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T H E SYSTEM
OF
C O U R T LY LOVE
STU DIED AS AN INTROD UCTION
TO THE WITA NUOVA OF DANTE
BY
LEWIS FREEMAN MOTT, M.S.
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN THE FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY
COLUMBIA UN IVERSITY
BOSTON, U.S.A., AND LONDON
GINN & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS
(The 3thematum Jregg
1896

CopyRIGHT, 1896, By
LEWIS FREEMAN MOTT
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
N O T E .
——º-3-33-3-e---
MANY of the deficiencies of this essay have been unavoid-
able, owing to the fact that books which I should have been
glad to consult have been in many cases inaccessible to me.
Such material as I have been unable to use, though detracting
from the completeness of my study, would, I believe, hardly
affect either the general conclusions reached, or any important
step in the development of the argument. I take this occa-
sion to express my thanks to Prof. Adolphe Cohn and to Prof.
Henry A. Todd for many acts of kindness and for much help-
ful criticism.
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL WORKS USED IN
PREPARING THIS ESSAY.
ANDREAE CAPELLANI Regii Francorum, De Amore, E. Trojel. Havniae,
1892.
APPEL, Das Leben und die Lieder des Trobadors Peire Rogier. Berlin,
| 1882.
BARTSCH, Chrestonathie Provençale. Elberfeld, 1880.
Chrestomathie de l'Ancien Français. Leipzig, 1872.
and HORNUNG, La Langue et la Littérature Françaises, IX au XIV
Siècle. Paris, 1887.
Grundriss zur Geschichte der Provenzalischen Literatur. Elber-
feld, 1872.
| CARDUCCI, Studi Letterari. Livorno, 1880.
CASINI, Le Rime dei Poeti Bolognesi. Bologna, 1881.
D’ANCONA, I Precursori di Dante. Firenze, 1874.
La Vita Nuova di Dante. Pisa, 1884.
and BACCI, Manuale della Letteratura Italiana. Firenze, I 893–95.
DIEZ, Leben und Werke der Troubadours. Ed. Bartsch, Leipzig, 1882.
Poesie der Troubadours. Ed. Bartsch, Leipzig, 1883.
DouTREPONT, La Clef d’Amors. Halle, 1890. *
FAURIEL, History of Provençal Poetry, trans. Adler. New York, 1860.
FOERSTER, Christian von Troyes Sämtliche Werke : Cligès, 1884 ; Der
Löwenritter, 1887 : Erec und Enide, 1890.
Venus la Deesse d'Amor. Bonn, 1880.
FRATICELLI, Opere di Dante. Firenze, 1887.
GASPARY, Geschichte der Italienischen Literatur. Strassburg, 1885 and
I 888.
HISTOIRE LITTÉRAIRE de la France, tome xxx, Paris, 1888.
HUON DE BORDEAUX, Guessard et Grandmaison, Anciens Poètes de la
France.
HUON DE MÉRY, Tornoiement de l’Antéchrist. Ed. Tarbé, Reims, Col.
Poètes de Champagne, 1851.
vi LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL VVORKS.
l
)
Seashov, Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France. Paris, 1889. W
i JoNCBLOET, Roman de la Charrette. La Haye, 185o.
A LANGLOIS, Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose. Bib. de re
v frang. d'Athènes et de Rome, fasc. 58. Paris, 189 I.
. LONGFELLOW, The Divine Comedy of Dante. Boston, 189o.
Si MAHN, Werke der Troubadours, 4 vols, Berlin, 1846-55.
- Gedichte der Troubadours, 4 vols. Berlin, 1856-73
MEYER, PAUL, Roman de Flamenca, Paris, 1865.
NANNUCCI, Manuale della Letteratura del Primo Secolo, 2 vols, Firenze,
1883. l
º NoRTON, The New Life of Dante Alighieri. Boston, 1889. )
S NUOVA ANTOLOGIA, Rome, I866, seq.
l
si PARIS, GASTON, Origines de la Poésie Lyrique en France au Moyen Age
- \
Paris, 1892.
l
Littérature Française au Moyen Age. Paris, I89o. \
Poésie du Moyen Age. Paris, 1887. V
N PARIS, PAULIN, Le Romancero François. Paris, 1833. (
RAYNoUARD, Choix de Poésies Originales des Troubadours. Paris, 1816. \
ROMAN DE LA ROSE, Piere Marteau. Orléans, I 878.
\" ROMANIA, Paul Meyer et Gaston Paris, Paris, 1892-96. l
* SCARTAzzINI, Dante, 2 vols. Manuali Hoepli. Milano, I89o.
v. La Divina Commedia, 3 vols. Leipzig, 1874-82. a l
V, Prolegomeni. Leipzig, I89o. i .
- SCHERILLo, Alcune Fonti Provenzali della Vita Nuova. Torino, 1889.
v SCHMELLER, Carmina Burana. Breslau, I894.
* STIMMING, Bertran von Born, Halle, 1892.
SUCHIER, Aucassin et Nicolete. Paderborn, I889.
THoMAs, Francesco da Barberino, Bib. de l'école frang d'Athènes et de
Rome, fasc. 35.
ToDD, Le Dit de la Panthère d'Amours. Paris, 1883.
WACKERNAGEL, Altfranz. Lieder. Basel, I846.
ºa º
T H E SYSTEM OF CO U RTLY LOVE
STUDIED AS AN INTRODUCTION TO THE “ VITA NUOVA.”
— — —$–%+-c-e-
It is well known that Dante employed in the “Vita Nuova"
a system of love which had grown up among the poets of
France and Italy during the two preceding centuries, and
which continued with diminishing reality and vigor to furnish
topics for the versifiers of several generations of later imitators.
The p.:rpose of the present essay is to set forth the principal
articles of this code, together with some indications regarding
their origin and development and the modifications wrought in
them by the genius of Dante when he transfigured them into
the expression of his feeling for Beatrice."
1 “ Toute la première poésie lyrique de l’Italie dépend de celles de la Provence
et de la France, et leur influence est même encore sensible, bien que le fond et la
forme aient subi de profondes modifications, dans Guido Guinicelli, Dante et
Pétrarque.” – Gaston Paris, Littérature du Moyen Age, § 129.
II. w
\
| THE carols sung, while dancing at the festivals of May, by
the peasant girls of Poitou and Limousin, seem to be the tiny
spring from which the great stream of mediaeval lyric poetry
flows." These festivals, originally pagan and consecrated to
Venus, celebrated the joy of spring's renewal, the gayety of
youth, and the glorification of love.” Those who did not love,
the jealous, and all who might give annoyance to lovers were
excluded from the round.” Young girls, escaped for th
moment from the tutelage of their mothers, and young wives.
freed from the authority of their husbands, hastening to the
meadow, joined hands in the dance, and sang of liberty and
wantonness, railing against the yoke to which they were com.
pelled to submit.* The motives of these songs, taken up,
expanded, and modified by the court poets, became the themes
of the conventional lyrics of the troubadours and their imitators,
Many essential traits, such as the praise of joy, youth, and
spring, the abuse of marriage, the vilification of husbands,” and
the glorifying of love, were developed in the later art-poetry
with little alteration, but the fact that these songs were the
songs of women and that the art-poetry was written almost
exclusively by men led to some very important changes. One
of the most notable and far-reaching of these is in the relations
of the lovers. These dance songs express the feminine pas-
|
|
1 G. Paris, Origines de la Poésie Lyrique, p. 61.
*id. pp. 49, 50, and 58, 59.
*id. pp. 51, 55.
* id. p. 51. 5 “E si'l gilos vos bat defor,
Ben gardatz que no us bata’l cor.
Si us fai enueg, vos a lui atretal;
E ja ab vos no gazanh be per mal.”
Bernart de Ventadorn, MW, i. p. 19, vi. See also “Reis glorios,” Bartsch, Chres. IoI-103.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 3
n. Even the Alba and the Pastourelle originally represented
e from the woman's side." In the early narrative poems,
.-- *- * *--> -- ~~ *-- -. * ...~
- ** = <-----
top, it is the woman who loves, the man who is absent or
indifferent.” The Bele Idoine languishes, grows sick and pale,
and exclaims:
| “My love, it pleases me much to recall your beauty; you are so sweet
ahd frank, courteous and debonair, that never would you do any wrong
ainst me. You have made me love you so much you cannot displease
me nor can my heart withdraw from love of you. Alas, what shall I do?
am in such distress: My love, your great beauty, your good sense, your
|rowess have stricken me with a dart of love so that it wounds my heart;
if you do not cast it out, there is no one who can, for you have driven in
both the head and the shaft.” 8
Oriolans complains :
“My love, wicked and evil-speaking ones make you depart too much
from me : ” 4
And confesses:
“Asleep I dream that I embrace you.” "
But in the Court poetry proper, although the songs may occasion-
ally come from a lady, we find the female heart as a rule
unportrayed. Composed by men, these songs represent their
Afeelings alone. It is they who grieve and suffer, while the
object of their affection, proud and untouched, is heedless of
their prayers.
The poetry of the troubadours is frankly immoral, and owes
its growth to a corrupt condition of society. Marriage among
the higher classes was an affair of politics or business, never
of the heart, and it became a doctrine that love and matrimony
* G. Paris, Origines, chaps. iii., iv., v.
* Jeanroy, Origines, pp. 219–22 I.
* Le Romancero François, Paulin Paris, p. 13, “Amis, vostre biautés.”
*id. p. 42, “Amis, trop vos font eslongier.”
* id, p. 43, “En dormant, vos cuis embracier.”


4 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
were incompatible." Of course, in practice matters were hot
so bad, but there is no mistaking the spirit of the literature.
The licentious poems of Guillaume, Count of Poitiers, the
oldest of the troubadours, who, as his biographer says, “anet
lonc temps per le mon per enganar las domnas,” were but the
reflection of his licentious life, and both the biographies and
the poems of Bernart de Ventadorn, Guillaume de Cabestaing,
and many others leave no doubt as to the character of their
passion. The love songs of the troubadours are, for the most
part, addressed by court singers to married ladies of high º
extolling their beauties, professing most passionate love and
devotion, portraying the anguish caused by neglect and delay,
and begging in the plainest terms for the alleviation of thes
sufferings. The physical is dwelt upon, emphasized, and kep
in continued prominence, and only after the style had begun t
wither do we reach more elevated thoughts and purer ideals;
not the sanctified strength of youth, but the tardy repentancé
of old age.
The conditions just alluded to moulded the primitive elements
of the lyric poetry into certain shapes which were fixed by the
genius of individual singers. Others imitated and added, until
the mode of love became hardened into a set of formal principles
and these were reduced to a code, an art of love, which every
courtly lover must learn and practice. Of course, this was a
gradual development. At first, we have merely successive
troubadours imitating one another” until certain ideas became
conventionalized, ready made for all new-comers. Under the
influence of a group of noble ladies, these conventions grew
more fine-spun, and passing to the north of France, they were
taken up by Chrétien de Troies, the most original poet of his
age, as a basis for endless subtleties and psychological studies
* Jeanroy, Origines, p. 19. Langlois, Origines et sources du Roman de la Rose,
chap. i.
* Diez, Poesie der Troub. p. 21.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 5
of passion. At about the same time, in imitation of Ovid and
under the influence of Scholastic methods, the laws of love (2
were systematized and codified, and this code was set forth in
many books, the most important of which is the “Roman de la
Rose,” “ou l'art d'amour est tout enclose.”
III.
THE general traits of the Provençal love poetry have been
adequately set forth in the works of Raynouard, Diez, a
Fauriel, but for the purpose of the present investigation, it wiſ)
be necessary to enter into a more detailed consideration of
some points. At the beginning, we shall confine our attention,
almost exclusively to Bernart de Ventadorn.
From the popular lyrics this poetry retains, among othe
motives, the everlasting descriptions of spring, the gardens
the flowers, the birds, the joyousness of the season, sometimes t
in harmony with the happiness of the poet, oftener in contrast
with his grief." There is also a sense of the allaborting
importance of love, as the highest good.
\
“Truly is every man of mean life who has not his state in joy and who
does not direct his heart and his desire toward love.” — Berzzará de Vezz
tadorn, A/W. i. p. 37 : Bem es totz hom.
“A man without love-making can be worth no more than an ear of .
corn without the grain.”— Peire d’A/verm/he, id. & 94 : Om ses domizeźs.
“He is indeed dead who does not feel in his heart some sweet taste of
love : and what is the use of living without love, except to be an annoyance
to the people.”— Bermart de Ventadorn, MW. i. 36: Bem es mortz gui.
Such points are characteristic. In fact, there is hardly one
of these love-poems which does not exemplify them; but pass-
ing them by with this brief mention, our attention. must be
directed chiefly to the way in which love is represented, its
causes, its progress, and its results.
As has already been pointed out, this poetry is the expression
of the feelings of men; for although a lady sometimes sends
1 MW. vol. i., Bernart de Ventadorn, i., ii., vi., xxi., xxv, xxvii., etc.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 7
her chanson as a messenger to tame the pride of the most
valiant one," or to tell him how she spends the weary nights in
sighs and tears, wounded so that no physician can cure her,”
yet these are lost in the general current, and the poetry of the
troubadours portrays only the feelings of the lover, while the
loved one remains an adored object, without definite shape or
personality, one who receives or rejects the proffered homage,
and grants or withholds her love as she might grant or withhold
a flower or a jewel.
One of the first points to be noted is the personification of
Love, as a being of irresistible power against which it is use-
lass to contend though it seem to drive the victim to hopeless
†.
At first Love is invariably feminine:
“On account of Love I shall be in contention, for I can no longer keep
from it, since she has fixed my affection in a place from which I can never
hope for joy ; rather she would readily make me hang myself, for by myself
have neither heart nor desire : but I have no power at all that can defend
me against love.” — Bernarf de Ventadorm, M W. i. 38 : Aſ amor we'er.
“Believe not that I shall withdraw from joy 3 nor leave Love for the in-
jury I am accustomed to have from her, for I have not power thus to take
myself away ; for Love assails me so that she masters me and makes me
love and wish for whomsoever she pleases; and if I love one who ought
not to favor me, the force of Love makes me perform vassalage.” — B. de
V. M. W. 2, 44 : /a no crezaſz.
“If I do not sin, I must love her, for Love, who has me in her power,
wills it: against her will I do not wish to defend myself, nor contend against
her in anything : rather must I say that I consider myself rewarded since I
do all her will.”— Rambaut d’Orange, id. 68: Amar la dei.
