Arnaut de Mareuil, a Provençal troubadour active at the end of the 12th and at the turn of the 12th/13th centuries. He came from Mareuil-sur-Belle (province of the Dordogne). Initially, he was a clergyman and copyist, highly valued for his knowledge and literary skills, then he became a juggler and later a troubadour. He stayed at the court of Roger II de Béziers. 26 of his songs have been preserved, including six with melodic notation, belonging to the oda continua type. Most of these pieces take the form of a canzona. Of the remaining five, they are a type of rhyming love letter, the so-called saluts d’amour, and one represents a new literary genre – a kind of morality play containing elements of social criticism. When listing the most outstanding troubadours, Petrarch quotes Aarnaut de Mareuil in Trionfo d’amore (IV, 44) next to D. Arnaut.
Literature: W. Friedmann Einleitung zu einer kritischen Ausgabe der Gedichte des Troubadour Arnaut de Mareuil, Halle 1910; R.C. Johnston Les poésies lyriques du troubadour Arnaut de Mareuil, Paris 1935; F. Gennrich Der musikalische Nachlass der Troubadours, 3 vol., Darmstadt 1958–65; Les saluts d’amour du troubadour Aarnaut de Mareuil, published by P. Bec, «Bibliothèque méridionale» I, 31, Toulouse 1961; J. Boutière, A.H. Schutz Biographie des troubadours, Paris 1964.
