Hugues IV de Berzé (or ''Bregi''; 1150/1155 – 1220) was a

knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of knighthood by a head of state (including the Pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church or the country, especially in a military capacity. Knighthood finds origins in the Gr ...

and

trouvère ''Trouvère'' (, ), sometimes spelled ''trouveur'' (, ), is the Northern French (''langue d'oïl'') form of the ''langue d'oc'' (Occitan) word ''trobador'', the precursor of the modern French word ''troubadour''. ''Trouvère'' refers to poet- ...

from the

Mâconnais The Mâconnais district is located in the south of the Burgundy wine region in France, west of the Saône river. It takes its name from the town of Mâcon. It is best known as a source of good value white wines made from the Chardonnay grape; the ...

. He participated in the

Fourth Crusade The Fourth Crusade (1202–1204) was a Latin Christian armed expedition called by Pope Innocent III. The stated intent of the expedition was to recapture the Muslim-controlled city of Jerusalem, by first defeating the powerful Egyptian Ayyubid S ...

in 1201 and the

Fifth Crusade The Fifth Crusade (1217–1221) was a campaign in a series of Crusades by Western Europeans to reacquire Jerusalem and the rest of the Holy Land by first conquering Egypt, ruled by the powerful Ayyubid sultanate, led by al-Adil, brother of Sala ...

in 1220. He was the lord of

Berzé-le-Châtel Berzé-le-Châtel (; frp, Bresié-le-Châtiô) is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France. The trouvère Hugues IV de Berzé was the ruler of Berzé-le-Châtel in the early 13th c ...

. Hugues wrote at least five

lyric poem Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...

s that are preserved in various

chansonnier A chansonnier ( ca, cançoner, oc, cançonièr, Galician and pt, cancioneiro, it, canzoniere or ''canzoniéro'', es, cancionero) is a manuscript or printed book which contains a collection of chansons, or polyphonic and monophonic settings o ...

s. His last one was written to the

troubadour A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a ''trobairit ...

Falquet de Romans, asking his friend to participate in the Crusade with him '' outra mar''. Hugues sent his poem with the ''

jongleur A minstrel was an entertainer, initially in medieval Europe. It originally described any type of entertainer such as a musician, juggler, acrobat, singer or fool; later, from the sixteenth century, it came to mean a specialist entertainer who ...

'' Bernart d'Argentau and it forms an important source of information about both poets. According to Hugues, neither he nor Falquet were young at the time.Though the poetic exchange has been dated as early as 1201 or as late as November 1220 – September 1221, the former date is ''too'' early and the latter invalidated by Hugues's death. Recently, dates of 1215, 1216, 1217, and 1219 have been proffered (Riquer). Hugues was dead by August 1220, which provides an '' ante quem'' date for the poem. Hugues is referred to as ''N'Ugo de Bersie'' in the

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; o ...

razo A ''razo'' (, literally "cause", "reason") was a short piece of Occitan prose detailing the circumstances of a troubadour composition. A ''razo'' normally introduced an individual poem, acting as a prose preface and explanation; it might, however ...

'' that accompanies the poem in the chansonnier. His most famous

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligib ...

work is ''La Bible au seigneur de Barzil'', a poem of 1,029

octosyllable The octosyllable or octosyllabic verse is a line of verse with eight syllables. It is equivalent to tetrameter verse in trochees in languages with a stress accent. Its first occurrence is in a 10th-century Old French saint's legend, the '' Vie de ...

s preaching the reform of the

Church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * C ...

. Hugues was influenced by his time in

Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth (Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis (" ...

and by "the certainty of death and the uncertainty of his times", when the Crusades were generally failures and the

Cathar Catharism (; from the grc, καθαροί, katharoi, "the pure ones") was a Christian dualist or Gnostic movement between the 12th and 14th centuries which thrived in Southern Europe, particularly in northern Italy and southern France. Follow ...

heresy was rampant in

southern France Southern France, also known as the South of France or colloquially in French language, French as , is a defined geographical area consisting of the regions of France that border the Atlantic Ocean south of the Marais Poitevin,Louis Papy, ''Le midi ...

. Hugues has criticism for all three social classes (nobility, clergy, and peasantry). Hugues's ''Bible'' is in the same category as the slightly earlier ''Bible Guiot'' of Guiot de Provins. ''La Bible'' exemplifies "the beliefs of a pious layman with a considerable breadth of worldly experience". In the late sixteenth century, Hugues's ''Bible'' furnished much historical evidence for the antiquarian works of Claude Fauchet.

References

Sources

*Boulton, Maureen B. M. "Hugues de Berzé" (p. 462). ''Medieval France: An Encyclopedia'', ed. William W. Kibler. New Jersey: Routledge University Press, 1995. . *Lecoy, Félix. "Pour la chronologie de Hugues de Berzé." ''Romania'' 67 (1942–1943): 243–254. * Riquer, Martín de. ''Los trovadores: historia literaria y textos''. 3 vol. Barcelona: Planeta, 1975. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hugues 04 De Berze 1150s births 1220 deaths People from Saône-et-Loire Christians of the Fourth Crusade Christians of the Fifth Crusade 12th-century French poets 13th-century French poets Trouvères French male poets