Acceso usuarios
Dietmar Rieger
In the Middle Ages, not only philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas, butalso numerous troubadours have discussed with commitment issues of privateproperty and its social obligations–up to expropriation. The discussion mainlytook place in the context of their continuous polemics from about 1150 to 1300 inthe form ofsirventesandpartimens, but alsocansos, against the «evil rich bar-ons», therics malvatz. The antipathy towards this «incarnation ofMalvestatz» andfigure of greed, avarice and all varieties of immorality finds its outlet in manydenunciations and hateful verbal aggressions in a wide rhetorical range–up todemands for prohibition of inheritance claims and suggestions for expropriation.The motivations for these insulting tirades are multiple and partly overlap: Thericmalvatzis hated as rich and powerful and therefore often successful rival in loveas well as one who refuses himself or his fortune for the Crusade, as a miser whodenies the equality (including the poor) before God and above all as a territorialprince who tramples on his socio-cultural duty to promote and stabilize the trou-badouresque cultural activity with its cultural-productive structure resulting froman important social compromise. It is remarkable, but also enigmatic, in whichway a troubadour (Trobaire de Villa-Arnaut) combines his polemic against thericsmalvatzwith a formal experiment and how he legitimizes it with a clear referenceto Giraut de Borneil.
