At the festivals of the haughty barons, the lady of the castle, attended by youthful beauties, distributed crowns to the conquerors in the jousts and tournaments. She then, in turn, surrounded by her ladies, opened her Court of Love, and the candidates for poetical honors entered with their harps and contended for the prize in extempore verses called _tensons_. The Court of Love then entered upon a grave discussion of the merits of the question, and a judgment or _arrêt d'amour_ was given, frequently in verse, by which the dispute was supposed to be decided. These courts often formally justified the abandonment of moral duty, and assuming the forms and exercising the power of ordinary tribunals, they defined and prescribed the duties of the sexes, and taught the arts of love and song according to the most depraved moral principles, mingled, however, with an affected display of refined sentimentality. Whatever may have been their utility in the advancement of the language and the cultivation of literary taste, these institutions extended a legal sanction to vice, and inculcated maxims of shameful profligacy. The songs of the Provençals were divided into _chanzos_ and _sirventes_; the object of the former was love, and of the latter war, politics, or satire. The name of _tenson_ was given to those poetical contests in verse which took place in the Courts of Love, or before illustrious princes. The songs were sung from château to château, either by the troubadours themselves, or by the _jongleur_ or instrument player by whom they were attended; they often abounded in extravagant hyperboles, trivial conceits, and grossness of expression. Ladies, whose attractions were estimated by the number and desperation of their lovers, and the songs of their troubadours, were not offended if licentiousness mingled with gallantry in the songs composed in their praise. Authors addressed prayers to the saints for aid in their amorous intrigues, and men, seemingly rational, resigned themselves to the wildest transports of passion for individuals whom, in some cases, they had never seen. Thus, religious enthusiasm, martial bravery, and licentious love, so grotesquely mingled, formed the very life of the Middle Ages, and impossible as it is to transfuse into a translation the harmony of Provençal verse, or to find in it, when stripped of this harmony, any poetical idea, these remains are valuable since they present us with a picture of the life and manners of the times. The intercourse of the Provençals with the Moors of Spain, which, as we have seen, was greatly increased by the union of Catalonia and Provence (1092), introduced into the North an acquaintance with the arts and learning of the Arabians. It was then that rhyme, the essential characteristic of Arabian poetry, was adopted by the troubadours into the Provençal language, and thence communicated to the nations of modern Europe.