Folquet de Marseille

(ca. 1160–1231)

   One of the more unlikely of the Provençal TROUBADOURS, Folquet de Marseille was the son of a Genoese merchant from whom he is said to have inherited a good fortune, and by 1178, he was a wealthy merchant himself, living in Marseille. Within a few years, however, Folquet had become a troubadour. Allusions in his poems suggest he was in the court of Alfonso II of Aragon by around 1180, and over the next 15 years seems to have been associated with several other courts of southern France and Spain.

   Folquet wrote all of his extant poems in these years. Of the 29 lyrics attributed to him, 13 have music that has survived. Many are fairly conventional COURTLY LOVE poems. Folquet seems to have become known for his amorous exploits. He was one of the first troubadours to use the coblas esparas— individual stanzas intended to stand alone. One such stanza is addressed to his JONGLEUR, Vermillion, and concerns a certain woman who he felt had ruined one of his CANSOS:

   Vermillion, I am complaining to you about

   an evil, stupid, painted lady who has

   destroyed and ruined my song by saying

   that I composed it about her . . .

   (Paden 2000, 71)

   In some of his poems, though, Folquet suggests a more spiritual passion. One of his better-known poems, beginning “Vers Dieus, el vostre nom,” is a prayer to God in the form of a dawn song (see alba). Such poems were an indication of the direction Folquet’s life was about to take. Sometime around 1200, he withdrew from the world—according to his VIDA along with his wife and two sons—and entered the Cistercian abbey of Thoronet in Provence, where in 1201, he was made abbot. By 1205, he had become bishop of Toulouse. It was as bishop that Folquet gained real notoriety. He became a supporter and protector of St. Dominic, and in 1215, was a cofounder of the Dominican order. He also was instrumental in founding the University of Toulouse in 1229. But he is best known for his role in the Albigensian Crusade, preached against the heretical Catharist sect that was widespread in Provence and the rest of southern France. Folquet was chief prosecutor of heretics during the Crusade, and was renowned for his cruelty:He is said to have sent hundreds to their deaths, and a contemporary poem names him as the Antichrist. Nevertheless Folquet is the only troubadour to appear in paradise in DANTE’s DIVINE COMEDY. The great Italian poet places Folquet in the third circle of heaven, the circle of Venus, in Canto IX of Paradiso. Here Folquet explains to Dante how his amorous early life eventually led him into a passion for God. Dante never mentions Folquet’s role in the Crusade.

   Bibliography

   ■ Goldin, Frederick, ed. and trans. Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology and a History. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1973.

   ■ Paden,William D.Medieval Lyric: Genres in Historical Context. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.

   ■ Stronski, Stanislaw. Le troubadour Folquet de Marseille. Cracow: Académie des sciences, 1910.