instruct his joglar Cabra; Guiraut upbraids this performer for his ignorance, and details a long series of legends and poems which a competent joglar ought to know.  Guiraut de Calanso wrote an imitation of this diatribe.  The best known of the Catalonian troubadours is Raimon Vidal of Besadun, both for his novelas and also for his work on Provencal grammar and metre, Las rasos de trobar,[33] which was written for the benefit of his compatriots who desired to avoid solecisms or mistakes when composing.  “For as much as I, Raimon Vidal, have seen and known that few men know or have known the right manner of composing poetry (trobar) I desire to make this book that men may know and understand which of the troubadours have composed best and given the best instruction to those who wish to learn how they should follow the right manner of composing....  All Christian people, Jews, Saracens, emperors, princes, kings, dukes, counts, viscounts, vavassors and all other nobles with clergy, citizens and villeins, small and great, daily give their minds to composing and singing....  In this science of composing the troubadours are gone astray and I will tell you wherefore.  The hearers who do not understand anything when they hear a fine poem will pretend that they understand perfectly... because they [123] think that men would consider it a fault in them if they said that they did not understand....  And if when they hear a bad troubadour, they do understand, they will praise his singing because they understand it; or if they will not praise, at least they will not blame him; and thus the troubadours are deceived and the hearers are to blame for it.”  Raimon Vidal proceeds to say that the pure language is that of Provence or of Limousin or of Saintonge or Auvergne or Quercy:  “wherefore I tell you, that when I use the term Limousin, I mean all those lands and those which border them or are between them.”  He was apparently the first to use the term Limousin to describe classical Provencal, and when it became applied to literary Catalonian, as distinguished from pla Catala, the vulgar tongue, the result was some confusion.  Provencal influence was more permanent in Catalonia than in any other part of Spain; in 1393, the Consistorium of the Gay saber was founded in imitation of the similar association at Toulouse.  Most of the troubadour poetical forms and the doctrines of the Toulouse Leys d’Amors were retained, until Italian influence began to oust Provencal towards the close of the fifteenth century.

On the western side of Spain, Provencal influence evoked a brief and brilliant literature in the Galician or Portuguese school.  Its most [124] brilliant period was the age of Alfonso X. of Castile, one of its most illustrious exponents, and that of Denis of Portugal (1280-1325).  The dates generally accepted for the duration of this literature are 1200-1385; it has left to us some 2000 lyric poems, the work of more than 150 poets, including four kings and a number of nobles of high rank.  French and Provencal culture had made its way gradually and by various routes to the western side of the Spanish peninsula.