idel arts and sciences and refinements
penetrated and softened the rougher-mannered civilization of the
Christians.

On Spain itself this Oriental influence was, of course, strongest; but
the relations between Spain and the south of France were at all times
close, and the relations between Provence and Spain were made still more
intimate when, in the early part of the twelfth century, the crown of
Provence passed to Raymond Berenger, Count of Barcelona, who had married
Douce de Provence.

Under these influences the nobility of Provence developed a culture
perhaps purely artificial and exotic, but certainly far in advance of
that prevailing in any other part of France. With their civilization
came, of course, a knowledge of the gentler arts and a feeling for the
beautiful. At a time when French literature consisted of a few fragments
of documents, chronicles, or dull legends of the saints, Provence had
developed a literature of most astonishing richness and delicacy. The
surprising thing about this literature of Provence is that it has no
beginnings, no childhood, but is almost as perfect in artistic finish,
in the careful handling of most intricate rhymes and stanzas, when the
first troubadour sings as it became during the two hundred years of its
life. There were songs or poems in stanzas of varying structure and
lines of varying length, some really lyric, and some epic. The most
distinctive forms of the lyric poetry were probably the dirge or
_planh_; the contention or _tenson_, a poem in which two or more persons
maintain an argument on questions of love, or chivalry, etc., each using
stanzas terminating in similar rhymes, somewhat like the style of poem
long after known in Scottish literature as a "flyting;" and the satiric
poem or pasquinade, the _sirvente_, often a fierce war song in which the
poet lashed his foes and urged his men on to battle.

The social conditions of France during this period were such as to make
caste distinctions very marked. That a _roturier_, a plain peasant, or
even a tradesman, should become the social equal of a noble was a thing
unheard of. But in Provence--curiously enough when one remembers the
excessive refinement of luxury encouraged in this land of flowers--the
society was much more democratic. Perhaps it would be more accurate to
say that among a people who had already discovered that literature and
music were arts the artist was welcomed, talent was recognized and
rewarded, n