Love binds the poet so that he cannot escape:
“And for all that I cannot depart an inch, so Love, which fetters me,
holds me captive.” — B. de V. Bartsch, Chres. 59, 15.
1 Bartsch, Chres. Prov, 71. ° id. 229.
* Joy means the exultation of the lover.
8 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“Even when I think to free myself, I cannot, for Love holds me.” * A.
de V. M.W. i. 37: Azus guant feu. - \
“And what else can I do since Love takes me 2 And the prison in
which she has put me, no key can open but pity, and of pity I find there none
at all.”— B. de V. M.W. i. 36: E gu'eu žues als. |
\
\
He will be his lady's vassal and servant, and do everything
for her honor and benefit : - * - - - -
-— -------------- ~ : * ~ - )
“I shall always desire her honor and her welfare, and I shall be to her
vassal, friend and servant.”— B. de V. M.W. i. 20 : Tos tem/3 vo/raž.
“Lady, your vassal am I, and I shall be ready in your service: your
vassal am I, sworn and engaged, and I shall be yours forever.” — B. de V.
;
2d. 20 : Domezza vost?'ozzz sazz. r
All that Love commands he will do :
“O Love, and whoever is true to you ! Do you find a greater fool than
I? You will that I shall be a lover and that I shall never find favor : what.
ever you command me to do, I shall do, for so it is fitting, but you do not well
always to make me suffer.” — B. de V, id. 37 : Amors e gue uses ~
But sometimes Love forgets the lover:
**----- - ----
“I alas ! whom Love forgets, for I am out of the right path, I should
have my portion of joy.”— B. de V, id., 21 : Zew las / cui Amors.
The poet even abuses the goddess:
“Love, I indeed pray to you to my injury, for I can have no benefit
from it; I will never flatter nor fear you, for then I should lose you ; truly
he is a fool who trusts you : for with your lovely mien you have drawn me
without challenge.”— B. de V. M. W. i. 30. Amors, āe us fºrec.
than all other good things:
“Of such sweet semblance is the ill, that my ill is worth more than any
other good thing ; since the ill seems so good to me, good will be the weal
after the pain.” — B. de V. 2d, 37 : Tan es ſo ma/s.
The cause of love is the beauty of the lady, together often
with her good sense, courtesy, and kindness: -
THE SYSTEMS OF COURTLY LOVE. 9
“I do not wonder that love of her holds me prisoner, for a more tender
body I do not believe is to be seen in the world ; beautiful is she, and white
and fresh and gay and soft, and in every way just as I wish and desire ; I
cannot speak ill of her, for there is none.”—B. da V, id. 20: Aom
772 eraviſh.
“Beautiful lady, your refined person and you
quered me, and your sweet 'glance and your
beautiful smiling mouth : and when I consi
equal in beauty: you are the most refined th
dr I do not see clearly with the eyes with a
Aſ W. 17 : Belha domažna.
|
“Never did any man bear su
is the burden when I considey
speech with which she swee
her fresh color; very del;
regard her, the more be
loved anything so mug















IO THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
}
“Never a word of it did I know until within me was the flame which
burns me more strongly than fire in a furnace.” — B. de V. d. 20. A nº 720
sau/, //not.
\
The effe love are at first suffering, sickness, *
an ivory, wherefore no other do I adore : 'if
# my good lady should love me, by the head di
\e does not kiss me in her room or under º
- Que //us eſz &/anca. f
I cannot find medicine for it.” –
: toſz Zo cors.
Me.” – B. de V: id. 38 : Be
|
R- B. de l’. 2d, 41. Quar
\ere did not come º
l
Kazº frac Żejta.











THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I I
\
Lovers cannot rest :
a All night I twist and toss from side to side of the bed.”—B. de V: id.
24: Tota muit me vir. *
“Alas ! my body neither sleeps, nor rests, nor can remain in one place,
nor can I endure it, if the pain is not alleviated.” — B. de V. 2d, 38 : Zas /
mo's cors no dorm.
* Alas ! how I die of desire, so that I cannot sleep morning or evening,
for at night, when I go to repose, the nightingale sings and cries: and I,
who used to sing, die with envy and heaviness when I see joy or happi-
fiss.”—B. de V, id. 29: Atlas/ cum matter.
“well do I know at night, when I undress for bed, that I shall not sleep
a wink; I lose sleep, for I take it from myself, lady, when I recall you.
For wherever one has his treasure, there does he wish to keep his heart.” —
B. de V, id. 19 : Ben sai la nuég.
In absence, her image is always present, and the heart or )
spirit is often sent to commune with her at a distance: /
“Lady, if my eyes see you not, you may truly know that my heart sees
you.” — B. de V: id. 19: Domna, si no us vezon.
“When sleeping under the coverlet, my spirit is there with her.” —
J. Rudel, Monacz, ž. 16: Et en dormezz.
“Those who think that I am here do not know how my spirit is private
and at home in her, even if the body is distant : know, the best messenger
that I have from her is my thought, which recalls to me her beautiful
appearance.” — B. de V. M. W. i. 22 : Sels gui cuion.
His passion plunges the lover into endless contradictions,
foolishness, and even madness:
“Little loves he that does not grow foolish.”— B. de V, id. 18. E. pauc
(Z7% (2.
“She who takes from me sense and knowledge.” – B. de V. 2d, 45 : Sil/
gue me tolc.
“My heart is so full of joy that all nature is turned about. The
frost seems to me white, red, and blue flowers. . . . In my heart I have so
much love, joy, and sweetness that winter seems to me blossoming and the
snow verdure.”—B. de V. 2d, 35 ; 7 and at 7/zon cor.
I 2 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
The force of the lady's influence extends even to others:
“Through her joy can the sick grow well, and through her anger the
healthy die, and the wise man grow foolish, and the handsome man º
his beauty, and the most courteous grow ill-bred, and the roughest becomé
courtly.” — G. de Poitiers, id. I : Per son joy. |
In the presence of the lady the lover trembles, grows pale,
and loses control over himself: i
“When I see her, it seems to me that in my eyes, my face, my colo:
all together, I tremble with fear, as does a leaf in the wind : I have npi
sense enough for a child, I am so overcome by love: and to a man who is
thus conquered might a lady have great charity.”— B. de. V. M. W. i. 36,
Quant ièze la vey.
Fear keeps him from showing his love and asking for hers:
“I wonder how I can endure that I should not show her my longing :
when I see my lady and gaze upon her, her beautiful eyes so well befit he
I scarcely restrain myself from rushing toward her: I should do so, if \t
were not for fear.” — B. de V. 2d, 12 : Merazil/; me cum Żuesc.
“I love my lady so much and hold her so dear, and I so fear her an
adore her, that I dare not pray to her for myself, nor say anything to her
nor demand of her anything.”— B. de V, id. 12 : Tant am mi dons.
“I am desirous of such a lady that I dare not tell her my longing, but
when I gaze upon her beauty I am entirely lost; and shall I ever have so
much boldness as to dare ask her to keep me for her own, when I dare not
ask her for pity ?”— ſºudel, Monaci, Ž. 18: De ta/ domżna.
To this fear of the loved one is added the fear of detection
by others. The lady is always addressed by an assumed name
(Bels Vezers, Tort n'Avetz, etc.). There is a continual abuse of
tale-bearers (lausengiers) and a strong desire for secrecy:
“O God how good would be the love of two-lovers, if it could be that
never should one of those envious ones know of their affection.” — B. de V.
MW. 7. 28. A 2 diezes /
“To the hard, cruel, tormenting tale-bearers, envious, low-bred, evil-
&
speakers, I shall recite a poem that I have thought.” — A'ambaut d’Orange,
2d, 75 : A /s durs, Crus, Cozens.



THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 3
“But if it should please her that she should do me some benefit, I should
swear to her, by herself and by my faith, that the benefit which she might
do me would not be disclosed by me.” — B. de V, id. 15 : Mas s'a Zieys
Alaafa,
|
There is a curious blending of gallantry and religion, which
to many would now seem blasphemous :
d * My lady Smiles upon me so sweetly that it seems to me the beautiful
smile of God: and her smile makes me more joyous than if four hundred
angels who wished to make me happy should smile on me.” – Ramó.
aſ' orange, id. 67 : Mì don's ri.
t often, indeed, the poet worships the object of his love:
“Hands joined, head bowed, I give and commend myself to you.”—
B. de V: id. 4.1 : Mas ſunſas, aā ca/, cle.
“Lady, towards your love I join hands and adore.” — B. de V. 7d. 25 :
Domezza vas vostre amor. -
There is constantly recurring expression of entire devotion
to the lady, perfect submission to her will, and absolute faith-
fulness :
“ Nothing else do I love or fear, nor shall anything ever be a grief to
|
me, if only it may please my lady.”—B. de V: id. 34: Re mais non am.
“Body and heart and knowledge and sense and force and power have I
but in this : the rein draws me so toward love that in no other direction do
I attend.”— B. de V, id. 36: Cors e core saffer.
“In her pleasure may it be, for I am at her mercy : if it please her to
kill me, I do not complain of it at all.” — B. de V. 7d. 15 : F77 son //azer.
“I never saw any lover who loved better without deception.” — B. de V.
2d, 13 : Anc no vi.
“Since we were both children, I have loved her, and I praise her, and
my love continues to double every day of the year ; and if she does not
show me love and favor before, when she shall be old I shall ask her to
have good will to me.” — B. de V, id. 13 ; Pus form amduz.
“And if one dies of well loving, I shall die of it, for in my heart I bear
her a love so fine and complete, that all the most loyal lovers are false in
comparison with me.” — B. de V, id. 19 : E s? home £er ben,
I 4 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“Good lady, I demand nothing more of you than that you should take
me for a servant, for I will serve you as one serves a good master, whâtever
be my reward : behold me at your command, frank, humble in heart, gay
and courteous. Bear or lion you are not that you should kill me if l give
myself to you.”— B. de V, id. 37: Bona domna. \
“And you are my first joy, and you will be the last, however long my
life shall endure.” — B. de V. 2d. 21. AE vos efg. |
Nothing is of value in comparison with this love : ſ
“All the gold in the world and all the silver, I would have given if . had
it, only that my lady might know how tenderly I love her.” — B. de tº id.
37: Tot Z'azer de/ ?/2072. |
\
“And it pleases me more to live despairing than that I should be lqved
by another.” — ſºamó. d’Orange, id. 68: E flatz me? mais.
This devotion ennobles him who pays it. The lover becomes
courteous, generous, brave, possessed of all virtues. If a war-
rior, he fights with greater courage; if a singer, his songs
surpass all others:
“My lady would fulfil all my desires if she only granted me one kiss;
for it I would make war on my neighbors, and I would be generous in giv-
ing, and I would make myself thanked and feared, and I would hold my
own and adorn it.”— Cerca/mozzá, Bartsch Chres. 49, Z.
for whoever serves nobly becomes purified in goodness.”—Peire d’A/vermſ,
2d, 79, 27.
“Singing can be of no worth if the song does not come from the head,
and song cannot move from the heart if fine, heartfelt love is not there;
for this reason is my singing the best; for in joy of love I have and keep
my mouth and eyes and heart and mind.”—B. de V. M.W. i. 33: Chamtar,
zlo Zot. i
“It is no wonder if I sing better than any other singer ; for my heart is
more drawn toward love and I am more completely at her command.”—
A. de V. 7d. 36: Moza es meraze/ha.
“Good love has one quality in common with good gold when it is º
The lady's influence benefits all who approach her:
“My Bels Vezers, by you God does such wonders that one does not see
you without becoming heir to the agreeable things you know how to say and
do.” — B. de V. 7d. 27 : Mos Bels Vegers, Žer vos.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 5
Notwithstanding all these fine thoughts, these poets do not
long merely for the ideal. They beg for pity, call the lady
proud and merciless, and waste their spirits in complaining: -
“My lady who does not deign to hear me, and holds my heart so that
I º attend elsewhere.” – Ramó. d’Orange, id. 68 : Ma domama gue no.
"Lady, what do you think to do to me who love you so P Why do you
make me suffer so and die of desire?”— B. de V. d. 22 : Dona, gue cuidatz.
}
|
* Mercy is truly lost, and I never knew it, for she who ought most to
have it, has none at all; where then shall I seek it?”—B. de V: id. 33:
Merces es Zerduda.
\
L ‘ Great trouble it is, and great annoyance always to cry for mercy ; but
Love, which is fastened within me, cannot cover or conceal herself.” – B.
de r 2d, 38 : Grazes ezzzzeźtz es.
This passion has its end in the full, though secret and unlaw-
ful, gratification of every desire, and this the poets beg for in
the most outspoken and unambiguous terms, which contrast
strangely with the artificial exaggeration of the other conceits:
| “She should not have toward me a cruel or savage heart, nor believe
against me evil counsel, for I am her liegeman, wherever I am, so that from
the best of me I pledge her my faith; with hands joined I come to her
will; and I will never move from her feet till she in mercy places me where
she undresses.”— B. de V. M. W. 1, 45 : /a, no me 'ada. See also Monaci's
&ude/, p. I4.
It will be observed that most of these citations are from
ernart de Ventadorn, he being the most prolific and influen-
tial of the early troubadours." Written before the crust of
1 He is also one of whom the Chansonniers Français have preserved a large
number of pieces. Romania, I893, p. 373. Id. p. 9o, we read :
“Il parait bien que tout ce mouvement littéraire se rattache principalement au
séjour de Bernart de Ventadour auprés de la reine Aliénor et à l'influence de celle-
ci et de sa fille Marie de Champagne. Il n'y a rien d’étonnant à ce que ces deux
dames aient joué un rôle aussi important dans la transplantation d'une poésie
où la femme domine avec une puissance si souveraine.”— Les Poésies Provençales
conservées par des Chansonniers Français, L. Gauchat.


