Vidal, a Provençal TROUBADOUR who combined elegant
simplicity with technically demanding metrical
forms, was born in Toulouse, France, the son
of a furrier. He began his troubadour career in
Marseilles and also spent time at the court of King
Alfonso II of Aragon. Vidal spent most of his life
traveling between the courts of Marseilles,Aragon,
and Toulouse. In 1196, after Alfonso of Aragon
died, Vidal visited the court of King Emmerich of
Hungary. He may or may not have joined Marquis
Boniface of Montferrat on a CRUSADE in 1202, but
he was at the Island of Malta in 1204. He probably
died in Provence between 1208 and 1210.
The hallmark of Vidal’s poetic style is his clarity
and simplicity of expression, a characteristic he
shares with BERNARD DE VENTADOUR. Unlike ARNAUT
DANIEL, who combined technical mastery with obscure
vocabulary and metaphor, Vidal strove to
make his work melodious and accessible to his audience.
He specialized in the canso-sirventes, a
Provençal poetic form that mingles the ethos of
courtly love (see CHIVALRY AND COURTLY LOVE) with
contemporary political references. This form gives
Vidal’s readers a sense of his restless, brilliant personality.
He boasts of his prowess in court tourneys
and especially with the ladies:
I am such an one that a thousand greetings
come to me every day from Catalonia and from
Lombardy, for every day my value mounts and
increases, wherefore the King nearly dies of
envy, for I have my fun and pleasure with ladies.
Vidal’s claims need to be taken with a grain of
salt. According to the rather fantastic biography
that precedes his poetry in several manuscripts, he
traveled to Cyprus and married a Greek woman,
whom he claimed was a niece of the emperor in
Constantinople. He was also given to extravagant
behavior; when one of his patrons, Count Raimon
of Toulouse, died,Vidal mourned him by not only
donning black clothing but also by cropping and
docking his horses’ ears and tails and shaving his
and his servants’ heads. When Vidal loved a
woman named Loba (which means “she-wolf ” in
Provençal), he made the wolf his heraldic emblem
and even put on a wolf skin to be the prey of a
mock wolf hunt to gain her pity and attention.
Surprisingly, this eccentric man’s poetry reveals a
directness and elegance in language that makes
him one of the era’s most accessible and honored
troubadours.
An English Version of Works by Peire Vidal
Trobador Poets: Selections from the Poems of Eight
Trobadors. Translated by Barbara Smythe. London:
Chatto & Windus, 1911.