r poetic
disputations, carried afterward to perfection among the Troubadours;
from them, also, the Provencals learned to employ jongleurs. Across the
Pyrenees, literary, philosophical, and military adventurers were
perpetually passing; and thus the luxury, the taste, and above all, the
chivalrous gallantry and elegant courtesies of Moorish society found
their way from Granada and Cordova to Provence and Languedoc.

[Sidenote: The south of France contracts their tastes.] The French, and
German, and English nobles imbibed the Arab admiration of the horse;
they learned to pride themselves on skilful riding. Hunting and falconry
became their fashionable pastimes; they tried to emulate that Arab skill
which had produced the celebrated breed of Andalusian horses. It was a
scene of grandeur and gallantry; the pastimes were tilts and
tournaments. The refined society of Cordova prided itself in its
politeness. A gay contagion spread from the beautiful Moorish miscreants
to their sisters beyond the mountains; the south of France was full of
the witcheries of female fascinations, and of dancing to the lute and
mandolin. [Sidenote: Light literature spreads into Sicily and Italy.]
Even in Italy and Sicily the love-song became the favourite composition;
and out of these genial but not orthodox beginnings the polite
literature of modern Europe arose. The pleasant epidemic spread by
degrees along every hillside and valley. In monasteries, voices that had
vowed celibacy might be heard carolling stanzas of which St. Jerome
would hardly have approved; there was many a juicy abbot, who could
troll forth in jocund strains, like those of the merry sinners of Malaga
and Xeres, the charms of women and wine, though one was forbidden to the
Moslem and one to the monk. The sedate greybeards of Cordova had already
applied to the supreme judge to have the songs of the Spanish Jew,
Abraham Ibn Sahal, prohibited; for there was not a youth, nor woman, nor
child in the city who could not repeat them by heart. Their immoral
tendency was a public scandal. The light gaiety of Spain was reflected
in the coarser habits of the northern countries. It was an archdeacon of
Oxford who some time afterward sang,

"Mihi sit propositum in taberna mori,
Vinum sit appositum morientis ori,
Ut dicant, cum venerint angelorum chori;
'Deus sit propitius huic potatori,'" etc.

Even as early as the tenth century, persons having a taste for learning
and fo