I6 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
convention had hardened over the lyric art of Provenceſ his
songs in spite of the traditional elements they contain, are the
expression of natural passion. There is nothing in them that
a lover might not feel. (The power of love ruling over life, the
pains, the complaints, the dreams of his lady's beauty, the fear
of her displeasure, the submission to her will, the magnifying
of her worth, the ennobling influence of her personality, -
these ideas have an enduring basis in the human heart; The
exaltation of his lady and the humiliation of himself wºuld
naturally be exaggerated by the circumstance that he, a lºor
singer, was addressing Eleanore, Countess of Aquitaine and
Queen first of France and then of England.” But from º
time forward, the poems of the troubadours grew more àrti-
ficial. Always imitating the songs of his predecessors, each
lover was obliged to pass through the same emotional experi-
ence. Good form forbade the omission of a single element.
The same ideas recur in the same order. All the songs grow
alike. Each new one is but a wearisome repetition of those
which have gone before, and the originality of the singers
is spent upon the invention of increasingly exaggerated con-
ceits to express the intensity of their passion and the complete.
ness of their devotion—an intensity and a completeness which
can hardly be thought to hold the mirror up to nature.
This exaggeration makes its first notable appearance in th
songs of Peire Rogier. The refinement of manners, the respe
1 “Egli fu dei primi, il terzo in ordine di tempo, dei trovatori de' quali ci
rimasto memoria: trovava dunque prima che la maniera consuetudinaria indurasse
la sua crosta sopra ed intorno a quella leggera arte Occitanica. Perció raccoglie
più netto e rispecchia più immediato l'ideale della poesia trovadorica.” — Carducci,
Un Poeta d’Amore del Secolo XII : Nuova Antologia, Serie 2 day vol. 25.
* “Il fallait qu’entre l'object de ces amours et le poète il y efit toute la dis-
tance qui separait un pauvre vassal de la femme ou de la parente d’un seigneur,
pour que la poésie amoureuse prit tout d'abord ce caractère réservé et respectueux
qu’elle a conservé depuis, même en des cas ou la cause qui avait commandé ce
respect et cette réserve n'existait plus.” – P. Meyer, Romania, 1876, p. 261. Vide
also M.W. i. 136, 149, 291.



THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 17
|
paid t woman, the theory of the ennobling power of love, and
the expansion of this love into a science and a code, developed
under the influence of a group of high-born ladies," quoted by
André le Chapelain as judges in the Courts of Love, among
whom the most influential seem to have been Eleanore of
Poitiers, her daughter Marie de Champagne, and Ermengarde
de Narbonne. Eleanore was the patroness of Bernart de
Ventadorn and the inspiration of his songs; Marie moulded the
spirit of Chrétien de Troies, and at the court of Ermengarde,
Peire Rogier spent the most active years of his literary career.
This high-minded countess, who presided over her own courts
of º and led her army to battle, willingly received the hom-
age of the poet, but kept him at a distance and never allowed
himſto overstep the limits of propriety.” His songs, therefore,
breathe respectful devotion, rather than earnest passion, and
his profession of love, based upon earlier models and following
the development already marked out, becomes artificial and
intellectual, a play of fancy, an exaggeration of dimly felt senti-
ments, an exercise of courtly compliment.
A few quotations will illustrate the changed tone of these
poems. In praise of her beauty and virtue, we have the
ºwing:
* No man who ever saw her will say that one could choose another such
beautiful lady : no one sees her who does not wonder, for her beauty is so
resplendent that, to him who looks upon her with a just eye, night becomes
clear, fine day.” — M.W. i. z z9 and Appel 60. Ja no dira.
ſ “I can never at any time fail in good verse while I sing of my lady:
how could I say anything ill? For no one is so ill-bred that, though rough,
he does not become courteous if he speaks with her a word or two. Where-
fore know it is indeed true that whatever I say well I have entirely from
her.” — M. W. 123, A. 54: Ges moſt £14ésc.
Distance cannot separate him from her :
*-
1 Gaston Paris, Lit. Fr. au M. A. p. 96.
2 Diez, Leben und Werke, pp. 79, 80.
I 8 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
|
“Afar I am truly near her, for no one can separate lovers, if º hearts
desire to feel together : All that is brought me from her is good ; when
the wind blows thence, I love it more than when another receives me close
to her.” — M.W. 119, A. 59 : De Zuemh li suy.
© e |
He sends his heart and mind to her : {
-** *-------
_--- -- ~~~~
“But if I am indeed far from you, I have sent you my heart and
mind ; so that I am not where thou seest me ; and the good I have is all
from her.” — M.W. 124 : Mažs s? be m'estazz." \
He suffers, sighs, wavers between joy and grief, but clings to
his pain as preferable to other happiness: \
“ Grievous is it to me to suffer the great ills and the pains which I have
from her, from whom my heart cannot return to me : yet other love does
not please me, nor is any joy sweet or good to me, nor do I wish it should
be promised to me; for if I should have won a hundred, I should prize
nothing at all but what I have from her.” — MW. Z24, A. 56. Ǻus
772'es lo mea/s. ſ | º
But, 'w |
“Little loves he who does not suffer the pride, the ill, the wrong and the
injury.”— M.W. 122, A. 51, Pauc fºrem d’Amor.
In the end the joy conquers the grief : |
“Sorrow and joy have so divided me between them that sorrow takes
from me appetite and sleep, and joy makes me laugh and rejoice ; but the
Sorrow passes away in consolation and the joy remains, whence I am joyous
on account of a love that I love and wish for.” — M.W. 118, A. 58. AEzzfr’āra
e joy.
“Little heed I the ill, for the good conquers it, since I rejoice more tha
I sorrow.” — M.W. 119, A. 59, Pauc fºres lo mal.
Merely to see his lady makes him happy :
“From my lady I have laughter and smiles, and I am foolish if I demand
more of her ; rather should I have great joy now. God save me ! have I
not benefit when I only see her? from seeing I am happy and joyous.”—
MW. I 17, A, 45. De midons az.
* Appel rejects this stanza.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I9
º is not to be found in his poems the passionate begging
for pity and relief. In the songs that have been preserved, he
mentions the end of his desires once," in the conventional form,
but his doctrine is that the faithful lover ought to suffer in
peace till his lady of her own free will relieves him :
“For Love wishes such lovers as can suffer in peace, pride and great
haughtiness. . . . For this reason I am dumb, and have of Love as much
as I wish : for if she treats me very ill, when another complains I remain
silent. Although my pain is great, I suffer till she alleviates it with some
delight whatsoever she wishes.”—MW. 120, A. 39: Qu’Amors uo/,
|
Thus he has never spoken of his love, but rejoices simply to
have the privilege of loving her, even though she does not
know', it :
“Never did I or any other tell her this, nor did she know my desire;
but scretly do I love her as much, by the faith I owe her, as if she had
made] me her lover ; and it does not trouble me that I should be one of six
that love her. Then shall I love that which I have not? Yes, for when it
is not a reality, I have from it just as much joy and reward and I am just as
happy and joyous as though it were true.”
“Of all lovers I am the most faithful, for I neither speak nor send any-
thing to my lady, nor demand of her gentle act nor gracious look. Where-
ever I am, I am her lover, and I pay her court, all covertly and secretly
and quietly. So she does not know the good she does me, nor how I have
thrºugh her joy and reward. It is not fitting that the envious should know
that I am her lover in secret.”—MW. 7, 117, 118, 4.45, 46 : Azec zeae m2
auth-e.
|
'What a distance from the spirit of Bernart de Ventadorn
| In conformity with this attitude, the mistress is elevated
into a position of absolute and unapproachable preeminence.
A good lover should believe no evil of her even if he sees it
with his own eyes:
“A good lover ought not to believe a witness or even what his eyes see
of any failing whereby he knows that his lady betrays him : what she says
1 MW. i. I2O—iii.
2O THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
she has done elsewhere he should believe, although she does not swear it,
and what he has seen, he must dismiss from his mind.”— MW. I 19 || A. 38.
Bos drutz nom dezz. |
For her sake he prefers dishonor, rather than honor:
“I prefer thirty dishonors to an honor if it takes her from me : for I am
a man of such nature that I wish no honor but her benefit.”— MPV. Z.20,
\
A. 39 : Mažs utte/h trenta. }
| His devotion and his submission to her will are absolute:
“For her love I live and her love has released me from prison ; and her
love has put upon me a rein so that I move not toward other ladies, since
she holds me back ; and through her love I have all my heart joyous); and
I leave sorrow, and it pleases me when I can serve, and the long desires for
her are of more worth than if I had all my will of another. I send the
song and wish that it should be presented to my Tort n'Avetz, if itſ please
her that she deign to hear it, for all the world ought to obey her, since
more than any other lady, she seeks to maintain high worthiness.”—l-MG.
277. 1056, A. 50 : Per s'amor uilt.
)
“Of nothing else but her do I think or meditate or have desire or long-
ing, how I can serve her and do all that is good for her and that pîeases
her ; for I do not believe that I was meant for anything else but to do # her
what pleases her : I know well that all I do for love of her is honon and
benefit to me.” — M.W. 123 ; A. 55 : De rem als mom Žems.
“For love of her I live, and if I should die so that it should be said
that I died loving, Love would have done me so great honor, that I know
and believe she never did greater to any lover. You judge, lady, land
impose obligations ; for if I fear and suffer and even die for you, it is joy
and reward to me : from you I find all ills benefit, damage advantage, folly
sense, wrongs justice and right.”— MW. ZZ8, A. 46. Per s'amor wāz; .
In such verses we have traveled far from the passionate
longings of Bernart de Ventadorn toward that ideal of courtly
love which is first fully set forth in Chrétien's Roman de la
Charrette," a work which owes its spirit and motive to Marie de
Champagne. She developed and consummated the progress
already begun, and at her court the code of chivalrous courtship
* G. Paris, Romania, xviii.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 2 I
was fixed and formulated. It can hardly be doubted that the
songs of Peire Rogier, composed under the inspiration of
Ermengarde de Narbonne, were a most important influence in
refining this conception, in subtilizing the conceits in which
it was expressed, and, above all, in exalting the lady who was
the object of this passion to a position of absolute preeminence
and power over the lover, so that he must obey her least desire
and prefer to bear every evil rather than displease her."
l NOTE.
The idea of the complete submission of the lover to his lady,
and his preference, for her sake, of dishonor above honor,” is so
strikihg that the probability in favor of its being borrowed by
one poet from another is stronger than that in favor of its
being simultaneously invented by both. Peire Rogier is the
only one of the early troubadours who sings in this strain, and
noné, who wrote after the year 1170 could have influenced
Chrétien's work. It is rather Chrétien who would have influ-
enced them. Besides the adoption of such prominent ideas,
another indication that Chrétien was influenced by Peire Rogier
is ſº by a trick of style common to the two. Among
the verses of the Provençal poet we have the following:
Dompn'ay. — non ay. —ia'n Suyieu fis —
no suy, quar no m'en puesciauzir. —
tot m'en iauzirai, quan que tir. —
oc, ben leu, mas Sempre n'a tort. —
tort n'a º qu’ai dig boca, tu mens
e dis contra midons erguelh. —
A. 58, MW. i. 118.
Cosselh n'ai. —qual 2–uuelh m'en partir, –
no far ! —si faray — quers ton dan. —
1 See note at the end of this chapter.
* See p. 20, and pp. 4I, 42.
22 THE SVSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
que'n puesc als? – uols t'en ben iauzir? –
oc mout. – crei mi. – era diguatz. –
sias humils, francs, larcx e pros. –
si'm fai mal? – sufr'en patz. – suy pres? –
tu oc, s'amar uols ; mas si'm cres,
aissi't poiras iauzir de liey.
A. 57 , MVV. i. I24.1
The subjoined parallel passages are chosen from Chrétien's
Cligès: s
1. 665 : Ne sai? Si faz, jel cuit savoir,
Cest mal me feit Amors avoir.
Comant? Set donc Armors mal feire?. . .
1. 679 : Que ferai donc ? Retreirai m'an?
Je cuit que je feroie san,
Meis ne sai, comant je le face. . . .
l. 69I : Et si te plains? Don n'as tu tort?
Nenil, qu'il m'a navré si fort
Que jusqu'au cuer m'a son dart treit,
N'ancor ne l'a a lui retreit.
Comant le t'a donc treit el cors,
Quant la plaie ne pert de fors?
Ce me diras, savoir le vuel !
Par ou le t'a il treit? Par l'uel.
Par l'uel? Si ne le t'a Crevé ?
An l'uel ne m'a il rien grevé,
Meis el cuer me grieve formant. . . .
l. 997 : Comant? Proierai le je donques ?
Nenil. Por quoi? Ce n'avint onques
Que fame tel forfeit feist. . . .
1. I392: Que dirai je, feit ele, primes?
Apelerai le par son non
Ou par ami? Ami? Je non.
Comant donc ? Parson non l'apele !
Deus ! ja'st la parole si bele
Et tant douce d'ami nomer.
Se je l'osoie ami clamer –
1 See also Appel p. 49: Si ioy non ai : and 52 : Membra'm aras. For a song
in the same manner by G. de Saint-Didier, vide MW. ii. 51.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 23
Osoief Qui le me chalonge?
Ce que je cuit dire mançonge.
Mançonge 2 Ne Sai que sera,
Meisse je mant, moi pesera.
|
That the form quoted from Peire Rogier is the earlier appears
from its greater simplicity, Chrétien employing this device for
most elaborate subtleties. Furthermore it seems to have been
invented for its effectiveness when presented before an audience
by a singer, as is indicated, in the passages cited, by the
Choppy movement of the verses, with the flowing cadence at
the end. The performer could make the answers back and
forth dramatically effective, and the conclusion would seem
clearly to settle the dispute." Chrétien, on the contrary, trans-
forms this lyric character for the purpose of representing with
greater vividness a conflict of thoughts. It is moreover signifi-
cant that this form does not occur in Erec, but makes its first
appearance in Cliges, the poem which, as we shall find,” opens
the series of those works in which Chrétien elaborates the doc-
trines of courtly love. There seems therefore reason to suppose
that the court poet of Marie de Champagne owes several charac-
teristics to the favorite singer of Ermengarde de Narbonne,
that he indeed borrowed from him one often-used trick of style,
together with the doctrine, set forth so emphatically in La
Charrette, that in every point, and to the sacrifice of his most;
precious hopes, the knight must yield to his lady's slightest
whim.
| 1 The lyrics of the troubadours were meant to be sung. In Chrétien's day
tomanº, were read, see Hist. Lit. t. xxx. 17 : A. de Marueil sang well, we are
told, and also read romances well. MW, i. I48.
