The language of the troubadour poetry was the “langue d’oc” (as opposed to the North French “langue d’oïl” or “langue d’oui”). It was spoken over a stretch of country far more extensive than was later the province of Languedoc. Thus there were troubadours in the central mountain mass of Auvergne and in the broad Atlantic coastal plain from the Pyrenees up to the Loire. Nevertheless, Toulouse remained its centre. The first thing that strikes its readers is the familiarity of many of its rhythms. The Greek and Latin classic rhythms have to be learnt. The “Song of Roland,” with all its power, strikes uncouthly on the modern ear. But the troubadour poetry, after seven centuries, sings itself as if it had been written yesterday, in such stanzas as this of Bernard de Ventadour:— “Quan la douss avra venta Deves vostre pais M’es vejaire qu’ev senta Odor de paradis.” Notwithstanding English blank verse from the sixteenth century on, and notwithstanding the pathetic efforts of our contemporary crew of “free versifiers” feeling ignorantly back to unrhymed rhythms such as the ancients knew, notwithstanding these, I say that Provençal stanza, with its rhyme and regular accents, still represents exactly the sort of lyric rhythm we use. As far as verse form goes, the troubadours were beyond all question the first of the modern poets, in the easy skill and variety of their measures, some simple, some as intricate as any verse ever written. Dante revered them second only to Virgil. What is most important to us is the picture they give of their society. First of all they represent the chief end of man to be the worship of woman. We have seen in the last chapter that feminism in religion, i.e., the cult of the Virgin, was one of the twelfth century master-passions. In Italy, towards the end of the thirteenth century, poets intertwined love with philosophy, somewhat as the Platonists had before them. The troubadours concerned themselves not at all with philosophy and little with religion. Here and there they bring in religion as a sauce to flavour more piquantly their love for their lady, very much in the manner of our modern decadents. Thus the poet may protest that he loves his lady “more than God loves Our Lady of Puy de Dôme.” Incidentally, the devotion of the poets is almost always for someone else’s wife. The essential thing about all this “courteous love” is that it is unmistakably the most cultivated and civilized thing that had been since Rome had fallen asleep.