Naming Names: Matfre Ermengaud's Use of Troubadour Quotations

Abstract

NAMING NAMES: MATFRE ERMENGAUD'S USE OF TROUBADOUR QUOTATIONS This paper explores the concept of naming, and more precisely, how names are intimately tied to the related concept of authority in the Middle Ages. The association ofnames with authority has Biblical precedent: even a cursory reading ofGenesis establishes names and the act ofnaming as concomitant to the foundation of authority.1 Because it recalls how the creation ofman in the image ofGod was linked to his dominion over the beasts, birds, and fish (Gen. 1 . 26), Adam's naming ofthe animals and birds (Gen. 2. 1 920 ) is clearly part and parcel of his authority over them.2 Thus imbued with authority, names become themselves the visible traces or markers ofauthority, and particularly in exegesis. Moreover, if names convey authority generally, certain names are intrinsically and uniquely authoritative: medieval theologians treated the name ofGod in particularwith dogmatic respect, sensitive to its omnipotent authority.3 Explicitly coupled with the creation and the preservation of authority in the Middle Ages, names and naming are common features of patristic exegesis and scholastic disputation. The auctores, or author/authorities, constituted a canon ofauthoritative sources, most often patristic or Biblical, available for the study of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. While the auctores were the primary sources for medieval writers of Latin sententiae and glossae, they also served as argumentative supports in such vernacular religious texts as glosses, hagiography, and encyclopedias. In these contexts, the names ofthe auctores provide argumentative support; they enact an implicit transferal ofauthority from one text or argument to another, providing an essential, and authoritative, stamp ofapproval. One such spiritual encyclopedia is Matfre Ermengaud's Breviari d'Amor (ca. 1288), a vernacular summa devoted to explicating the various aspects oflove in theological terms. Despite his vernacular language, Matfre's exposition oflove is in the manner 41 MICHELLE BOLDUC ofa learned cleric and theologian: he takes care to cite authorities, especially the names associated with Scripture and patristic exegesis. Matfre's authoritative allusions clearly serve as argumentative supports; his use of this ad verecundiam argumentation throughout the Breviari establishes and maintains the authoritativeness ofMatfre's encyclopedic work. However, Matfre has an unusually broad understanding of which authors deserve to have auctoritas. He extends the traditional scholastic concept ofauthority by quoting, in addition to the more common patristic authorities, authors who were neither clerical nor Scriptural. In the debate of courtly love that concludes the Breviari, the "Perilhos Tractat d'amor de donas, seguon qu'en han tractât li antic trobodors en lurs cansos" [The Perilous Treatise on the love ofwomen according to what the troubadours have said in their songs], Matfre names many ofthe "antic trobodors" and not infrequently: he quotes troubadour lyric, including his own, some two hundred and sixty-six times. Matfre's explicit quotation of, rather than simple allusion to, the troubadour lyrics, I suggest, firmly establishes the troubadours as auctores. This paper offers a reading of Matfre's use of troubadour quotations as evidence ofthe transformations affecting the concept ofauthority both within the Breviari and in scholastic culture generally in the late thirteenth century, and I have organized this paper into fourprimary sections. Beginning with an examination ofthe exegetical act ofnaming authority and Matfre's conventional use ofcanonical authorities, I then turn to a discussion ofthe flexible nature ofLatin auctoritas, and how this pliability is manifest in the Breviari. Whereas in the third section I examine the generic implications ofMatfre's dialectical use ofauthority for the Breviari, the final section investigates how Matfre transforms the traditional exegetical act ofauthoritative naming, attributing to the troubadours unexpected and unusual authority. Modern scholarship has been increasingly attentive to the importance of the medieval association of names and authority. Whether examining names as derived from narrative (Haidu 68), or as an integral facet ofauthorship (Minnis, Authorship), or more 42 MATFRE ERjMENGAUD'S USE OF TROUBADOUR NAMES frequently, investigating the authorial acts of self-naming (see Bruckner, "Strategies"; Curtius 515-18; de Looze; Quilligan), modern scholars elucidate clearly how names in the Middle Ages are never simply names but rather hermeneutic keys to understanding textual authority and authorship. Despite this recent scholarly attention to names and authority generally, consideration ofMatfre's broad and...