Hospitality and remuneration in the Middle Ages, between courtly ideology and material needs, with a focus on the court of Montferrand (end of the XII century – beginning of the XIII century)

Giraut de Borneil in Cardalhac, per un sirventes sends the one-handed jester Cardalhac to the lord and fellow troubadour Dalfi d’Alvernhe in reason of his famous hospitality. Dalfi, in his reply, refuses to host the jester, considered incompetent. This poetic exchange is probably a fictive courtly game, but it sheds light on the depiction of hospitality in Southern France in the Middle Ages. Another one of Dalfi’s poems, Joglaretz, petitz Artus, through ironic advice to a novice jester, builds a portrait of the poverty and precarious life many of these professionals were bound to.
If Dalfi sarcastically declines reception to the disabled Cardalhac, generosity and hospitality were some of the main virtues demanded from a good courtly lord, and Dalfi’s court was presented as exemplar in this respect: Montferrand was renowned as one of the main centers of hospitality of the time for and by the troubadours, and Dalfi himself was celebrated as a generous lord. The acme of this vision is reached by the nova Abril issi’e mays intrava by Raimon Vidal de Besalù, where Dalfi is depicted as the last living proponent of a lost era of courtly hospitality.
Hospitality was fundamental for the troubadours not only in an ideal scale of virtues but also on a material plain: many poets and musicians relied on it to survive, depending on one or more lords, and travelling from court to court looking for remuneration for their activity.
The present communication examines the concept and nuances of remuneration and hospitality towards poets in the courts of Southern France in the Middle Ages, considering the example of the court of Montferrand in particular, starting by an analysis of the poems connected to this court to then widen the research to other centers and draw more general conclusions around the theme.