Matfre Ermengau[a] (died 1322) was aFranciscanfriar,legist, andtroubadour fromBéziers. He had amaster of laws (senhor de leis) degree.[1]
He wrote onecanso, whose melody survives, and one moralisingsirventes. His most famous work was anOccitan poetic book in 34,735octosyllables called theBreviari d'amor, begun in 1288. Encyclopedic in length and diversity, its sole purpose is the reconciliation of love for God with the erotic amours of the troubadour lyric.[2] It is divided into parts and is structured like a "tree of love". TheBreviari is preserved in twelve fullcodices and as many fragments. It was translated intoCastilian and theLimousin dialect (once thought to beCatalan orcatalanisant Occitan).[3] Matfre also says that he would have written better inLatin (from which he borrowed the wordbreviari, frombreviarium, not found elsewhere in medieval Occitan).
The work begins with populartheology, a section entitled "The Study of God and the Creation". From theTrinity it moves toangels,demons, then thezodiac and theplanets. Then in a section entitled "The Study of Nature" ("Natural Law") he discusses the proper modes ofworship, then the temptations that affect Christians and the sins they must avoid. Exempla are drawn from daily life. Finally, in "The Love of God", he summarises the Christian creeds, the life ofChrist, and severalhagiographies.[4]
The last section (8,000 lines) of the work, "Perilhos tractatz d'amor de donas, seguon qu'en han tractat li antic trobador en lurs cansos", structured as a dialogue between the defenders Love and her critics, is filled with citations (266 by some counts) of other troubadours and even sometrouvères; Matfre cited himself six (Jeanroy) or nine (Paden) times and cited his brotherPeire twice. He was careful to cite poets from different eras, but his favourites appear to beAimeric de Peguilhan,Bernart de Ventadorn, andPeire Vidal of the "classical era".[5] The title of "Perilhos" indicates that theantic (old) troubadours were authorities on poetic and amatory matters. He even quotes in support of thisRaimon Jordan using the wordantic of his predecessors.[3] Matfre's knowledge of the early troubadours came largely through reading and he indicates that the early troubadours "sung" about love, not that they wrote about it, as did Matfre and his contemporaries. After the "Perilhos", Matfre includes a letter (epistola) to his sister, written indecasyllabicrhyming couplets:Fraires Matfre a sa cara seror. In it he explains the symbolism of aChristmascapon.
Matfre has been credited, along withFerrari da Ferrara, for pioneering the anthologising of the troubadours.[3] Matfre is partly responsible for the later treatment of singlecoblas as distinct units, because he regularly quoted onecobla from a troubadour and treated it as a single thought. Matfre had become quite famous by the timePeire de Ladils lumped him together with the heroes ofArthurian romance (c.1340).
