Note 19 — Chapter XIII · THE SIRVENTES.
Reading edition
The exact meaning of the word sirventes is not easy to define. It is evidently derived from the Latin verb servire, and may therefore loosely be rendered as the ‘song of a serving-man in praise or in the interest of his master.’ The Leys d’amors calls the sirventes ‘a song which contains censure and vituperation, and castigates wicked and malignant people.’ This tolerably meets the case. The use of the word by later grammarians for a song in praise of the Virgin is a manifest corruption of its original meaning.