Consistori de Barcelona - Description of Enrique de Villena

Description of Enrique De Villena

One of the best descriptions of the Consistori de Barcelona is found in the Arte de trovar of the Castilian writer Enrique de Villena, who was at Barcelona in 1408. Though written in 1423, it probably describes the Consistori during the era of Martin the Humane as well. Enrique's account of the foundation of the Consistori, however, is a jumble of historical events that took places decades and almost centuries apart:

Enrique is the sole authority for the statement that John the Hunter sent an embassy to the King of France, Charles VI, evidently before 1393, to request that he send two men from his Consistori at Toulouse to found one at Barcelona. According to Jerónimo Zurita in his Indices rerum ab Aragoniae regibus gestarum (Zaragoza: D. a Portonariis de Ursinus, 1578), in 1388 an embassy was sent to France ut vernaculae linguae celebres poëtae in Hispaniam ex Narbonensis provinciae scholis traducerentur: & studia poëtices, quam gaiam scientiam vocabant, instituerentur. His vero, quorum ingenium in eo artificio elucere videbatur, magna praemia, industriae, & honoris insignia, monumentaque laudis esse constituta ("so that the vernacular language might be celebrated in Spain, translated from the school of the province of the Narbonnaise: and poetic studies, which is called the gay science, instituted"). The story is not implausible, however, and may explain the obscure references to Paris in the acts of John and Martin. It is also plausible that two scholars left Toulouse with the purpose of founding a second academy at Barcelona, considering the history of Occitan literature in Catalonia.

According to Enrique, who is the only source for the organisational structure of the Consistori, it was run by four mantenidors: a knight, a master of theology, a master of laws, and an honourable citizen. Since all other existing documentation shows John and Martin naming two mantenidors, it follows that Ferdinand of Antequera, under whom Enrique was writing, raised it to four. At one point Enrique seems also to say that prizes (vergas de plata, silver rods) were given out each month (cada mes), but this may represent a corruption in the manuscript and should perhaps refer to each year. According to Enrique, the "collegio de Barcelona" lapsed after the death of Martin in 1410. The sixteenth-century Toledan Álvar Gómez de Castro glossed the Arte de trobar manuscript with the fact that Enrique came into the service of Ferdinand after his election to succeed Martin in 1412 that he procuró la reformación del consistorio y señaláronle por el principal d'ellos ("procured the reformation of the consistory and was marked as the principal among them"). Enrique held a post in the Consistori similar to that of a president, but it is possible that he exaggerated his own importance.

Enrique described the festas of the Gay Science as occurring in two sessions, perhaps on two separate days. At the first session, one of the mantenidors gives a lecture (called the presuposición), then the poets recited their work de la materia a ellos asignada (on the theme assigned to them). The themes were algunas vezes loores de Santa María, otras de armas, otras de amores e de buenas costumbres: sometimes the praises of the Virgin Mary, other times of arms, other times of love and good customs. These three themes were understand by the Romantics as those of faith (fé), patriotism (patria), and love (amor).

After the first session, the poems were put into writing and taken by the mantenidors for secret deliberations (the jurat), where the poems were examined for fidelity to the rules and their faults were carefully enumerated. Stress was laid upon the identification of vicis (vices, faults) in the esteemed llibres de l'art (books of the art), the treatises carried by the mantenidors. The second session was held after the judgement was passed and there the winner was declared and the prizes awarded.