the laity, or some unlearned person might compose religious verses. Almost the oldest monument of Old French is the hymn in honour of Ste. Eulalie. Then as civilization advanced from the tenth to the twelfth century, in southern and northern France for example, and the langue d'oc and the langue d'oil became independent and developed languages, unlearned men, or men with unlearned audiences, would unavoidably set themselves to composing poetry in these tongues. In the North the chansons de geste came into existence; in the South the knightly Troubadours made love-lyrics. Somehow, these poems were written down, and there was literature for men's eyes as well as for men's ears.
In the twelfth century and the thirteenth, the audiences for Romance poetry, especially through the regions of southern and northern France, increased and became diversified. They were made up of all classes, save the brute serf, and of both sexes. The chansons de geste met the taste of the feudal barons; the Arthurian Cycle charmed the feudal dames; the coarse fabliaux pleased the bourgeoisie; and chansons of all kinds might be found diverting by various people. If the religious side was less strongly represented, it was because the closeness of the language to the clerkly and liturgical Latin left no such need of translations as was felt from the beginning among peoples of Germanic speech. Still the Gospels, especially the apocryphal, were put into Old French, and miracles de Notre Dame without number; also legends of the saints, and devout tales of many kinds.
The accentual verses of the Romance tongues had their source in the popular accentual Latin verse of the later Roman period. Their development was not unrelated to the Latin accentual verse which was superseding metrical composition in the centuries extending, one may say, from the fifth to the eleventh. Divergences between the Latin and Romance verse would be caused by the linguistic evolution through which the Romance tongues were becoming independent languages. Nor was this divergence uninfluenced by the fact that Romance poetry was popular and usually concerned with topics of this life, while Latin poetry in the most striking lines of its evolution was liturgical; and even when secular in topic tended to become learned, since it was
