Marcabru

Marcabru (; fl. 1130–1150) is one of the earliest troubadours whose poems are known. There is no certain information about him; the two vidas attached to his poems tell different stories, and both are evidently built on hints in the poems; not on independent information. According to the brief life in the BnF ms. 12473, Marcabrun was from Gascony (details of the dialect of his poems support this) and was the son of a poor woman named Marcabrunela. This evidently comes from a reading of poem 293,18. According to the longer biography in MS. Vat. Lat. 5232 Marcabru was abandoned at a rich man’s door, and no one knew his origin. He was brought up by Aldric del Vilar, learned to make poetry from Cercamon, and was at first nicknamed Pan-perdut and later Marcabru. He became famous, and the lords of Gascony, about whom he had said many bad things, eventually put him to death. This appears to be based on poems 16b,1 and 293,43 (an exchange between Aldric del Vilar and Marcabru) and guesswork; the link with Cercamon is doubted by modern scholars. Forty-four poems are attributed to Marcabru, learned, often difficult, sometimes obscene, and relentlessly critical of the morality of lords and la