GAI SABER

Old Provenal: gay knowledge or gay science the art of composing love poetry; especially the art of the Provenal troubadours as set forth in a 14th-century work called the Leys d'amors. The Old Provenal phrase gai saber is associated with the Consistri del Gai Saber, originally the Sobregaya compannia dels VII Trobadors de Tolosa (Very Gay Company of the Seven Troubadours of Toulouse), a group of seven citizens of Toulouse who in 1323 organized yearly competitions to encourage troubadour poetry, by then in serious decline.