* vide p. 28.
IV.
SPRINGING forth in the earliest troubadours, expanding with
power in the songs of Bernart de Ventadorn, becoming more
delicate, exaggerated, and fanciful in Peire Rogier, the senti-
ments of courtly love attain their full growth in the epics of
Chrétien de Troies. He is the preeminent poetic representa-
tive of chivalry. Love and adventure are his themes, and his
imagination adorned the court of Arthur with the brilliance Of
achievement and refinement of manners which made the caval-
iers of the Round Table the ideal models of mediaeval knight-
hood.
Chrétien is, first and foremost, a love-poet. He seems to
have been the earliest singer of the north to imitate the Proven-
çal lyrics and to adopt their theories." He sings that

“All good things come from love.””
that
“No one, if he is not courteous and wise, can learn anything of love
\º a
and
“As long as I live, I wish to be in your keeping, without ever parting,
for in the world there is not your peer, and all good things are entirely t
you. ?? 4
His translations of Ovid and his romance of Tristan, all
unhappily lost, show by their subjects a similar tendency, an
Erec, Cligês, ſle Comte de la Charrette, and Yvain find their mos
important motives in the same all-absorbing passion.
In comparison with the later poems, the spirit and manners
;
t
1 G. Paris, Lit. Fr. du M. A. § 125.
* Wackernagel, Altfranz. Lieder, Basel, 1846, p. 16.
*id. p. I 5. - *id. p. 17.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 25
in his romance of Erec are rough, often brutal. The tale nar-
rates how Erec wins Enide in a tournament and then, lost in
love for her, neglects to achieve fresh knightly honors, until he
becomes an object of general scorn. One morning he sees his
bride weeping over his shame and, on learning the cause of
her tears, he falls into a jealous rage and takes her forth with
him in quest of adventures, commanding her never to turn or
speak to him, no matter what may happen. As each new
danger approaches, she disobeys his command, until, convinced
of the faithfulness of her love, he becomes reconciled to her
and joyfully leads her back to his kingdom.” The mere outline
of the story shows how far it is removed from the courtly ideal
that we have found in the early troubadours.
Th modern reader is especially struck by the prominence
given to the physical aspects of passion,” a prominence found
very generally in mediaeval poetry. Of itself this would hardly
indicate lack of courtly polish, for we have observed the same
raitº in the lyrics of the troubadours, and even in the later
fromances it does not disappear. But the bluntness of speech
in Erec implies a primitive roughness of manners which is
ingompatible with the courtesy held in such high respect by the
knights and ladies who amused themselves with mimic Courts
of Love.8
!
'i The reader of Tennyson will recognize the story of Geraint and Enid.
* See particularly Foerster's Erec, p. 77.
* Note, for example, the absence of reticence and modesty in Enide's words,
! 3398–9. Guinevere in Za Charrette expresses herself in the same way, but she
is speaking to herself, not to a lover. It is interesting to compare this animalism
with that in a widely known contemporary work, Huon de Bordeaux ; for, although
in the Chansom de Geste, the love story plays but a small part, in comparison with
its importance in Chrétien's romance, there is enough of it to show the contrast
between the wild impulses portrayed by unsophisticated poets and the refined
feelings of the courtly school. See Huon de Bordeaux (F. Guessard & C. Grand-
maison, Anciens Poètes de la France), p. 170, the reason given by Esclarimond for
fainting : p. 202, Huon's violent passion. Such a comparison reveals to us the
reason that the poets prized courtesy so highly, particularly in relation to love.
26 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
-ºf-
In direct contrast to the courtly conceptions is the position
here assigned to woman. We have seen her exalted by Ber-
nart de Ventadorn and Peire Rogier to a supremacy which gives
her absolute authority over her lover. Here, on the contrary,
it is Erec who has the authority, and Enide who is obliged to
obey.” She is given to him by her father, and although he loves
her greatly, in his own way, as is shown by his acts, by his
words, and by his provision for her welfare in case of his own
death, yet he violently threatens her, tells her directly that she
lies (2537), and compels her to submit to the severest hard-
ships on account of his jealous whim. Meanwhile she is
perfectly docile and patient. In the same spirit, the Count
Galoain (p. 120) plunges bluntly into his proposition to make
her his amie and dame de tote ºria terre; and, on her refu t l, he
becomes brutally enraged, threatening to slay Erec bef her
eyes and to take her by force. Further on (p. 171) the Count
of Limors, believing Erec dead, marries her against her will,
Consoling her, not only by proiere, but also by menacier, usilin;
her that grief will not revive a dead husband, and holding º
wealth and rank as an inducement. When she still persists in:
her disconsolate sorrow, he grows angry and strikes her in the,
face (4824).” But what most vividly exhibits the man’s supéri-,
ority in position is the scene of reconciliation (p. 176). After
all Enide's sufferings from Erec's jealousy, one would expect that
it must be he who would beg forgiveness of her. On the con-
trary, he magnanimously grants her his pardon. “I see that
you love me perfectly, and I shall henceforth be wholly at your
command, as I was before, and if you have said anything agains.
me wrongly, I pardon you.” Enide accepts this gracious
forgiveness with unalloyed joy.
* Erec is a prince : Enide the daughter of a poor knight. In the relation of the
troubadours to their ladies, this was reversed. So in the case of Guinevere and
Launcelot, which furnished the general model.
* This is parallel to the action of the gilos in the Provençal poetry. — B. de V.
MW. i. 19, vi. ; but these singers treat it as an abomination.


THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 27
Courtly love was declared incompatible with marriage: the
subject of Erec is conjugal love, and the poet indicates an ideal
of the inexhaustible affection of a wife and of the unity of the
married state, rare in his age. " He loves me much and I him
more” (6306), says Enide, “so that love could not be greater”:
and when (p. 168) the Count of Limors inquires whether she
is Erec's wife or his amie, she answers: “Both, sir.” Nothing
could be further from the code of André le Chapelain.
But although in spirit this poem is thus removed from the
ideals of the troubadours, it contains many traces of chivalrous
sentiment. The description of Enide's beauty is in the exag-
gerated courtly style (p. 16): Nature had put all her desire
upon the work and was surprised that once only she could make
so beautiful a creature, for she could not do it again. Her hair
was golden, shining over a forehead whiter than the fleur-de-lis,
her cheeks were fresh and red, her eyes two stars. God never
knew how to make more perfectly nose, mouth, and eyes. Her
wisdom, moreover, was greater than her beauty.
Furthermore, each knight has an amie whose honor he is
bound to maintain. The custom of the kiss given by him who
has captured the white stag to the most beautiful lady of the
court, would, as Gauvain tells Arthur, cause endless disputes
and fighting, for (295) “ each would by chivalry maintain that
his mistress is the most beautiful in the hall.” And the adven-
ture in which Erec won his bride is of like nature. A falcon
is offered as a prize to the most beautiful lady, and to prove,
each that his amie surpasses all others, the knights contend in
a tournament." It needs to be noted further merely that the
good qualities of Erec are (p. 168) biautea, proesce, savoirs, and
/argesce, and that his love for Enide gives him boldness enough
to conquer any living man (p. 209).
Chrétien's next poem, Cligès, offers a most striking contrast
to Erec in almost every respect, for in it we find fully devel-
1 André le Chapelain borrows this incident.
28 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE,
oped nearly all the subtleties with which mediaeval poets decked
out their theories of love. Such a sudden change of tone must
be largely ascribed to external influences. Doubtless Chrétien
had in the interval become acquainted with the love-songs of
the troubadours, or at least with those of Bernart de Ventadorn
and Peire Rogier. But he does not merely reproduce their
thoughts. With an originality which left its trace on all suc-
ceeding amourists, he develops tenuous ideas with amazing
delicacy and subtlety, theorizes over causes, as one trained in
the Scholastic Logic, and studies profoundly the impulses and
movements of the human heart.
In Cliges we have two narratives : the first of Alexander, the
second of his son Cligès. Alexander, son of the Emperor of
Constantinople, leaves his native city vowing that he will receive
knighthood only from the hands of the renowned Arthur. In
Britain, he loves the Queen's maid, Soredamors, and after
accomplishing astounding feats of valor, he wins her hand.
The fruit of their union, Cligès, wrongfully kept from his
heritage by his uncle, accompanies that monarch when he
visits Germany to demand the Emperor's daughter Fenice in
marriage. This maiden and Cligès love at first sight, but she
is obliged to espouse the uncle. By means of a magic potion
compounded by her old nurse, however, she deceives him and
remains virgin. During an absence of Cligès in Great Britain,
their love becomes so intense that, upon his return, a declara-
tion ensues and Cligès, by the aid of a second magic potion of
the old nurse, like that used by Juliet, gives Fenice the appear.
ance of death, while he carries her away. After some further
adventures, he gains his throne and lives afterwards happily
with his beautiful wife. In both stories, the space is about
evenly divided between accounts of fighting and of love-making,
but love furnishes the motive of the plots, and upon it the poet
dwells with special pleasure.
The manners in C/igès are manifestly more refined than in
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 29
Erec. Ladies are always treated with respect. Guinevere has
rights even as against the king (1350). There is no such
violence as we find in the earlier poem. Even when Fenice is
captured, she is not maltreated. Above all, the lovers have a
fine delicacy of sentiment. Erec had no scruples about
demanding the hand of Enide from her father, but when
Arthur promises Alexander anything that he may demand
excepting his crown and queen (222O), that hero does not
dare ask for Soredamors in fear of displeasing her, for he
would rather suffer without her than possess her against her
will. This conception, which belongs to the equipment of
Peire Rogier, undoubtedly owes its origin to the noble ladies
whom these poets designed to please.
There is here presented, perhaps for the first time, a system
or philosophy of love. Part of this is derived from the trouba-
dours, part from other sources, but much seems to have been
contributed by Chrétien himself. There is no reference to
others as authority in matters of love-lore. Fenice tells her
old nurse (31.45) that she would rather be torn in pieces than
remind the world of Iseut and Tristan, a shame to recount.
She could not live the life of Iseut, whose body was given to
two, but her heart all to one: for her part, whoever has her
heart shall also have her body. And when Cligès suggests
flight to Britain (5300), saying that she would be received
there as gladly as Helen when she was brought to Troy, she
refuses to go, because in all the world it would be spoken of
them as of Iseut the blonde and Tristan. These passages show
how little thought there is of fashioning a system by reference
to earlier works. This reference to authorities is of later
origin. Yet Chrétien, perhaps because of his acquaintance
with Ovid, speaks as though there were in existence a body of
doctrine and a code of laws to regulate love affairs. Such an
idea had not yet occurred to the troubadours. It is true that
Rambaut D’Orange writes:
3O THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“I know well enough how to speak of love for the benefit of other
lovers, but for my own good, which is dearer to me, I know not how to
speak or tell anything at all.” "
The half-humorous poem thus introduced is, however, of such
a character as to show that, although there was a conventional
spirit for lovers to cultivate, there was as yet no distinct set of
formal principles, no Art of Love. But in Cligès it is other-
wise. Of Thessala, Fenice's old nurse, it is said (3095):
“She was very wise in love and all its usage.”
And later the poet addresses a question to those learned in
love (3865):
“You who are wise in love, who maintain faithfully the customs and the
usage of his court, and never broke his law, whatever might befall you.”
Here already are the conceptions of the Court of the God of
Love, the attendance of the faithful, and the observance of law.
In setting forth the system of Chrétien, the same plan will
be followed as in the previous analysis.
Love is a resistless God. It is to be noted that Love is
almost always represented as an external power ruling the
individual. It is not the lover who acts, but Love.
1. 456: Love makes Soredamors suffer and avenges the pride that she
manifested toward him. He has wounded her in the heart with his dart
(461). She pales and quivers, and loves in spite of herself.
l. 528 : She thinks to defend herself against love but cannot.
1. 925 : There is no defence against love.
1. 301 I : “She whom love has in his power.”
1. 4430 : “Love who gives me all to him.”
Love is a master and a teacher :
1. 667 : Alexander finds him cruel, a master who heavily afflicts his vas-
sals. Shall he withdraw He knows not how. If love chastises him to
teach him, ought he to disdain his master (682) 2 No, he ought to cherish
the pain, for great good can come of it.
1 MW. i. 71, vi.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 3 I
1. 947 : Soredamors — Love will teach her and she will serve perfectly.
“Love would wish, and I wish, that I should be wise and without pride and
gentle and lovely to all for the sake of a single lovable one.”
1. 865 : “Let Love do with me as he will, for so he ought with his own.”
Alexander would rather keep his ills and never be healed, if the health
come not from the same source whence came the sickness.
1. 3879 : “As a servant ought to fear his lord when he commands, so
ought all true lovers to fear Love, for they make him their lord and master.”
l. 3889 : They owe him reverence, fear, and honor.
The cause of love is beauty. Chrétien is prodigal of exag-
gerated descriptions of both masculine and feminine beauty.
The type he prefers is the blond.
Alexander is tormented by Soredamors' beauty (622), and it
is his beauty which she delights to see and would increase if
she could (90I).
l. 281 5: The cause of love is beauty.
1. 2730 : Fénice is without equal in beauty, a miracle the like of which
nature could never again make. The poet will not describe arms, body,
head or hands, because if he had a thousand years to live and each day
doubled his sense, he must lose his time before he could say the truth.
1. 2760 : Cligès is more beautiful than Narcissus, with hair of fine gold,
face a fresh rose, nose and mouth beautiful, large of stature. Fenice thinks
him more beautiful than herself (44.16).
This beauty enters the eyes and strikes to the heart. The
slight traces of this doctrine found in earlier writers were
developed by Chrétien with such subtlety, that it became an
essential element of the theory of love. All the later poets
employ it, and Huon de Meri alludes to it as the property of
Chrétien."
In Cligès it is completely set forth :
l. 592 : Lovers delight to feed their eyes on each other.
1. 924 : Soredamors’ eyes wish never to leave Alexander.
l. 465 : Soredamors cannot refrain from looking at Alexander. Now it
pleases her, now annoys her ; now she wishes it, now she revolts (472).
