Troubadours

CHRETIEN DE TROYES:

Academics will freely admit that this man was a troubadour. But what is a Troubadour? They were important to the genesis of the Cathar mystique for a certainty and the Princeton people I will shortly quote will say that Chrétien was one of the first Troubadours in this region. Surely they do not think it would be one of the first involved in these arts. In point of fact they are very very ancient arts in the training of a Druid, who would become a minstrel and jester before taking up the involved study to be a Bard or Baird. Druids, Bairds and Ovates are the best known appellations for those who completed these long and arduous studies which were already suffering and shortening by the time of Pythagoras who was part of the last known Dean of Studies in the Mediterranean region. Abaris (Rabbi) the Druid was that Dean and his name gives us a clue as to one of the branches or systems which took over some of their training.

The Cathars were very Gnostic and open to the Pharisaic Rabbinical message. In Caesar's Journals we are told the period of study was 20 years but it was 25 a millennium earlier and there were still other specialties one could study throughout their lives. One of those might lead to being called a Peryllat or 'alchemist'. Many members of the family of Jesus were alchemists and it is quite likely that Yeshua bar Joseph studied with Comarius who also tutored Cleopatra. Apollonius of Tyana is part of the Jesus amalgam and the Cathars kept most of the Gaedhil/Gnostic learning alive. One of the charges that the Inquisition leveled against the Cathars had to do with Dianistic or Tantric sexual practices and I believe the sexual or Bhakti 'union' (Yoga) was part of their training and system which highly valued women including giving them high priestly functions and leadership roles including Esclarmonde de Foix who is reminiscent of Hypatia of Alexandria, who both should be studied as a great heroine for all time.

The Bairdic Educational system had included a seven year specialty in developing languages for their far flung colonies in the second millennium BCE and they developed such codes and Gematria as you see in Hebrew and the Aymará of Peru. I have delved into these Oghamic studies in many other books including one with the title From OM to Ogham. Plato observed that knowledge was declining due to the written word after the Phoenicians gave them their refined alphabet. Some scholars think a few of the poems attributed to Orpheus (a lesser Bard or Troubadour) are in fact the writing of Pythagoras. The Grail myths are rich repositories of the pre-Christian traditions.

"Little concerning the person we call "Chrétien de Troyes" (fl. ca. 1160-1191) can be affirmed with certainty. What we know must largely be inferred from the writings attributed to him. These include five romance narratives written in rhyming octosyllabic couplets during the final third of the 12th century (Érec et Énide [ca. 1165], Cligés [ca. 1176], Le Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot), Le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain) [ca. 1177? 1179-80?], and Le Conte du Graal (Perceval) [ca. 1190]); a sixth narrative, Guillaume d'Angleterre, has been attributed to him by some, although many scholars find this doubtful. At least two surviving lyric songs are said to have been composed by him (if so, he is the oldest known trouvère with work closely related to that of the Old Provençal troubadours). {The region is also known as Langue d'Oc or Languedoc. Occamy is 'alchemy' in one translation so we can see the importance of the Troubadour to Bairdic or Peryllat spiritual quest is the tongue or language and codes of alchemy.}

Certain works said by him to belong to his oeuvre--they are listed in the opening verses to Cligés--have not survived; these include, especially, a romance entitled Du roi Marc et d'Iseut la Blonde. One of the Ovidian poems given in the Cligés list appears as part of an early 14th-century compilation called the Ovide moralisé.

Of the above-mentioned titles two were left incomplete by Chrétien: the Charrette was brought to a close by Godefroi de Leigni, under Chrétien's supervision (according to Godefroi); the Graal was (almost certainly) interrupted by the poet's death.

Not only did each of our poet's works undergo copying throughout the 13th century (all eight manuscripts of the Charrette were produced in that century), they were each subject to myriad reworkings, in verse and, especially, in prose. Perceval underwent a number of "continuations" and inspired many textual "spin-offs" before the Grail story it told came to be incorporated into the vast Prose Lancelot (along with the Charrette, which constitutes the midpoint text of this great compilation). Post-World War II scholarship has demonstrated that Chrétien's oeuvre was fully integrated into the system of textual references and allusions underlying many important 13th-century texts--a series of "epigonal romances" (e.g., Fergus, Le Bel Inconnu) and a work like the Roman de la Rose (Guillaume de Lorris's Narcissus episode, as M.A. Freeman has shown, "re-reads/re-writes" Ovid through a process of refraction involving Chrétien's Blood Drops on the Snow scene in Perceval [Freeman 1976-77]). A romance composed as late as Froissart's 14th-century Méliador "revives" Chrétien de Troyes's Arthurian manner and matter, as P.F. Dembowski has demonstrated (1983).

