A ''senhal'' is a codename used to address ladies, patrons and friends in the

Old Occitan Old Occitan (, ), also called Old Provençal, was the earliest form of the Occitano-Romance languages, as attested in writings dating from the 8th to the 14th centuries. Old Occitan generally includes Early and Old Occitan. Middle Occitan is some ...

poetry of the

troubadour A troubadour (, ; ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female equivalent is usually called a ''trobairitz''. The tr ...

s. Only a minority of persons addressed by ''senhal'' have been identified, the rest being subject to much speculation.Frank M. Chambers
"Senhal"
in Roland Greene (ed.), ''The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics'', 4th ed. (Princeton University Press, 2017). ''Senhals'' are usually found in the '' tornadas'' of poems. They could be nouns, adjectives or phrases. They were usually expressions of admiration, longing or joy, as in ''Bel vezer'' (beautiful gaze), ''Mon desir'' (my desire) and ''Gen conquis'' (nobly conquered). Occasionally they are humorous or deprecating, as in ''Tort n'avetz'' (you are wrong).

Alfred Jeanroy Alfred Jeanroy (5 July 1859 – 13 March 1953) was a French linguist. Jeanroy was a leading scholar studying troubadour poetry, publishing over 600 works. He established an influential view of the second generation of troubadours divided into tw ...

, ''La poésie lyrique des troubadours'' (Slatkine Reprints, 1998 934, pp. 317–320. ''Senhals'' appear in the earliest troubadours works, those of Duke

William IX of Aquitaine William IX ( or , ; 22 October 1071 – 10 February 1126), called the Troubadour, was the Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of Poitou (as William VII) between 1086 and his death. He was also one of the leaders of the Crusade of 1101. Thoug ...

in the early twelfth century.Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, ''The Poetry of the Medieval Troubadour, William IX of Aquitaine: The Songs That Built Europe'' (Rowman and Littlefield, 2023), p. 148. Early poets employed different ''senhals'' for different addressees, but later poets used the same ''senhals'' repeatedly for different referents. Their use continued into the fourteenth century in the works of

Raimon de Cornet Raimon de Cornet (, also spelled ''Ramon de Cornet''; fl. 1324–1340) was a fourteenth-century Toulousain priest, friar, grammarian, poet, and troubadour. He was a prolific author of verse; more than forty of his poems survive, most in Occi ...

. Guilhem Molinier's prose ''Leys d'amors'' states as a rule that troubadours should adopt their own ''senhals'', which thus functioned more as signatures of the poets than identifiers of others.Federico Saviotti
"L'énigme du ''senhal''"
''Medioevi'' 1 (2015): 101–121. The origin of the ''senhal'' has been much debated. It has been linked by

Martín de Riquer Martin may refer to: Places Antarctica * Martin Peninsula, Marie Byrd Land * Port Martin, Adelie Land * Point Martin, South Orkney Islands Europe * Martin, Croatia, a village * Martin, Slovakia, a city * Martín del Río, Aragón, Spain * M ...

to classical practice, as in the case of the Lesbia of

Catullus Gaius Valerius Catullus (; ), known as Catullus (), was a Latin neoteric poet of the late Roman Republic. His surviving works remain widely read due to their popularity as teaching tools and because of their personal or sexual themes. Life ...

or the Cynthia of

Propertius Sextus Propertius was a Latin elegiac poet of the Augustan age. He was born around 50–45 BC in Assisium (now Assisi) and died shortly after 15 BC. Propertius' surviving work comprises four books of '' Elegies'' ('). He was a friend of the ...

. It has also been linked to the practice of nicknames at the court of Charlemagne and to the '' kināya'' of contemporary Andalusi poetry.

References

{{reflist Old Occitan literature