* Huon de Meri, Tournoiment de l’Antecrit, p. 77. (Col. de poètes de Cham.)
32 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE,
She accuses her eyes of treason (474). “By you has my heart come to hate
me, which used to be faithful to me”(476). What she sees troubles her.
Can she not turn her eyes away P It would be vain to try, she cannot rule
her eyes (484). By turning her eyes away she could guard herself from
Love, who wishes to rule her (486). But one cannot love with the eyes
(500). In what, then, have her eyes wronged her? Nothing. She herself
is to blame; her eyes regard only that which pleases her heart (507).
l. 693 : The dart of Love has penetrated to Alexander's heart. But
how, since no wound appears on the outside P Through the eyes (700).
The dart passes through the eye without injuring it or causing pain, enters
the heart and there wounds grievously. How 2 The eye is the mirror of
the heart, and the heart is like a lantern that shines while the light burns.
As the sun pierces glass without breaking it, so can the heart be reached
through the eyes.
What is this dart (770) * The pennon is made of the golden tresses he
saw. The rest is of transparent forehead, eyes, nose, rose and lily cheeks,
laughing mouth, teeth, chin, ears, ivory throat, bosom whiter than snow.
The remainder of the dart he has not seen, as it is sheathed in the maiden's
dress.
In Cligēs the parts of the body are often treated as though
they were separate personalities:
1. 754 : Alexander thought he had three friends, his heart and his two
eyes; but they have become his enemies. His servants do their owr will,
not his. Thus Love, by corrupting his attendants, overcomes him.
1. 28.09: Fenice and Cligès exchange eyes at first meeting. His eyes he
gives her and takes hers. She has given him eyes and heart (2817) and
he has given his. But no one can give his heart. This question is dis-
cussed physiologically and psychologically with astonishing minuteness.
The sending of the heart to the loved one is developed with
great subtlety:
1. 4457 : Cligès has robbed Fenice of her heart, which goes away and
will not remain with her, it hates her so much (4490). Her heart will
never leave his, but will follow it in secret. His is lord, hers servant :
therefore it must do its lord’s will.
1. 5180 : Cligès' body is in Britain without the heart, like the bark of a
tree without the pulp. His heart has returned to Greece. Fenice had
never traveled, but her heart had gone to Britain with Cligès.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 33
The queen sees in the love of Alexander and Soredamors that of two
hearts they have made one (2296).
The effects of love are at first sickness, which is manifested
by pallor of countenance:
1. 870 : Love a sickness. 1. 3084 : “I am sweetly sick.”
1. 54I : The queen sees Alexander and Soredamors grow pale, but thinks
it sea-sickness.
1. 2996 : Fenice loses color. Thessala perceives it and asks what mal-
ady she has (30 II).
l. 592 : Lovers like to feed their eyes upon each other because it pleases
them, but it really intensifies their pain.
1. 637 : Alexander calls his love a sickness of which he can never be
cured by any medicine, herb or root. But he lies, he could be entirely cured
if he dared speak to the physician.
l. 3 IOI : All other sicknesses are bitter : Love turns bitterness to sweet-
IleSS.
Their passion robs lovers of their repose and fills them with
contradictory impulses and thoughts:
1. 62 I : No repose at night,
1. 877 : Soredamors does not sleep or rest at night. Weeps and com-
plains. Love has put in her heart a conflict and a torment. See also
472–3.
l. 510 : The desire of Soredamors' heart gives her pain. “Am I mad,”
she asks, “to desire what wounds me?” So she struggles, one moment
loves, the next hates.
1. 897 “ Fool,” she says, “what is it to me if he is sage, courteous, valor-
ous, beautiful ?” "
1. 933: Love has so carried her away that she is foolish and confused.
1. 626 : Alexander calls himself a fool for loving and not daring to speak.
He is a fool who feels his sickness and does not seek health (637).
l. 3070 : “My pain is different from all others. It pleases and hurts;
my sorrow is my desire. I am sweetly ill” (3084). f
In fact, lovers become fools : indeed, Love makes the wise foolish
(1643).
In absence, Love pictures the loved one (618). The lover cannot
repose, so much he delights to recall her beauty.
Lovers fear to confess their passion :
34 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
1, 575 : Neither Alexander nor Soredamors dares speak.
1, 2280 : It is the Queen who discovers their love and tells them they do
wrong to kill one another with concealment, thus making a homicide of Love
(2300).
1. 3827 : Neither Cligès nor Fenice dares speak, though it is a good oppor-
tunity. They speak with their eyes, though their tongues are cowards
(3835). Fenice dares not openly tell even Thessala, her nurse (3050).
This fear springs partly from bashfulness, partly from dread
of refusal :
I. 602 : From shame they conceal their love. It burns like coals under
the ashes. But they hide their anguish by false semblant. At night, how-
ever, the plaint is great.
1. 995 : Soredamors would like to tell Alexander, but she feels shame.
She will hint.
1. 628 : Alexander dares not speak, fearing matters would grow worse;
he conceals his pain, and dares not call for aid.
l. 3827 : Both Fenice and Cligès fear refusal.
1. 2222 : Alexander fears to displease Soredamors : he would rather
suffer than have her against her will (2227–8).
This fear leads to trembling, confusion, and loss of sense,
when the lovers are in each other's presence. This becomes
one of the most artificial conventions of mediaeval gallantry.
1. I 58o : Alexander is pleased when Soredamors is so near that he could
touch her, but he dares only look. All his sense fails when she comes so
near, and she is so confused that she has no control of her eyes, but casts
them to earth (1587).
1. 3835 : Though Fenice and Cligès speak with their eyes, their tongues
are cowards. This is to be expected of a maid, but why in him who is
bold for her sake everywhere? Whence this fear of a mere maid 2 Mat-
ters are upside down. The hare chases the dogs, the stag the lion, etc.
(3859). “But the will comes to me that I should tell the reason why it
happens to fine lovers that sense and hardihood fail them to say what they
think, when they have opportunity and place and time.” Was there ever a
lover who did not tremble and pale before the loved one 2 Whoever does
not so pale and tremble and lose sense and memory, seeks like a thief. For
a servant who fears not his lord does not hold him in honor. A servant
ought to tremble with fear when his lord commands, and whoever com-
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. - 35
mends himself to Love makes him his lord and master, and ought to have
much reverence, to fear and honor him much if he wishes to be of his
court. “ Love without dread and without fear is fire without flame and
without heat” (3893–4). “He who would love, must fear, or if not, he can-
not love : but he fears only the one he loves, and for her he is everywhere
bold * (3901–4).
We here catch a glimpse of a principle of the love philosophy
in the making. What wonder if, after all that irrefragable
logic, every lover found it requisite to tremble and lose self-
control in the presence of his mistress
In C/ºges the love becomes a kind of adoration, implying a
Superiority in the loved object, and, on the part of the one who
loves, a desire to serve.
1. 4416 : Fenice asks : “Is he not better than I, more beautiful, etc. P.”
1. 4566: She praises him. Her heart is the servant of his.
Soredamors has embroidered one of her golden hairs in the
garment which the Queen presents to Alexander for the cere-
mony of knighting. If he had known that the hair was there,
he would have loved it so much that he would not have taken
the whole world in exchange for it (1194). “Rather he would
have made of it, I believe, a holy thing, and would have adored
it day and night.” When he learns that the hair is in the gar-
ment (1617), he can scarcely refrain from bowing down and
adoring it, even though the Queen is present.
The effect of this passion upon the character is to render the
lady affable and gentle, the knight valiant and generous.
1. 953 : Soredamors is gentle to all for his sake.
l. 3756: Cligès is happy to be able to do deeds of valor before her who
gives him life.
1. 4Ioo : Cligès falls in battle with the Duke of Saxony : Fenice faints
with a shriek. Her voice gives him force and heart, and he overcomes
his opponent.
1. 4566 : Cligès is such a knight, says Fenice, that his service will
improve the servant. “Whoever commends himself to a worthy man is
bad if he does not grow better near him " (4573–4).
:
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36 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
Here we have another example of a metaphysical foundation
lent by Chrétien to a principle of the love philosophy.
The end of their love is possession, but a trifling token
becomes of immense value to the lover.
1, 1563 : Soredamors finds such delight in looking upon Alexander that
she would not exchange it for paradise.
•. 1631 : Alexander has the garment with Soredamors’ hair embroidered
in it ; is glad to have so much of his mistress, but never expects more.
All night in secret he kisses and embraces the cloak, and, when he gazes at
the hair, he thinks himself lord of the whole world.
Yet in spite of this exaltation, he says he has loved in vain
if she does not grant him his wish; and Soredamors says:
1. Io95 : “If he does not love me, I have sowed on the sea, but still I
will love him " (IoA6).
Here, too, the physical and material are constantly in the
foreground. - -
In this poem we see a striking progress toward the concep-
tions of chivalrous love. This is apparent in the greater
refinement of manners and sentiments portrayed, in the inten-
sity and all-absorbing interest of love, and especially in the
metaphysical theorizing upon the nature and the manifestations
of passion in the forms sanctioned by convention. In addition
to the examples already given, it will be useful to call attention
to two further cases of subtilizing. In line 2822, there is a
characteristic explanation of the saying that the two hearts
were in one. As two hearts cannot really dwell in one body,
this form of speech is shown to mean that both desire the
same thing. And in line 962, Soredamors puns upon her name,
and draws from it many fantastic conclusions.”
Notwithstanding the progress above noted toward the con-
ceptions of chivalrous love, the sentiment in this poem differs
1 Attention may be directed to Vita Muoza, § xxv., explanations of forms of
speech ; and § xxiv., the punning upon Primavera and Giovanna. Also to the
constant double sense of Beatrice.
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THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 37
in some most important respects from that ideal. In the first
place, the feelings of both sexes are portrayed.’ Soredamors
and Fenice love equally with Alexander and Cligès, and their
passion produces in them like pains, contradictions, and virtues.
They exalt the object of their affection, dream of his beauty,
desire to serve him and to be worthy of him (44.16). This is a
stage of development midway between those early pieces in
which the love of the woman alone was set forth and those
later ones in which she has become a superior being, a mere
object of adoration.
A second departure from the conception of the chivalrous
system is the end of this passion. Alexander aspires to the
hand of Soredamors, and Queen Guinevere brings them together
in a marriage, such as Chrétien delighted to represent, one in
which their love may long endure (2307). “She has her love
and he his, he all her, and she all him '' (2348–9). In the case
of Cligès and Fenice there is a closer approach to the courtly
mode, for Fenice is already the wife of the Emperor-uncle of
her lover, but the device by which she preserves her virginity
emphasizes the departure from the customary intrigue. Her
body goes only with her heart (3163 and 522O), and in the end,
Cligès has made his love his wife (6753), but he continues to love
her as his amie and she loves him as one ought to love her ami.
The characteristics of chivalrous love lacking in Cligès are
forcibly presented in Le Chevalier de la Charrette. This poem,
composed under the inspiration of Marie de Champagne, who
furnished the author both the story and the spirit of the recital
(see opening lines), is almost entirely devoted to one aspect of
this artificial passion, the complete subservience of the lover
and the unquestioned superiority of the lady he loves, an aspect
which we found already developed in the lyrics of Peire Rogier.
Bernart de Ventadorn had written love-poems to a queen and
Peire Rogier to a countess, and Marie, daughter of a queen
and herself a countess, impressed the same spirit upon Chrétien
38 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
when she gave him as a topic the passion of Launcelot for his
Queen, Guinevere, and when he undertook to set forth her
ideas, Come cil qui est suens antiers (4).
Chivalrous love was an artificial creation of court life. What
natural qualities it possessed, were soon buried under a mass of
conventions. The course of passion was directed by precedent,
and these precedents were established by poets who wrote under
the inspiration of princesses, and by the noble ladies themselves
in the decisions rendered by them in the mock trials at their
Courts of Love. What wonder, then, that the fundamental
article of these laws became the absolute submission of the
lover to his lady's every whim, accompanied by an attitude of
worship which made the slightest token connected with her an
object of adoration and which sapped his powers and destroyed
his senses when he came into her presence
The natural fears and trembling of the lover, his natural
desire to serve and please the object of his passion, were exag-
gerated and overlaid with a very pedantry of sentimentality. In
C/igès, though Chrétien covers his lovers' feelings with a tinsel
of metaphysical subtlety, he is still mainly within the limits of
the possible. In La Charrette, the sen furnished by his dame
de Champagne drives him to the absurd. That it was her
influence, and not his own impulse, seems clear from the fact
that in Yvain, in spite of the prominent supernatural element,
he again portrays character and sentiment more closely in
accordance with nature.
The Romaz de la Charrette narrates the adventures of
Launcelot in an expedition undertaken by him to recover
Queen Guinevere, who had been carried away by a neighboring
prince. His prowess and his inexhaustible patience win for
him the reward which alone he desires, the favor of the Queen.
The rest of the poem shows that after, as before, their secret
interview, Launcelot continues absolutely faithful, submissive,
and valorous.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 39
In this poem, the personification of love, the vassalage of
lovers, beauty striking through the eyes to the heart, the suf-
fering and sickness, visions and contradictions are chiefly
conspicuous by their absence. When introduced at all, it is
only to give added force to the main motive. The piece is
exclusively devoted to setting forth and heightening by every
device of exaggeration, the submissive devotion of the lover and
the absolute authority of the lady beloved.
For example, the personality of Love is thus referred to by
Launcelot :
1. 4365 : “But I believe I know so much of love that I ought not to hold
myself more vile, – if she loved me and called me true love, – when for her
it seemed to me honor to do whatever Love willed, even to mount upon the
cart. She ought to account this love, and it is the true proof. Love thus
tries her own, thus knows her own.”
The heart and eyes : The Queen, having refused to receive
Launcelot after all his sacrifices for her sake, goes to her
chamber.
l. 3970 : “And Launcelot accompanies her to the door with his eyes and
his heart. But to the eyes the way was short, for the room was too near :
and they would have entered after her willingly enough if they could. The
heart, which is more sire and master and of much greater power, went in
after her, and the eyes are left outside, full of tears, with the body.”
When he leaves the Queen,
l. 4677 : “The body goes, the heart remains.”
The wound of love appears in I 336 seq.
But these examples simply prepare us for the main theme.