Chrétien himself utilized a similar network of textual allusion in his own romances. Scholars interested in sources have for generations pointed to such "first-generation" romances as the romans antiques (Énéas, Troie, and Thèbes) and Wace's Brut and Rou, not to mention the Tristan corpus (especially Thomas), as constituting a kind of quarry from which Chrétien extracted materials which he utilized in his own constructions. Chrétien's bookish learning--he was clearly a clerc fully trained in the arts curriculum of his day--is evident in his love of such figures of ornamentation as adnominatio, rich rhyme, and chiasmus, and, as well, in the particularly fertile manner in which he refracted the Arthurian materials he borrowed from Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace through the lens of such works of late Antiquity as Martianus Capella's De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae (in Érec et Énide) or the writings of Macrobius. As he states in the Prologue to Érec et Énide, he--and he proudly names himself--and his work must be distinguished from the fragmented and vulgar tales hawked before kings and counts by uneducated minstrels." (6)

Author of Diverse Druids
Columnist for The ES Press Magazine
Guest 'expert' at World-Mysteries.com

---

Lance Armstrong Bracelets: Fashion Accessories for a Worthy Cause

Lance Armstrong bracelets, the yellow rubber wrist bands inscribed with... Read More

Debussy and Gamelan According to a 150 Year Old Man

Hello!If you haven't been transported by the mesmerizing sounds of... Read More

Copper Keels and Red Ochre

Copper Keels:Nature provides varying resources in different parts of the... Read More

Europes New Jews

They inhabit self-imposed ghettoes, subject to derision and worse, the... Read More

Mexican Living: Daily Schedule of an Expatriate

I was wondering if you might be interested in what... Read More

Mythology and Parables in Modern Communication - Part 4

At the end of Part 3 in this series I... Read More

Jewelry Making for Fun and Profit

There is an old adage that says work isn't really... Read More

The Daily Show is a Must See on Comedy Central

Doesn't it seem that today there is nothing but bleak... Read More

Babel vs. the PC

Imagine a time when mankind was young. Migration led many... Read More

A Brief Biography of Rene Boissevain the Agate Adventurer and Creator of The Crystal Caves Museum

In 1964 myself (René), Nelleke my wife, and our daughter... Read More

Shakespeare and Human Nature

Isn't it peculiar how human nature evolves through environmental and... Read More

Mythology and Parables in Modern Communication - Part 2

There is a big adjustment coming in terms of our... Read More

Jewelry and the Darkside: Fashionable Gothic Jewelry

No, by jewelry and the darkside, we are not referring... Read More

Working With The Generations

For the first time in history, there are four generations... Read More

Body Jewelry and Todays Stars

Body jewelry and body piercing practices have been observed by... Read More

She Wrote the Book on Fakin It

She brought the guitar into vogue. She created the first... Read More

Flows of Civilization; Views from a Think Tank

Over the past few years we have been discussing many... Read More

How Many Chinese Characters Are There?

Let's trace the number of Chinese characters from Han Dynasty... Read More

Fictions Galore

FABULOUS: - Many 'fabulous' personages and concepts are created by... Read More

True Story; Why Can?t We all Just Get Along?

A little girl came up to her mom in the... Read More

When Does Man Become God?

Some scientists argue over creation and evolution and they argue... Read More

King Tuts Tomb was No Better - Found in America

Between 603 and 702 AD. a truly marvelous temple was... Read More

Inuit Drum Dancing Of The Arctic

Like many other aboriginal cultures around the world, the Inuit... Read More

Basic Chinese Pinyin Rules

* Make sure you set your browser encoding correctly to... Read More

Bureaucracy in Peru!

This article is from the pen of a New Zealander... Read More

Astrology : A Science or Superstition?

Human beings have always been curious to know their future.... Read More

OM to Ogham

Plato observed that the advent of an alphabet making writing... Read More

A Short Biography on Some of Europes Most Loved and Hated Monarchs - Pt 1 Vlad Tepes (Dracula)

Vlad Tepes or Dracula was born in 1431, in the... Read More

ML - CHI - Zadok and the Making of Gold

ATOMIC HIGH-SPIN TECHNOLOGY: - In 1950 B.C. there was a... Read More

Civil War Uniform Shirts ? When to Use a One and Two Piece Body!

So, you want to make your own Civil War shirt.... Read More

Nessie, the Beast of the Loch

They were fierce hill tribes in what is now Scotland,... Read More

The Oldies? Nostalgia? Watchyacallit?

Our culture is defined by what we have access to!... Read More

How To Get Rich and Die Quick!

It is funny how web site promotion can suddently plunge... Read More