“During Middle-Age in the emerging France, both civilizations were above all differentiated by their languages. North of the Loire, the lingua d’Oïl, and in the south the lingua d’Oc (language of Occitania) made a Parisian or a Picard a foreigner in Limoges, Toulouse or Avignon, while a Toulousan or an Avignonese arriving in Barcelona, Spain, wasn’t disorientated. Contrary to the occupied part of Spain, south of Barcelona where Jews and Christians were suffering from the violent Muslim rule, far from the romantic image of El Andalus passing for the “lost paradise of a European multiculturalism” the Languedocian Christianity was characterized by its tolerance.
« The spirit of liberty which allowed Jewish and Arabic professors to teach in (Languedoc) schools is the very basis of the gnostic spirituality. This spirit of tolerance and liberty will be defended by the privileged classes. » Jeanne Bedin in « Les Origines du Catharisme languedocien » (Revue Atlantis 1969-1970).
Gnostics from all origins and mystics, in the sense of experimental consciousness aiming at the integral knowledge, are the ones who manifest the most the spiritual expression of the divine sparkle, present in the soul of each individual. Hence the notion of individual responsibility, in contrast to the group soul of animals obeying to their sole instincts. To let the fruits of this human free-will express the choices of an individualized consciousness, this one must be nourished with truth to be able to escape from the social conditioning of its time.
(…) The Troubadours, these poets often knights, became erudites because they travelled, venturing towards India. In Khorassan, the northern province of the Persian empire straddling over Iran and Afghanistan, the troubadours exhilarated by the oriental rhythms and chants learned its language, the Farsi. Imbued with all the subtleties of the Persian language some troubadours pure in heart had been initiated by Sufi brotherhoods to another level of celebration of human feelings. The one where the love towards the Divine inspires the mystic and melts itself by the beauty of the verses embodying It with the love for the well-beloved lady.”
Touched as much by the music of these luminous Sufis than by the burning intensity of their poetry, the Troubadours brought back this poetical concept in which the temporality melting within the spiritual lifts up the very nature of feelings of love towards the heights of the ideal. Thus, the Troubadours were transcribing the fol amour of the amorous transport, not in Latin but in Langue d’Oc. By diverting the war energy using the Trobar, the art of finding the right word, the Troubadours inspired the knights of the South to express the nobility of their feelings to the lady of their heart. By raising the scale of sentiments to its ultimate combustion point through a divine allegory, the « Fin Amor » of the Troubadours gave birth to the « Amour Courtois », in the courts of the Counts of Toulouse and Eleanor of Aquitaine. This is how since the 12th century the Christian mariage consecrates mutual consent by asking “Do you accept to take as spouse?… ”, contrary to forced mariages where young girls are sold like cattle.”
excerpt from https://eveilleursdelaube.fr/, written in Cathar Land, Languedoc-Occitania, by the Sufi-troubadour Salik de Bonnault inspired by the One 🙂