Launcelot's love absorbs and destroys all other consciousness :
ll. 709-24: “And he of the cart thinks as one who has no force nor
defence against Love, who rules him ; and his thought is such that he for-
gets himself, nor knows whether or not he exists, nor remembers his name,
nor knows if he is armed or not, nor knows whither he goes nor whence he
comes : he remembers no person at all except one alone, and for her has
forgotten the others. Of her alone he thinks so much that he neither hears
nor sees nor is sensible of anything.”
4O THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
He is so absorbed that he does not see an enemy or hear
his shouts until he is overthrown (744).
When he sees the Queen he loses sense completely. He
would plunge from the window of a tower to reach her :
l, 62 : “He never ceases to gaze at her very attentively, and much it
pleased him as long as he could : and when he could see her no longer, he
wished to plunge down and cast his body below.”
During a mortal combat, he remains without power of move-
ment to gaze at her, while his enemy showers blows upon him
(3675).
He worships his lady. In his search for her he finds a comb
containing some golden hairs. A damsel tells him they are
Guinevere’s :
1. 1424 : “When he hears it, he has not so much strength but that he
needs sink : he had to support himself on the pommel of his saddle, so that
she thought he had fainted, . . . (I435) He had in his heart such pain
that, for a long time, he lost speech and color.”
The damsel asks him for the comb :
1. 1458: “He gives it to her and takes out the hairs so gently that he
breaks none of them. Never will the eyes of man see anything so honored,
as when he commences to adore them : fully one hundred thousand times
he touches them to his eyes and to his mouth and to his forehead and to his
face. . . . (1668) In his bosom near the heart he puts them between his
shirt and his flesh.”
He prizes them above the richest gems (1470), the rarest
remedies, the most powerful relics. The purest gold, com-
pared with them, would be as night compared with summer
noon (1494). We have the same adoration when Launcelot
approaches the Queen at their secret meeting :
1. 4652 : " He adores her and bows down to her, for in no holy body
does he so believe.”
His passion makes the lover obedient :
1. 3798: “He who loves is very obedient and does very quickly and
willingly, when he is amis antiers, whatever should please his amže.”
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE, 4. I
The lover must keep himself from shame and reproach. It
was considered shameful for any knight to mount upon a cart.
Launcelot, however, can reach the Queen only by undergoing
this disgrace.
l. 365 : " But a reason that springs from love tells him that he should
keep from mounting. It teaches him that he should do and undertake
nothing from which he should have shame and reproach.”
But love conquers even shame :
1. 372 : " But Love dwells in his heart who commands him that he should
mount quickly in the cart. Love wills it and he jumps in, for he cares
nothing for the shame since Love commands and wills it.”
His submission must be absolute and immediate. A moment's
delay or revolt may prove fatal. After all the hardships endured
in Guinevere's behalf, after the perfect faithfulness of his love
in most trying circumstances (I2O6), after the shame and the
taunts borne for her sake," after demonstrating his perfect
obedience,” he enters her presence and she does not deign to
look at him. To the remonstrance of her host she answers:
l. 3945: “I, sire? He cannot please me: I do not care to see him.”
1. 3960 : “Lo, Launcelot dumfounded ! but he answers nobly like a per-
fect lover : ‘Lady, truly this pains me, nor dare I ask your reason.' And
although he can imagine no cause for her anger, he remains perfectly sub-
missive : ‘ I am at her command.’”
So too, later, when she has granted him her confidence, he
says of this inexplicable reception : -
1. 4476: “You nearly gave me death, nor had I boldness enough to dare
ask you about it, as now I do. Lady, now I am ready to make amends, if
you only tell me the fault because of which I have been much troubled.”
* Again and again the disgrace of the Charrette is emphasized. Launcelot is
ill received, the people mock him ; one knight whom he conquers chooses death
rather than bear such dishonor (2775).
* When she commands him to cease fighting, he stops at once, though his
opponent continues to strike (3805).
42 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
And she then deigns to explain her action :
1. 4484 : “How then, had you not shame at the cart 2 and dreaded, so
that you hated to mount in it, when you delayed two steps. For this,
indeed, I wished neither to speak to you nor to look at you.”
This petty reason is sufficient, and the knight begs for
pardon :
1. 4490 : “ May God guard me, he said, from such ill-doing again And
may God never have pity on me, if you are not perfectly right. Lady, for
God’s sake, now receive from me amends, and if you ever can pardon me,
say to me: ‘Love, you are entirely absolved.” Then said the Queen, ‘I
pardon you fully.’”
This pardon means the consummation of his desires, as is very
fully set forth by the poet (45 I 5, 4575, 468 I). But Launcelot's
submission does not cease when he is accepted by Guinevere.
He continues to obey every whim of his mistress, no matter
what it may cost him. Although he has sworn before God to
have no mercy upon Meleaguant, he stops fighting the instant
Guinevere wishes it. Most precious to a knight was his honor.
We have seen how Launcelot sacrificed this to obtain the
Queen's good graces. He continues to love dishonor rather
than honor, when she wills it. His most ardent wish was to
attend Arthur's tournament and win renown, but the Queen by
a messenger commands him to allow himself to be overcome,
and he flees before his opponent (5655). The knights, even
the women, taunt him ; everything that can sting him is said;
but he continues to obey his lady's whim, saying to her mes-
senger :
l, 5890 : “Now tell her there is nothing that it grieves me to do, if it
pleases her, for whatever pleases her I wish.”
- He does not even need to hear her wishes; he guesses them
before they are uttered (5655 and 5889). No wonder the dam-
sel on her return to Guinevere says:
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 43
1, 5908: “Lady, I never saw a knight so debonair, for he wishes so
entirely to do all you command, that to tell you the truth, it seems the same
to him, be it good or evil.”
Love gives the knight magnanimity, force, and a large self-
contained confidence. Meeting a damsel in the forest, Gauvain
promises her all in his power if she will tell him tidings of the
Queen, but Launcelot does more :
1. 627 : “And he who had been on the cart says, not that he promises
her all in his power, but adds, as one whom Love makes rich and powerful
and hardy, that without let or fear he promises whatever she wishes and
puts himself all in her will.”
In the first combat with Meleaguant, one of the Queen's
maids thinks, that if Launcelot should know that Guinevere
sees him, it would give him force et hardimant (3645); so she
calls to him. But when he turns and sees (3672) “ the being
of all the world that most he wished to see,” he remains rapt
and is felled by Meleaguant. Then, getting his opponent
between himself and the Queen, he fights with redoubled force.
l. 3720 : “And his force and hardihood grow, for Love gives him great
assistance.”
Every time that he pursues his foe to a position from which he
can no longer see his lady, he must return.
l. 3748 : “And always he stops before the Queen, his lady, who put into
his heart the flame, wherefore he gazes at her.”
It was pointed out above that the love in Cligès is that of
youths and maidens, which has its end in marriage. In La
Charrette, it is an illegitimate passion which ends in clandestine
interviews. The concealment which, in the former poem, was
merely the natural reticence of bashfulness, induced by fear of
displeasing the loved one, has here become a requisite of pru-
dence (4507, 4535, 6835), and results from fear of detection.
In Cligēs, also, the passion of both sexes was equally repre-
44 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
sented. In La Charrette, on the contrary, it is merely the
devotion of Launcelot. The Queen does not display the least
emotion until she hears the false report of her lover's death.
Then indeed she breaks forth in lamentations, and resolves
never again to eat or drink, “if it be true that he is dead for
whose life she lived ” (4174). She wishes that she had held
him in her arms once before he died (4224). It is a pain to
live, he being dead, yet she will find it a pleasure to suffer for
him (4237). Finally she rejoices at his return to Arthur's court:
1. 6828 : “It nearly happened that her body followed her heart. Where
then is her heart? It kisses and caresses Launcelot.”
In her usual impassiveness she is the type of the amie of
chivalry, a being to be loved, adored, and obeyed. Her rôle is
that of a capricious, domineering, reserved mistress, who sub-
jects her devoted cavalier to every hardship in order that she
may rejoice in his fidelity.
The chief personage portrayed in this relationship is, how-
ever, the cavalier, and Launcelot is the perfect cavalier as con-
ceived by the court of Marie de Champagne. His character
has been so fully and so admirably portrayed by M. Gaston
Paris in his study of La Charrette" that the passage will be
quoted entire:
“Il ne recule jamais devant aucun péril, il est trois fois vainqueur de
Méléaguant, il remporte comme ense jouant le prix du tournoi. Sa géné-
rosité Égale sa vaillance : il permet à un vaincu de reprendre ses armes et
de recommencer la lutte. Fidèle a sa parole jusqu'au scrupule, il partage,
malgré sa répugnance, la Couche de la demoiselle a qui il l’a promis, et
revient dans la prison dont on 1’a laissé sortir Sur son engagement. Mais,
a la différence de son ami Gauvain, toutes ses actions, toutes ses pensées,
sont dominées par l'amour qu’il porte a Guenièvre. Cet amour est une
sorte de fascination et en même temps d'idolâtrie qui ne le laisse maître, en
dehors de ce sentiment, d’aucune partie de son étre. Il n'est rien qu'il ne
brave pour arracher Guenièvre a son ravisseur. En la voyant passer
* Romania, I883, p. 517,
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 45
du haut d'une fenêtre qui domine un abîme, il s'élance vers elle et se
précipiterait s'il n'était retenu. Il ne peut avoir pour l'amour de toute
autre femme que de l'aversion. En voyant le peigne où sont restés quel-
ques cheveux d'elle, ce guerrier que rien ne fait pâlir tombe en défaillance.
Pour les cheveux qu'il a dérobés il donnerait tous les trésors. Sa vue
inopinée le plonge dans une telle extase qu'il ne sait plus ce qu'il fait et
manque se laisser vaincre. Soumis près d'elle comme un enfant, après l'avoir
sauvée à travers mille dangers, il s'incline devant un mauvais accueil dont
il ne comprend pas la cause et se contente de gémir. Quand il croit qu'elle
a péri, la vie ne lui semble pas un instant supportable, et il cherche à se
procurer immédiatement la mort. Il lui sacrifie plus que la vie, l'honneur :
il est vrai qu'avant de monter dans la charrette infamante, il a une minute
d'hesitation, mais il reconnaît plus tard qu'il a été coupable, et, quand par
la suite elle lui impose ce qui peut être pour lui le plus pénible, l'apparence
de la couardise, il ne balance plus un moment, et par deux fois se laisse
honnir sans murmurer. Il ne semble pas d'ailleurs qu'il ait l'ombre d'un
scrupule sur ses relations avec elle, et que ce chevalier loyal entre tous se
reproche la trahison qu'il commet envers son noble seigneur, le roi Artu.
L'amour règne dans son âme avec une tyrannie sans nul contre-poids ; il y
est le principe des actions les plus hardies et les plus nobles, comme il le
fait passer par-dessus toutes les considérations, même de gloire et de con-
science. C'est le type absolu de l'amoureux tel qu'il a longtemps été
conçu dans la poésie, et rêvé, sinon réalisé, dans la vie.''
From the same essay is quoted the following statement of
chivalrous love as conceived in this poem : *
" Les principaux caractères de l'amour ainsi entendu sont les suivants :
I° Il est illégitime, furtif. On ne conçoit pas de rapports pareils entre
mari et femme ; la crainte perpétuelle de l'amant de perdre sa maîtresse, de
ne plus être digne d'elle, de lui déplaire en quoi que ce soit, ne peut se
concilier avec la possession calme et publique ; c'est au don sans cesse
révocable d'elle-même, au sacrifice énorme qu'elle a fait, au risque qu'elle
court constamment, que la femme doit la supériorité que l'amant lui
reconnaît.
2° A cause de cela l'amant est toujours devant la femme dans une
position inférieure, dans une timidité que rien ne rassure, dans un perpétuel
tremblement, bien qu'il soit d'ailleurs en toutes rencontres le plus hardi des
guerriers. Elle, au contraire, tout en l'aimant sincèrement, se montre avec
1 Rom, I883, p. 518,
46 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
lui capricieuse, souvent injuste, hautaine, dédaigneuse ; elle lui fait sentir a
chaque moment qu'il peut la perdre et qu'à la moindre faute contre le Code
de l’amour il la perdra.
3° Pour étre digne de la tendresse qu'il souhaite ou qu'il a déjà obtenue,
il accomplit toutes les prouesses imaginables, et elle de son Côté Songe tou-
jours a le rendre meilleur, a le faire plus “valoir’’; ses caprices apparents,
ses rigueurs passagères, ont même d'ordinaire ce but, et ne sont que des
moyens ou de raffiner son amour ou d’exalter son courage.
4° Enfin, et c'est ce qui résume tout le reste, l'amour est un art, une sci-
ence, une vertu, qui a ses rêgles tout comme la chevalerie ou la courtoisie,
règles qu'on possède et qu'on applique mieux à mesure qu'on a fait plus de
progrès, et auxquelles on ne doit pas manquer Sous peine d'être jugé
indigne.”
Such is the hero and such the passion portrayed. It has
already been shown that the purpose of La Charrette is to
emphasize the submission and devotion of the lover and the
supremacy of the lady of his heart. In the courtly society
which nurtured and developed chivalry, this relation became
firmly established. Originating in the homage paid by humble
poets to ladies of high rank, insisted upon by these ladies
themselves and unalterably fixed by the narrative of the ficti-
tious love of Launcelot for his Queen, it became one of the
most firmly settled articles of the code of gallantry. Every
knight and every poet became the humble servitor of his lady.
Her will was the highest law, her pleasure absolutely right and
just. But, important as it became, this was nevertheless only
a part of the code. Other maxims, whose development we
have been tracing, were no less obligatory. The lover must be
the vassal of Love, must follow his advice and obey his com-
mands, must find his penalties sweeter than other rewards,
must suffer pain and sickness almost to death, must be plunged
in contradictions, lose his reason, tremble and pale in his lady's
presence, dwell in thoughts of her and have her image ever
before his mind. These notions are perhaps taken for granted
in La Charrette. At any rate, they are not all expressly laid
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 47
down. To comprehend the doctrines of love developed by
Chrétien, Clégès is a necessary companion to La Charrette.
