Consistori de Barcelona
[1] The Consistori's chief purpose was to promote "correct" styles and themes and discourage vices (vicis) by awarding prizes in competition to poets who adhered to the "rules" of poetic composition.
The expertise of judges for the festival was also set out by the king, in Latin: gaya vel gaudiosa, et alio nomine inveniendi sciencie, that is, "gay and joyful, and by another name inventive science".
This festival is known from a letter the king wrote, which he sent on 19 February 1396 recording the bella festa ... a honor de la dita gaya ciència, the prizes for which were provided by the municipal government.
On 12 August 1399 at Zaragoza, Martin renominated Jaume March and Luys d'Averçó as rectors, maintainers, and defenders of the Gaya Sciència de Barcelona.
[9] Martin's 1398 act also made mention of Toulouse and Paris (again) in a lengthy preamble outlining the merits of the various sciences: arithmetic, astrology, dialectic, geometry, law, medicine, music, politics, strategy, composing (trobar), theology, etc.
His ties to Castile helped increase the accessibility of Catalan (and Occitan) culture and was a catalyst for the first Castilian poetic treatise, the Arte de trovar.
Felip's closing speech is similar in style to his opening, being filled with Latin references and lengthy commentary, but absent is the mention of the winner's name or poem.
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").
[19] 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.
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).
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.
[22] The isolation and their classicism of the Consistoris (of Toulouse and Barcelona) cut them off from the literary movements giving life to other vernaculars, such as the dolce stil novo and the Renaissance in Italian and the work of Ausias March associated with the zenith of medieval Catalan.
Martín de Riquer is highly critical of the negative influence of the Toulousain academy on Catalan poetry through the exportation occitanisms and support of an outmoded literary language.
For its thematically limited, narrow conception of art and imposing rules for form and content, he compares it to French neoclassicism and its "tyranny of the monotonous alexandrine".
The failure of the city of Barcelona to support the Consistori and its falling back on royal patronage in 1396 best exemplifies the problems of consciously continuing the troubadour tradition in an atmosphere that was not made for it.
Gilabert de Próxita wrote Le souvenirs qu'amors fina me porta, a secular song on love, in the manner of the troubadours.
Andreu Febrer composed Sobre.l pus naut element de tots quatre, an astrological and mythological panegyric for an unnamed queen of Sicily.
His canso of love Pus li prat son de verdura guarnit was "coronada" (crowned) the winner at a contest in Barcelona.
