Chardon de Croisilles

Chardon de Croisilles or de Reims (fl. 1220–45) was an Old French trouvère and possibly an Occitan troubadour. He was probably from Croisilles, but perhaps Reims. He is associated with the school of trouvères in and around Arras. Chardon wrote four chansons d'amour, two jeux partis, and one partimen.

In two of his chansons Chardon represented Marguerite de Bourbon, the wife (from 1232) of Theobald I of Navarre, in acrostics. Based on this and another internal reference to the castle of Monreal near Pamplona, whereat Theobald was staying in 1237, it is thought that Chardon joined Theobald's Crusade, which left for the Holy Land in 1237. Henry II of Bar, who adjudicated one of Chardon's jeux partis, also went on Crusade with Theobald.

All Chardon's French poems use pedes and cauda: the chansons are decasyllabic, the jeux partis octosyllabic. His only surviving melodies, for Mar vit raison covoite trop haut and Rose ne lis ne me done talent, are non-repetitive. A fifth chanson, no longer ascribed to Chardon, Li departirs de la douce contree, is notable for the simplicity of its melody compared to the "floridity" of that of Rose ne lis.

A poet named Chardo wrote a partimen (the Occitan version of a jeu parti) with an otherwise unidentified poet named Uc. The rubric La tenzo del chardo e den ugo ("The tenso of [the] Chardo and of Lord Hugh") appears in the manuscript. While Chardo's half, N'Ugo, cauzetz, avans que respondatz, survives, Uc's poem has disappeared. Hermann Suchier was the first scholar to identify Chardo with Chardon, dating the partimen to c.1240, but he has not gone unopposed.

References

• Karp, Theodore. "Chardon de Croisilles." Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online. Accessed 20 September 2008.
• Bibliografia Elettronica dei Trovatori.