The whole matter is summed up in Yvain, the knight with
the lion. It is true that in one point Chrétien now departs
from the courtly conception. In that code love was declared
incompatible with marriage. It must be unlawful in order to
be fashionably correct. But Chrétien was of too honest a
nature to be pleased with such a relationship. In Erec and
Cligès his ideal is the perfect union of two hearts in matri-
mony. Fenice is even made to repeat her condemnation of
Tristan and Iseut." It may be, therefore, that distaste for his
subject caused the poet to leave Za Charrette unfinished, while
in Yvain he proceeds to present the most refined courtly love,
with all its subtleties, as existing between husband and wife.
The lady still retains her superiority, a notion which perhaps a
mediaeval audience found too fantastic even for fiction and for
which the poet felt it necessary to apologize. The story starts
from the court of Arthur where, in the intervals of battle
and adventure,
* Li un racontoient noveles,
Li autre parloient d'amors.”
Yvain slays the husband of Landine and afterwards wins her
heart and hand, but he is induced to leave his bride for the sake
of accomplishing deeds of glory, and, having broken his promise
to return to her in one year, he is banished by her from her
presence, and thenceforth devotes all his efforts to the task of
regaining her favor by his faithfulness, his nobility, and his
valor. When she shall pardon him, he says, “ Lors finera mes
travauz toz” (4593).
The poet feels that he is representing something far removed
from the real life about him, for in placing his hero at Arthur's
court, he speaks of it as an ideal picture.
* See pp. 29 and 37.
48 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
1. 13 : “There they spoke of Love, the pains and the great rewards that
her disciples often have, but now there are few of her liegemen, for almost
all have left her, so that Love has fallen low. Those who used to love were
courteous and brave and liberal and honorable. Now love is become a
fable, for those who do not feel it, say they love, but they lie. But to speak
of those who were, let us leave those who now live.”
And further on he says (5390) that he would like to speak of
the wound of love, but it would be unpleasing:
1. 5394 : “For people are no longer amorous, nor love as they used, since
they do not wish to hear it spoken of.”
This lament, so often repeated by others that it becomes itself
a sort of conventional form, seems to express Chrétien's real
feeling that the picture his imagination has drawn of Yvain's
devotion could scarcely have a counterpart in the actual world
around him.
The lady, in this case-the wife, is as before the superior.
She makes the laws and executes them. Before she consents
to marry Yvain, she makes him undergo an examination in
order to be sure that he has orthodox doctrinal views upon the
subject of love (2005). When he wishes to depart with
Gauvain for the purpose of winning honor in tournaments,
he asks leave of absence from her (2550), and she, in granting
it, fixes the term and imposes the penalty for disobedience.
When Yvain neglects to return upon the day thus determined,
her messenger proceeds to Arthur's court (27OO) and pro-
nounces him to be “le des/ea/, /e traitor, le mançongier, Ze ſame-
geor.” And in the end, when he begs for reconciliation, he
addresses her as though he was praying to God or to the Virgin
Mary.
1. 6780 : “Lady, one should have pity on a sinner. I have paid dearly
for my foolish wisdom, as I indeed ought. Folly made me remain and
rendered me culpable and sinful. I was very bold when I dared come
before you ; but now, if you will retain me, never will I do any ill toward
you again.”
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 49
Her pardon being grudgingly granted, he humbly thanks
her :
1. 6975 : “Lady, says he, five hundred thanks 1 May the Holy Spirit
help me, for God in this life could not make me happy otherwise.”
This poem is limited, even more completely than Za Chaz -
rette, to the cavalier's love. That of the lady is hardly men-
tioned. She merely plays the rôle of a regal judge and seems
to act according to principles rather than from the dictates of
the heart. He protests, he begs, he suffers : she calmly
examines him and then grants his demand (2035). The love
of the lady is treated as a favor which she bestows. It is not
a passion ; it is not a matter of inward feeling but of external
act, something that she gives or withholds as she sees fit.
Caught in Lunete's snare, having promised before she knows
what her promise involves, she exclaims in anger :
1. 6762 : “Him who neither loves nor prizes me, you make me love in
spite of myself.”
The other conventions are almost all to be found fully devel-
oped. Love is a god who wounds with a dart (5377), who
avenges injuries (1366); Love is also a feudal lord (1357), to
disobey him is felony and treason (1446), is betraying him
(I451).
Beauty is dwelt upon as the cause of love and is described
in the customary exaggerated manner (1462). Landine has
golden hair, blue eyes, rosy face, crystal neck, etc. Nature
was unable to make so beautiful a being (1493). God made
her with his own hand, to compel Nature's admiration. She
could never make a counterfeit, however long she might try,
nor could God himself do it again, even if he did his best
(5375). The maiden in the castle of Pesme Avanture, whom
Yvain refuses, being wholly devoted to Landine, is so beauti-
ful that the God of Love, if he saw her, would fall in love with
her. To serve her he would become a man, issuing from his
5O THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
divinity, and he would wound himself with his own dart whose
wound cannot be healed.
There is the same subtlety of eyes and heart:
1. I 367 : Love attacks so sweetly that, through the eyes, he wounds the
heart ; a blow more lasting than that of lance or sword.
1. 2642 : The king can take Yvain's body with him, but the heart ,
remains joined to hers, and he has no power to take it away. His body
lives without the heart, a marvel, since no body can live without a heart,
but his did and hoped to return to the heart that would not follow it.
The idea of sickness and the wounds of love is continued :
1. 1371 : Love's wound is more lasting than that of lance or sword, for
this is cured as soon as the physician cares for it, but that grows worse
when nearer to its physician.
1. 5383 : Love's wound must be healed loyally.
Love must improve the lover. Gauvain shames those who
marry only to degenerate and says :
1. 2485 : “Whoever has a beautiful lady for amie or wife, ought to grow.
better.” *
From the standpoint of the love philosophy, a most impor-
tant passage is that containing the answers given by Yvain to
Landine when she questions him in regard to the origin and
nature of his passion. Here we have a formal and systematic
statement of the conventional method and character of chival-
rous love.
1. 2014: “How are you so overcome P’’ “Lady,” said he, “the force
comes from my heart which holds to you ; in this wish my heart has put
me.” “And who has thus disposed the heart, sweet friend?” “Lady, my
eyes.” “And the eyes, who P” “The great beauty that I saw in you.”
“And the beauty how has it hurt you?” “Lady, so much that it made me
love.” “Love? and whom P” “You, dear lady.” “Me?” “You, truly.”
“In what manner P” “ In such that greater cannot be, in such that rhy
heart does not move from you nor ever seek elsewhere, in such that I can-
not think of another, in such that I give myself all to you, in such that I
love you more than myself, in such thºt, if it pleases you, freely I wish to
die and to live for you.”
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 5 I
In one most important doctrine, besides the incompatibilty
of love and marriage, does Chrétien differ from his successors.
No principle of the philosophy of courtly love was more firmly
established than that love could dwell only in the noble heart,
that the courteous and loyal alone could be servants of this
god. But Chrétien directly states the opposite:
1. I386 : “It is a great shame that Love is such, and also when she
proves so ill, that in the vilest place to be found, she dwells as soon as in
the best of all.”
l. I 395 : “Love, which is so high a thing that it is a wonder how she
dares shamefully in so vile a place descend. She has now, however, left
these bad places and given herself all to Yvain" (1377).
Further on, we find it maintained that a lover must always be
loyal (5387).
The statements above cited are a deviation from the code of
André le Chapelain and from all other authorities on the sub-
ject of courtly love." Chrétien himself, if the chansons ascribed
to him are really his, must have known the cardinal principle
which he contradicts, for he sings :
“Nuls sils nest cortoise saiges
Ne puet neus damors aprendre.””
Such a variation as this, and above all such a departure from
the code as the entire poem displays in its subject, indicates
that, when Chrétien wrote, the laws of love had not become so
firmly established that no poet would venture to deviate from
them. This was soon accomplished, however, and the examin-
acion that has been made of Chrétien's romances shows how
largely he contributed to this result.
In Erec we found hardly a trace of chivalrous love. The
whole tone and spirit of the poem belong to an earlier and less
conventional epoch. Cliges shows the development of love
1 See p. 59, law x , ii. and op. 62, 68, 71.
* Wackernagel, Altfranz. Lieder, p. 15.
52 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
theories. The course and progress of passion is presented
enveloped in a cloud of metaphysical subtleties, and some of
the most characteristic notions of the philosophy are elaborated
with the acute minuteness of the scholastic logician. Then
come the ideas of Marie de Champagne which her servitor
versifies in Za Charrette, depicting the unlawful loves of Launce-
lot and Guinevere, and emphasizing to the utmost of his skill
the complete ascendency of the lady and the complete submis-
siveness of the lover. This attitude of humble adoration was
continued in Yvain, though the mistress was transmuted into
a wife. The same devices are employed, the same succession of
sentiments represented, and here finally set forth in systematic
form. .
In all this Chrétien merely represented, and, to a certain
extent, led his age. Contemporary poets began to labor in the
same fields, and the attempt to trace the influences exerted
back and forth by each upon the others would be futile, while
the results, even if attainable, would fail to compensate for the
labor involved. But that Chrétien, the foremost poet of his
generation, exercised a potent and far-reaching influence, we
have abundant evidence. The whole series of Arthurian
Romances took form and color from his example. Arthur's
court became the source of the laws of love. It is there that
André le Chapelain's knight finds the code, after adventures
manifestly imitated from Chrétien, and this code has almost
all of its articles expounded, amplified, and illustrated in his
narratives. -
V.
ATTENTION has been called to Chrétien's apparent dislike of
adultery as a narrative motive. In this he is followed by most
of the Arthurian romancers. Guinevere remains almost soli-
tary, and the stories generally relate how a brave knight by his
prowess in errant expeditions wins the hand of the beautiful
maiden for whom he sighs and in whose honor he labors."
There are later writers of allegorical love-poems who represent
the same feeling; but in spite of them all, we must regard this
sin as an essential of the chivalrous code.
That it became so was owing to the Provençal influence
already referred to, which, passing through Eleanor of Poitiers,
was developed to its highest point under Marie de Champagne.
That Eleanor practiced what she taught is well known. Her
example and that of her husband, Henry II., would be eagerly
followed by the fashionable society of their court. Transmitted
to her daughter, Marie de Champagne, the sentiments of Ber-
nart de Ventadorn and other poets became fixed as a code of
laws, in which this doctrine was fundamental. It was this
princess who gave Chrétien de Troies the subject and the
spirit of the Roman de la Charrette, and it seems to have been
her theories that most largely inspired André le Chapelain to
write his De Arte Homest; Amazed.”
In this work we have the whole art and science of love, – its
causes, its effects, and the means of acquiring and maintaining
it, — set forth in an orderly and systematic form. The treatise
is divided with scholastic accuracy. In the first Book we learn,
in twelve chapters, Quid sit amor, Inter quos possit esse amor,
1 Hist. Lit. t. xxx. p. I 5.
* Rom. IS83, pp. 52 I seq.
54 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
Unde dicatur amor, Quis sit effectus amoris, Quae personae
sint aptae ad amorem, Qualiter amor acquiratur et quot modis,
De amore clericorum, De amore monacharum, De amore per
pecuniam acquisito, De facili rei petitae concessione, De amore
rusticorum, De amore meretricum. The sixth chapter contains
eight model conversations between lovers of different or of
equal rank, showing how ladies are to be wooed. The argu-
ment in each case is that nobility springs from virtue rather
than from high birth, and throughout we find scattered most of
the conventions already developed in Chrétien de Troies, – the
power of love, the pains of lovers, their wounds and sickness,
dreams and longings, the doctrine of eyes and heart, conceal-
ment, etc. In the conversation in which Loquitur nobilis
nobili, we have a description of the palace of Love with its four
gates," an account of the punishment of loveless women after
death, and twelve precepts given to the lover by the God of
Love.” In another conversation (Loquitur nobilior nobili) the
lovers submit their case by letter to the Countess of Champagne,
who answers under the date of I I 74, giving the famous decision
that love cannot exist between married persons.” In the course
of André's arguments he often refers to the laws of love, men-
tions romances, and quotes impartially Ovid, St. Paul, Solomon,
and the Evangelists. The most sensual conceptions are found
by the side of the most fine-spun conceits.
The second Book, on the conserving, augmenting, diminish-
ing, and ending of love, contains (chap. vii.) twenty-one judg-
ments rendered by Eleanor, Marie, Ermengarde, and the
Countess of Flanders upon suppositious cases of disputes
between lovers. Interesting as throwing light upon a form of
fashionable amusement of the twelfth century, these decisions
have little importance in connection with our subject. They
1 Andreae Capellani Regii Francorum De Amore Libri Tres. Recensuit E.
Trojel. Havniae, I892, pp. 9o, 91.
2 id. p. Ioë. *id. pp. I 53, I 54.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 55
deal with the relations of individuals rather than with the prin-
ciples of the Art of Love ; they are the application rather than
the development of theories. The last chapter of this Book
presents a code of love which a Breton knight brought from
the court of Arthur, where he had found it attached to a falcon
by a golden chain. The subject of Book III. is, in imitation of
Ovid, De Reprobatione Amoris.
The idea of treating love as a science seems to have had its
origin, indeed, in the Ars Amatoria of Ovid, a book much
enjoyed by the clerks of the middle ages, who gradually came
to interpret its sensualism in the chivalrous spirit, and who
transformed its frivolous precepts into the rigid maxims of a
code of jurisprudence." In both the Amores and the Ars
Amatoria we read of the triumphant power of love, the grief,
pains, and pallor of lovers, the moving power of tears, the
necessity of patience and yielding in everything with entire
submission to one's mistress, the advisability of praising her in
verse and admiring her beauty. Yet the spirit of the Latin
poet is so widely different from the spirit animating the votaries
of chivalrous love that their harmonies are few in comparison
with their discords.” *
What Ovid's influence leads to is shown in Pamphilus de
Amore, which appears to belong to the end of the twelfth cen-
tury. Pamphilus, pierced to the heart by an arrow, finds his
wound growing daily more painful. She who has given the
stroke alone can heal him, but he must conceal her name, and
he dares not address his prayers to her, for she is richer than
himself. He consults Venus. On leaving the goddess, he
meets his mistress Galatea, and suffers the conventional
spasms.”
* Rom. 1883, p. 519; G. Paris, Poésie du Moyen Age, pp. 189 seq.
