Huguet de Mataplana

Huguet de Mataplana (after 1173 – 28 November 1213) was a Catalan nobleman and poet. His name is also spelled Hug, Huc, Uc, or Uget.

Huguet was the nephew of Ponç de Mataplana, who was attacked by the troubadour Guillem de Berguedà and then lamented by him in a planh. He is documented continually from 1185 until his death and in 1197, for the first time, he appears married to a woman named Sança. He was the lord of Mataplana near Nuestra Señora de Mongrony in the Ripollès and figured extensively in the royal acts of Alfonso II of Aragon and his son Peter II, of whom he was said to be a favourite. Huguet himself was a patron of Raimon Vidal de Bezaudun.

According to the Historias y conquestas of Pere Tomich (1438) he was present at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. He was wounded at the Battle of Muret the next year and died of his wounds a few months later. According to the Llibre dels fets of James I the Conqueror, Huguet was one of those who fled the field at Muret.

According to the Abrils issia of Raimon Vidal, Huguet was an intimate of joglars, and in his So fo el temps Raimon describes in detail Huguet's sumptuous court at Mataplana. It has been posited that Raimon Vidal may have been Huguet's teacher and grammarian. Huguet left behind his own poetry in the form of three tensos and one sirventes. In Scometre.us vuoill, Reculaire he attacks the joglar Reculaire. When young he composed two tensos with a young Blacatz (or possibly with Blacasset): En Blanchacet, eu sui de noit and En Diable, vos es per dar enoi. His most studied work is D'un sirventes m'es pres talens, an attack on his good friend Raimon de Miraval, who disowned his wife, Caudairenga. The sirventes comes with a long razo explaining the circumstances of its composition. Raimon has left a response.

Works

Sources

  • Riquer, Martín de. Los trovadores: historia literaria y textos. 3 vol. Barcelona: Planeta, 1975.