Lynch Geordie. The Church and the Troubadours: Religious Influences on Medieval Love Poetry

California State University System, 2022. — 104 p.For close to two hundred and fifty years, medieval western European poets, otherwise known as troubadours, composed and sang on the theme of love. The following thesis explores how troubadour love poetry offers clues to their complex relationship with the Catholic Church. It takes place primarily in what is now southern France, spanning a period from the mid-tenth to the mid-thirteenth centuries. In our modern era, scholars who focus on the troubadours have been mystified and often baffled by their abstract lyrics. They have analyzed, interpreted, and debated about the words of the poets, yet no consensus has ever been reached on grasping troubadour motivations and lyrical meanings. Curiously, the study of troubadour poetry is often confined to the disciplines of literature, philology, and philosophy. I therefore wish to contribute to the scholarly conversation and debate by examining the topic through the lens of history. If we view the poetry in its historical context, we can better understand its words and themes, and the situational factors that informed them. Granted, much has already been written about inspirations and philosophies behind the poems. But my goal is to present a comprehensive work that includes influences, philosophy, and historical context. Combining all of these components providesinsight into how the troubadours' environment shaped their poems and demonstrates how the poetry exposes the mentality of the surrounding populace, principally in regard to its views on religion and the Church. In the end, the reader will walk away with a firm grasp of how cultural identities formed in western Christian Europe in the High Middle Ages. This thesis explores troubadour poetry and the setting that informed it in three chapters. The first chapter investigates the religious and cultural influences that sparked troubadour poetics on love. The second chapter delves into the immediate spiritual and religious concerns that motivated troubadour lyrics, specifically the relationship between the poets and the Church. It also explores the composers' own internal deliberations about what it meant to be human in a devoutly Christian environment. The third chapter chronicles the buildup of tensions between the papacy and the inhabitants of southern France (the birthplace of the troubadours) over heresy, which ultimately led to the devastation of an entire region. By mixing together a thematic format with a progressive one, I hope to achieve a narrative arc which is not only informative, but also engaging.