4 posts tagged “poems”

Years later, some anonymous writer, carried away by his imagination, wrote Rudel's fictionalized biography. This style was called vida and was quite popular in the medieval period. This vida became the basis for a legend. According to it Rudel fell in love with Countess Hodierna of Tripoli without even seeing her! He just heard about her beauty from pilgrims, who were returning from the Holy Land. Rudell was so smitten, that he took a long sea journey just to see Hodierna. Unfortunately, during the voyage, he fell sick and was brought ashore in Tripoli already a dying man. When Hodierna heard the news, she came down to the shore from her castle and Rudel died in her arms.

The whole legend was a fluke, and, naturally, it never happened. But it was romantic! When 19 century Romanticism authors discovered the legend, they just could not pass the opportunity and meet it the halfway. To mention a few, Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Ludwig Uhland, Heinrich Heine, Giosue Carducci created their poems based on this fiction story. In the next century more epic poems and even an opera were created as well.

Usually, they say that life is more interesting than fiction. This time it was the other way around.

King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona Alfonso II was a noted poet and composer of his time and a close friend of King Richard the Lionheart. He also participated many times in poetical debates. Alfonso even had two nicknames - the Chaste and the Troubadour. I found from the archives of my web analytics company that he was born under different name. Yes, he was born in 1152 as Raymond Berengar, became a king of the united throne of Aragon and Barcelona in 1162 and changed his name to Alfonso. He stayed with the name Alfonso until his death in 1196. He was also Count of Provence from 1167 when he unchivalrously wrested it from the real heiress Douce to 1173 when he ceded it to his brother Berenguer. He was also involved in a couple of medieval love triangles and one big scandal.

Alfonso II was not just a troubadour and a poet, he was also a brave warrior and a vital part of Spanish Reconquista. He was a friend and an ally of Alfonso VIII of Castile. Together, they fought against Navarre and the Moorish kingdoms of the south. In 1174 in Saragossa Alfonso II married Sancha of Castile, sister of the Castilian king. This caused a scandal in the Christian world because his real fiancee was Eudokia Komnene, a niece of Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos. Eudokia Komnene was sent to by Emperor in 1174 to be betrothed to King Alfonso II, but, on her arrival, she found that he had just married Sancha of Castile. One can imagine the surprise! Thus, Alfonso and his love affairs are mentioned in poems by many troubadours, including Peire Vidal, who commented on Alfonso's decision to marry Sancha of Castile rather than Eudokia Komnene that he had preferred a poor Castilian maid to the emperor Manuel's golden camel.

Other troubadours, like Guillem de Bergueda Pons de la Gardia, Giraut de Salignac reproached Alfonso II for his love affairs. In their poems they say, that Alfonso II of Aragon was in rivalry with a knight Arnaut de Mareuil for the love of Azalais of Toulouse. According to their medieval story, the king jealously persuaded Azalais to break off her friendship with Arnaut. Alfonso's own dealings with Azalais were fiercely criticized by troubadour Guillem de Bergueda, who wrote: "she gave you her love, and you took two cities and a hundred castles from her"

She speaks of time spent in Lydia, one of the wealthiest and most powerful countries of that time. More specifically, Sappho speaks of her friends and happy times among the ladies of Sardis, capital of Lydia, once the home of Croesus and near the gold-rich lands of mythical King Midas.

Sappho's poetry centers around passion and love for various personages and genders. The word "lesbian" itself derives from the name of the island of her birth, Lesbos. Her name is also the origin of its less common synonym sapphic. The narrators of many of her poems speak of infatuations and love for various women.

In antiquity, Sappho was commonly regarded as the greatest, or one of the greatest, of lyric poets. An epigram in the Anthologia Palatina, ascribed to Plato says:

Some say the Muses are nine: how careless!
Look, there's Sappho too, from Lesbos, the tenth.

And I could not agree more.

After passing of Jutta who had many followers, Hildegard was elected to be a leader of her sister community. Then she was still in doubt about her visions. But then Hildegard decided that her visions were instructions from God. She confided in Jutta about the visions, who could not keep this secret and told it to several other people. Yet, Hildegard would not record her predictions and visions. Only when suddenly she became extremely sick, she overcame her fear and was more open about her visions that she continued to get throughout her life. Her work on vision was always in progress. In the end accounts of visions were compiled in three books and stopped only in 1179 with her death.

Hildegard founded several monasteries and was respected throughout all medieval Germany. Among her heritage there are many medical, botanical and geological works, poems, plays and music. Amazingly, she was the first woman in Europe to write about feminine sexuality and the first to describe scientifically origin of female orgasm. She remained at the level of beautification and her name was was taken up in the Roman martyrology. But never was formally canonized by Rome. Nevertheless,  for Germans she was and would remain Saint Hildegard and she is highly popular there even today.