Taylor, Edgar [Hrsg.]; Austin, Sarah [Hrsg.]: Lays of the minnesingers or German troubadours of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: Illustr. by specimens of the contemporary lyric poetry of Provence and other parts of Europe ; With histor. and crit. notes, and engravings from the ms. of the minnesingers in the king's library at Paris, and from other sources (London, 1825)

16 PROVENCE.

had enjoyed repose under the mild rule of Conrad
the Pacific. Perhaps we may even look higher up,
and trace the superior civilization of some of the
Southern states to the influence of the laws of the
Burgundians, which certainly formed the most equit-
able and mild of the codes established on the basis
of Roman jurisprudence. The courts of the Beren-
gars, the sovereigns of Catalonia and part of Southern
France, became the principal nurseries of the opening
talent, and the centre of vinion with other European
nations. The period of their power embraces the
whole bloom of Provencal literature, and their patron-
age of it every where stimulated the foreign courts,
with which they were connected, to the cultivation
of similar pursuits.

But the once brilliant literature, and even the lan-
guage, of the South of France was doomed to oblivion
and neglect. Its most beautiful regions became the
scene of bigoted devastation duringNthe bloody wars
against the Albigenses. The poets had never been
friends of the church; many of the last efforts of Trou-
badour song were exerted in vindicating the rights of
humanity against the cruelty and corruption of Rome
and its retainers ; and it is singular also that some of
the earliest remains of the poetry of this dialect col-
lected by M. Raynouard are those of the heretic
Vaudois or Waldenses. " Avez vous vu" (says the
author of 'De 1'Amour,' before quoted) " a l'opera la