PROVENÇAL POETS, in the History of Literature, a name given to certain professions of men who sprang up in Provence about the end of the 10th century, comprehending those that were called Troubadours, or Trouverres, Jongleurs, Cantadours, Violars, and Musars, in whom the faculties both of music and poetry seemed to be united. The first of these were
so denominated from the art which they professed of inventing or finding out as well subjects and sentiments as rhymes, constituting what at that time was deemed poetry. The jongleurs are supposed to have taken their name from some musical instrument on which they played, probably of a name resembling in its sound that by which their profession was distinguished: whence spring the jugglers, quasi jocolatores, as Menage conjectures, who went about singing their verses in courts and the houses of noblemen, with a viol or harp, or other instrument, and were dressed in a peculiar habit, for the sake of entertaining, in a burlesque manner, their protectors and patrons. The cantadours, called also chanterres, were singers of songs and ballads, as were also the musari; and the violars were players on the viol.
All these arts were comprehended, in the French language, under the general denomination of menestruadie, menestruadise, and jongleire.
The Provençal poets were not only the inventors and composers of metrical romances, songs, ballads and rhymes, to so great a number, and of such a kind, as to raise an emulation in most countries of Europe to imitate them; but, if we may credit the Italian writers, the best poets of Italy, namely Petrarch and Dante, owed much of their excellence to their imitation of the Provençals; and it is also said that the greater part of the novels of Boccace are taken from Provençal or ancient French romances. The learned Dr. Percy, in his Essay on the Ancient English Minstrels, has given a very curious and satisfactory account of these fathers of modern poetry and music; and although he agrees that the several professions above enumerated were included under the general name of minstrel, he has in the notes to that essay, p. 42. with great accuracy assigned to each its distinct and peculiar office. Of the ancient writers of romance, a history is extant in the lives of the Provençal poets, written in French by J. Nostradamus, compiled and published at Lyons in 1575; but a much more satisfactory account of them is contained in the translation of this work into Italian, with many additions, by Gio. Mario de Crescimbeni, and published, in 1710, under the title of Commentari Intorno all' Istoria della Volgare Poesia.