Chapter 2 - Clerical and Monastic Contexts for the Intertextual Refrain

Summary

Cil par qui fois et verités

devroit estre enseignie

ont les cuers si avuglés

d'estre en signorie,

que trop pou reluist lor bontés

car il sunt trop enclin

au monde d'assés.

A peines voit on devin

qui n'i soit adounez.”

[Those who by faith and truth/should be taught/have hearts so blinded/by power/that their goodness shines hardly at all,/for they are strongly attached/to things of this world./It is rare to see a churchman/who is not attached to them.]

et si ai trové

maint clerc, la chape ostee,

qui n'ont cure, que la soit

logique desputee.

Li hostes est par delés,

qui dit, “Bevés.”

Et quant vins faut, si criés:

“Cil nous faut un tour de vin,

Dieus, car le nos donez!””

[And I have often found/many a clerk, cowl set aside,/who have no interest in there being/a debate on logic./The host is right next to the guests/and says: “Drink.”/And when the wine runs short, [they] cry out:/“We need another round of wine here,/good God, so give us one!”]

The quotations above, drawn from the voices of a thirteenth-century motet, offer frustrated and bemused observations on the inappropriately worldly behavior of some medieval clerics. Intertextual refrains echo themes and elements found across trouvère song and its many genres in pithy, abbreviated form. In particular, refrains include requests for love and complaints about the pain of unrequited love. Yet despite their earthly preoccupation with desire, intertextual refrains often emerge in clerical contexts.