Literary History of the Troubadours

...[would not have seen the] ministry original: "ministère"; here referring to the clergy or the priestly office. targeted by the arrows of hatred, if enlightenment and virtues had guaranteed their persons. How much have they not benefited since from this fatal experience? How fitting is the spectacle of ancient errors and ancient faults for inspiring wisdom?

Be that as it may, the merit of this work belongs especially to Mr. de Sainte-Palaye Jean-Baptiste de La Curne de Sainte-Palaye (1697–1781) was a pioneering French scholar who dedicated his life to studying the Middle Ages, chivalry, and the Occitan language of the troubadours.. I have only set to work with pleasure the materials that he gathered with so much effort. I have followed his translations, giving the style a freer and more varied turn. His remarks and those of his first collaborators have spared me the boredom of research. The selection and arrangement of the materials, the care in blending them together, of mixing in reflections, and of remedying as much as possible a tedious uniformity, do not require great efforts when one has such assistance. Although I have suppressed an infinite number of trivial things, I will perhaps be blamed for having left far too many. But what would be more than trivial elsewhere is not so in literary history, where men of letters original: "gens de Lettres"; the intellectual elite and scholars of the Enlightenment era. may find important what people of the world original: "gens du monde"; refers to the fashionable, high-society audience who read for pleasure rather than rigorous study. judge useless.