Aquinas,

the most famous theologian of the Middle Ages, was a Dominican friar.

Carmelite friars were a small order of hermits on Mount Carmel, near

Haifa, in Israel. When they were driven out by the Muslims, they spread

across Europe, founding Carmelite houses. Between 1238 and 1300, they

became urban friars, rather than hermits, scattered across Europe; the En-

glish called them Whitefriars. Another small order, the Augustinian friars,

also began as hermits around 1223 and also became friars at universities.

The life of a hermit seems to have been initially popular but hard to sustain

over decades.

Life in the Cloister

The ideal of the monk was to withdraw from the world and use a simple

communal life to master the temptations and passions of the ﬂ esh. The

buildings in which the monks lived were designed to support this goal.

They were self-contained towns that needed little from the outside world,

but all buildings were connected. A typical monastic layout had two large

communal areas, the chapel and the cloister, a square walk that opened

onto a lawn. The word cloister came from Latin claustrum, “an enclosure.”

The cloister itself was an enclosure, but the word cloister also came to stand

for the enclosed way of life and the entire monastic compound.

The chapel was the heart of the monastery. All the monks, both choir

monks and lay brothers, had a rigorous schedule of Mass and prayers to

attend. They had to wake up in the night and sing Matins; Benedictine

monks and lay brothers went back to sleep until dawn, but Carthusian choir

monks stayed awake until the next service. Choir monks spent most of their

days and nights going into the chapel to sing the hours, while lay brothers

had a less demanding schedule but still attended two or three times a day.

In the Benedictine ideal, the monks were to offer up continual prayer for

the secular world that was busy doing other things. The strictest Cistercians

sang or recited the entire Psalms (150 songs) every day.

The cloister, the square walkway that led to other buildings, enclosed

a grass lawn, the garth. Monks were supposed to contemplate nature and

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appreciate beauty, so the cloister lawns were carefully tended. Most had

green grass and some trees and bushes. Monastic cloisters were especially

fond of rose bushes. The monks were permitted to walk and sit in the open

area when they were not at work.

The ideal of the monastic life was to work and live in silence. Monks

were not permitted conversation in some parts of the compound, while in

others it was only discouraged. In the refectory (the dining hall), conversa-

tion was forbidden. Monks developed hand signals for asking to have food

brought by the lay brothers who served. They listened to the Bible being

read while they ate and then left in silence. Elderly monks were permitted

to talk in the inﬁ rmary, but they were discouraged from telling amusing

stories.

There was always a lavatory room or stand next to the refectory. The

monks had to wash their hands before eating, partly as a symbolic gesture.

Monasteries were generally cleaner places than many other medieval com-

munities. They had laundry facilities and planned for weekly baths. They

were not only cleaner, but they were also more interested in health care.

As a preventative measure, monks routinely had blood let. Several times a

year, on a schedule, they went into the inﬁ rmary or lavatory and a barber

or another monk cut a vein to drain their blood into a basin. Although this

seems barbaric to modern eyes, it was considered excellent health care in

its time. Monks who were weak from bloodletting could spend a night in

the inﬁ rmary.

Depending on the plan of the order, monks slept in a communal dormi-

tory or had individual cells. In either case, their bed furniture was restricted

to a bed, a shelf, and a hook. They were expected to keep a certain few tools

about them: a needle to mend their clothes and a knife to cut food or mend

pens. Their clothes had to be embroidered with their names, since robes

were laundered together, but they were expected to launder some small ar-

ticles themselves (they could hang them to dry in the cloister). Although

they were required to go barefoot on some occasions, they owned shoes

and boots, and the order usually issued them a pair of new boots every

year, which they greased to keep waterproof. They also kept combs, razors,

soap, and towels. Monks in private cells sometimes had running water with

a washing stand. There were few other possessions monks were allowed

to have. However, establishments that were more lax turned a blind eye

to some monks and nuns who kept pets. Convents seem to have been fre-

quently ﬁ lled with lap dogs and tame birds. Some visiting abbots had to

impose rules against bringing animals into chapel.

Latrines were located near the dormitory; they were called the rere-

dorter. They were planned for large-scale use; the monks did not have pri-

vate toilets but used a room full of stalls with pit toilets. For the Middle

Ages, the latrines were very up-to-date and sanitary. In many cases, water

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carried the waste out of the grounds; either a cistern ﬂ ushed the latrine pit

or a stream continually ﬂ owed through it.

According to the Benedictine Rule, all but a few of the buildings in the

cloister compound were unheated. The chapel, the dormitories, the work-

rooms, and the refectory had no provisions for ﬁ re at all. The kitchen, of

course, had its cooking ﬁ res. The inﬁ rmary was heated, and one other

building was heated on purpose. It was called the calefactory, the warm-

ing house.

The chapter house was another communal building, and it was used for

all meetings. Meetings began by reading out loud a chapter from the or-

der’s rule, which gave the room its name. The chapter house could be used

for other meetings and even for conversation. The chapter house had a par-

lor for receiving outside visitors or indulging in conversations, and monks

often received their daily work assignments and tools in the parlor. The

monastic library was also connected to the chapter house. Each year, at the

beginning of Lent, every monk received a book from the library that would

be his to keep for a year, to read and meditate on. Monks read books like

Augustine’s Confessions, collections of letters by early church fathers, com-

mentaries on the Bible, lives of the saints, and sermons by contemporary

abbots and bishops.

Monks had visits from family several times a year. There were guest-

houses in these outer zones, near the gate, so family members could stay

In the illumination within a large

letter O, an abbot leads his monastic

community in prayer. The tonsured

choir monks sit on one side, but on the

other side, novices or guests with full

heads of hair appear to be included.

One monk stands ready to read a Bible

passage in Latin. (The British Library/

StockphotoPro)