That entire region was more Mohammedan than Christian and more infidel than either. The nobles adopted polygamous habits and maintained harems filled with concubines. A thriving trade in eunuchs was carried on with the Spanish Arabs, whose profits, it was notorious, were principally engrossed by ecclesiastics. A passionate love of poetry developed the troubadour, a most important factor of European intellectual progress, and the counterpart and representative of the Arab bard, whose improvisations had, from time immemorial, been the delight of the emotional tribes of the Desert. A language infinitely sweeter and more melodious than modern French, and exhibiting a strong similarity to the Italian formed at the court of Frederick II., became the vehicle of charming poetical compositions, which satirized the lives of the priesthood, recounted the achievements of the tournament and the foray, and celebrated, in graceful and rhythmic hyperbole, the beauty and fascinations of woman. This tongue, known as the Langue d’Oc, while indirectly derived from the Latin, owed, in fact, nothing to classic associations or influence. It was the first of the numerous family of languages and dialects of Roman origin which, during mediæval times, attained to any marked degree of perfection in grammatical construction or in elegance of expression. It is a significant fact that it only obtained a permanent foothold in countries once subject to Arab domination. It spread eventually all over the South of Europe. It was spoken in Valencia, Barcelona, and the Balearic Isles, whose dialects are now corrupted forms of the ancient Limousin. The productions of which it formed the medium were read in Italy, Germany, Sicily, and England. It adapted itself with such ease to the purposes of the poet that it almost seemed constructed especially for that variety of composition. It early incurred the hostility of the Church on account of the Albigensian heresy; and in 1248, Innocent IV., by a special bull, forbade its study to all good Catholics. The rapidity with which it was perfected, the extent of its distribution, the number of provincial dialects to which it gave rise, the richness of the literature which adopted it, and the suddenness and completeness of its extinction constitute one of the most interesting and extraordinary phenomena in the annals of linguistics.