* What is here said of Ovid is true of his mediaeval imitators. In the Clef
d’Amors, for example, there is not a trace of Courtly Love.
* Langlois, Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose, p. 22.
56 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“ Nec mea vox mecum, nec mea verba manent,
Nec mihi sunt vires, trepidantgue manuscue pedesque ;
Attonito nullus congruus est habitus.
Mentis in affectu sibi dicere plura natavi,
Sed timor excussit dicere que volui.
Non sum quod fueram, vix me cognoscere possum.
Non benevox sequitur . . . sed tamen ipse loquar.”—vv. I 56–162."
The play ends with the coarse device of a wicked old woman
and the resort to force.
In the Concile de Remiremont, a work composed by a clerk,
and apparently belonging to the early years of the twelfth cen-
tury, a body of nuns debate whether they shall grant their love
exclusively to knights or to clerks, and the meeting opens with
a parody of the divine service, at which they read “quasi
evangelium, Praecepta Ovidii, doctoris egregii.”” Here already
we have the idea of a science of love, and from this notion to
that of law is but a step. In fact, in this work itself, the debate
and the decision of the disputed question would lead naturally
to the thought of law. The sisters favoring the knights say,
in argument :
“Audaces ad prelia Sunt pro nostra gratia ;
Ut sibi nos habeant et ut nobis placeant,
Nulla timent aspera, nec mortem, nec vulnera.”?
And those arguing for the clerks claim that
“Laudent nos in omnibus rythmis atque versibus,” 4 —
acts which soon became obligatory.
The idea of law, however, seems to have received its chief
impulse from another classical conception, that of the God of
Love. In the early Provençal lyrics, because amors was a
feminine noun, Love as a personality was also conceived as femi-
nine,” and we find this also even in Chrétien de Troies. But
1 Langlois, Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose, p. 30.
2 id. ii. p. 7. 8 id. p. 8. * id., p. 9, note i.
* Diez, Poesie der Troubadours, pp. 122, 123.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 57
from Ovid comes the picture of Love as a god who wounds
his victim with his arrows." In the Comciſe de Remiremont, a
lady cardinal tells the company of nuns —
“Amor, deus omnium quot quot sunt amantium,
Me misit vos visere et vitam inquirere.””
Chrétien, too, speaks of the God of Love in Yvain,” and this
deity soon came to be generally recognized. To his powers as
a god were joined the additional attributes of a feudal lord.
At first it was the lady, whose vassal the poet professed him-
self to be,” then he became the vassal of Love.” In this way
we reach the fully developed conception of a potentate who
promulgates a system of laws which every lover is bound to
learn and to obey.
Springing thus from Ovid and developed by clerkly poets to
suit the requirements of the time, the science, art, and code of
love received and incorporated into itself the fancies of the
troubadours, the conceits of Chrétien de Troies, and the mun-
dane ideals of Eleanore of Poitiers, Marie de Champagne, and
their rivals. These ladies impressed their opinions upon the
fashionable world, not only through their influence upon their
favorite poets, but also through their decisions of imaginary
lovers' quarrels.
For more than half a century scholars have debated whether
the cases presented before the Courts of Love were real or
imaginary, and the results of this discussion seem to indicate
that these courts were mock-trials held for the amusement of
chivalric society. A favorite form of poem with the trouba-
dours was the tenson, or debate between two or more poets.
The first would propose a question, such as : " Which are
1 See e.g. Amores, book i., Elegy i.
* Langlois, op. cit. p. 8.
* See above, p. 49.
* See above, pp. 8, 20, 35.
* See above, pp. 30 seq.
58 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
greater, the benefits or the ills of love ?'' and the second,
choosing one side, would argue in favor of his opinion, being
answered by the first. After several stanzas alternating be-
tween the two, the matter would be referred for decision to
one or more judges, whose dicta are sometimes recorded.* This
sort of jeu-d'esprit, which is as old as William of Poitiers,º
would easily be developed into a regular trial before a mock
court, over which the reigning queen or countess presided, and
the decisions thus rendered, of which those recorded by André
le Chapelain are perhaps examples, would naturally be consid-
ered binding upon all correct lovers who might find themselves
in a position corresponding to the one thus debated and settled.
Precedents might be so established as additions to the formal
code of love.
The final word on this subject has doubtless been said by
Gaston Paris :
" La cour d'Aliénor fut sans doute une modèle qu'on imita avec empresse-
ment : à l'exemple d'Aliénor elle-même et d'Ermenjard de Narbonne, la
reine Aeliz, la comtesse Marie, fille d'Aliénor, la comtesse Elizabeth, cousine
des deux dernières, sans doute d'autres, ambitionnèrent à leur tour la gloire
de docteurs et jurisconsultes d'amour. On leur soumettait des points de
doctrine ou des espèces imaginées, et elles donnaient des solutions que l'on
recueillait avec soin ; quelquefois, avant de rendre une sentence, elles con-
sultaient les dames qui se trouvaient autour d'elles. . . .. Ainsi s'établissait,
à côté des lois fondamentales que le dieu d'amour avait lui-même révélées
à un chevalier breton, une jurisprudence appuyée sur l'autorité de noms
illustres. Peu à peu se formait l'idée que, dans les questions difficiles de
droit amoureux, il fallait recourir au jugement des " dames,' et sur cette
donnée on ébauchait une procédure à l'usage des amants, procédure dont la
première règle était naturellement qu'ils n'exposaient leur cas que par
intermédiare et que leurs noms restaient soigneusement cachés.'' º
1 G. Faidit, MW. ii. p. Ioo. Vide also Peirol, MW, ii., xxv., xxvi., xxvii., and
Bartsch, Chres. 74, I7.
* Bartsch, Chres. 29, 4.
º Journal des Savants, 1888, p. 732. Whoever desires the arguments pro and
con may consult the articles above quoted, the works of Raynouard, Diez, and
Fauriel, and Hist. Litt. tomes xxi. and xxix.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 59
This whole system of law is summed up in the code just
referred to, which, according to André's narrative, was com-
posed by the God of Love himself, and brought by a Breton
knight, after many marvelous adventures, from the court of
Arthur. We transcribe this code entire : 1
I. Causa coniugii ab amore non est excusatio recta.
H. Quinon Zelat, amare non potest.
III. Nemo duplici potest amore ligare.
IV. Semper amorem crescere vel minui constat.
V. Non est sapidum, quod amans ab invito Sumit coamante.
VI. Masculus non solet nisi plena pubertate amare.
VII. Biennalis viduitas pro amante defuncto superstiti praescribitur
amanti.
VIII. Nemo sine rationis excessu suo debet amore privari.
IX. Amare nemo potest, nisi qui amoris Svasione compellitur.
X. Amor semper consvevit ab avaritiae domiciliis exsulare.
XI. Non decet amare, quarum pudor est nuptias affectare.
XII. Verus amans alterius nisi Sui Coamantis ex affectu non Cupit
amplexus.
XIII. Amor raro consvevit durare vulgatus.
XIV. Facilis perceptio contemptibilem reddit amorem, difficilis eum
carum facit haberi.
XV. Omnis consvevit amans in coamantis aspectu pallescere.
XVI. In repentina coamantis visione cor contremescit amantis.
XVII. Novus amor veterem compellit abire.
XVIII. Probitas sola quemdue dignum facit amore.
XIX. Si amor minuatur, cito deficit et raro Convalescit.
XX. Amorosus semper est timorosus.
XXI. Ex vera zelotypia affectus semper crescit amandi.
XXII. De coamante suspicione percepta Zelus et affectus Crescit
amandi.
XXIII. Minus dormit et edit, quem amoris cogitatio vexat.
XXIV. Quilibet amantis actus in coamantis cogitatione finitur.
XXV, Verus amans nil bonum credit nisi quod Cogitat coamanti
placere.
XXVI. Amor nil posset amori denegare.
XXVII. Amans coamantis solatiis satiari non potest.
1 Andreae Capellani De Amore, pp. 31O-312.
6O
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
XXVIII,
XXIX.
XXX.
XXXI.
Modica praesumptio cogit amantem de coamante suspicari
sinistra. ºss
Non solet amare, quem nimia voluptatis abundantia vexat.
Verus amans assidua sine intermissione coamantis imaginatione
detinetur.
Unam feminam nil prohibet a duobus amari et a duabus
mulieribus unum.º
º This work of André le Chapelain was known to Guido Cavalcanti, and through
him might have influenced Dante; vide Salvadori, La Poesia Giovanile, etc., di
Guido Cavalcanti, Roma, 1895, p. 12.
VI.
WE have now come to the final stage of this part of our
subject, the stage in which the art of love, in its full develop-
ment, has taken almost complete possession of literature. The
mass of poems which we here encounter is too vast for us to
discuss. Nor is such a discussion necessary, for they bear so
close a resemblance to each other that the traits of one answer
for the traits of all.”
Many of these pieces are analyzed and discussed by M.
Langlois in his Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose. We
are plunged at once into a mass of personifications, allegories,
and dreams.” The action is always in the spring, and we are
introduced to all that machinery of gardens, flowers, birds, and
the joyous accompaniments of the God of Love which the
Aoman de la Rose has made familiar. One spring morning
two girls dispute whether it is better to love a cavalier or a
clerk; they go to the Garden of Love and submit the question
to the God himself, who decides in favor of the clerk.” In
another case the God refers the matter to a congress of birds,
among whom are some who know all the laws of love.” In the
Fač/iau du Dieu d'Amors,” the poet dreams that on a spring
morning he follows the banks of a stream bordered with
flowers until he reaches the garden of the God of Love.
* G. Paris, Litt. du Moyen Age, § 104 and § III.
* For a study of allegory in the mediaeval literature of France, see op. cit. pp. 47
seq. For the dream as a revelation of the future, see chap. v.
* Altercatio Phyllidis et Florae, Carmina Burana, pp. 155–165; op. cit. p. Io.
* Langlois, op. cit. p. 13, Le débat de Florence et de Blanchefleur : li esperviers
says, l. 243 : Gesai d'Amors totes les lois.
* Langlois, op. cit. pp. I 5–17, Li Fablel dou Dieu d'Amor, A. Jubinal, Paris,
1834; see also Foerster’s Venus la Deesse d’Amor, pp. 42, 43.
62 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
Admission is forbidden to the vulgar (vilains), but to the cour-
teous the gate is always open. Within, birds in song dispute
regarding love. His lady comes to him, but an immense
dragon carries her off, and the lover laments, reproaching the
God of Love for having abandoned his faithful servant. Then
the god appears, consoles the young man, and leads him to his
palace, to remain there while he pursues the dragon. At this
palace life is very joyous. Amid the singing and dancing, the
god brings back the young girl, and the lover is so overjoyed
that he awakes and realizes that his happiness was all a dream.
Venus la Deesse d’Amor" is largely copied from the Dieu
d’Amors. In the month of May, when the birds sing and the
flowers bloom, and “all hearts are amorous, desirous, and gay,”
Lover rises from bed and passes to a meadow, where he seats
himself sadly under a tree in which the birds, singing, dispute
of love, its pains, joys, and benefits. The nightingale sings :
“One who loves well ought to have his heart beautiful, and often sad and
troubled. He ought to shiver often without cold, and often sweat without
heat, and sigh and change color and languish in thought night and day”
(St. 27–28).
Then, through more than three hundred verses, the lover com-
plains. He pictures Florie's beauty and his own anguish, till
he faints (53). Reviving, he continues, pale, discolored, in
great torment :
“Sainte Marie, how I am laden with love | Florie, sweet love, your
beauty destroys me ! Earth swallow me !”
He wishes for his sword. Then he turns to allegorizing, calls
his lady Tristousse and himself Morant (60), thinks his pains
worse than those of childbirth (62 seq.). He exclaims (70):
“I desire rather to die than to see the day, I have begged for pity, as
he who fears much, on my knees with hands clasped, that she should cure
my wound, for I am certain that I shall not be truly cured if she have not
mercy and pity" (7I).
1 Ed. Foerster, Bonn, 188o.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 63
His heart is joined to hers with true cement, so that it cannot
be separated, and every pain she has, he can feel (72, 79,80, IOO,
Io 3, etc.). But “ he knows well that in love lies all good and
all wisdom, and that love is sweeter than balms or incense, or
fragrant flowers” (75). Besides Love is powerful, and there is
no defence against her (83–85). He repeats again and again
the list of his pains, he blames his eyes for leading him where
he has lost his heart, he begs for pity with wearisome reiteration :
“Tristose, sweet lady, full of courtesy, full of gentleness, and provided
with all wisdom, full of humility and of all good gifts, oh alleviate my ills,
have pity on me.” (Io8)
Love takes away his sense and reason (93). His suffering will
kill him :
“Tristose, sweet love, for you I must die. My wound is painful, my
heart has made me perish. I never thought to have deserved death from
you ; many a living death have you made me die" (96).
Still he wishes her every good thing :
“I wish to commend to God my lady who kills me. May Jesus Christ
help all those who speak well of her ” (86). “Yes, God forgive her the
evil she has done me”: “ May the King of Paradise pardon you, so that
he shall not make you worse either in body or in soul. You and your love
have played me such a game that through them is my soul damned, my
body exiled” (112).
He divides his prayers about equally between God and his
lady, sometimes addressing her with clasped hands, sometimes
begging Heaven for relief :
“I pray both God and her that she should have pity on me.” (IoI).
Worn out, he ceases, but he remains restless, insensible to
cold or heat, and as a climax to his anguish, he has the nose-
bleed :
“From his nose springs the blood by the force of his torments’’ (I 17).
At this point the Goddess of Love arrives, accompanied by
three damsels, all mounted upon mules. Three thousand birds
64 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
assemble, while the damsels sing of love, but Lover hears
nothing.
“For he has such sickness and pain and torment, as no living man could
believe. In him is no strength or virtue whatever, nor does he hear, nor
see, nor feel heat or cold" (125).
The birds, however, beg the goddess to aid vrai amant,
whereupon she and her attendants dismount and call him to
his senses :
“Ha, true lover, God give thee healing and joy of thy lady, for whom
thou drinkest such poison. Ha, young clerk, to what school art thou put !
Very hard is thy lesson which thy lady-love has taught” (132, 133).
He thinks the goddess his amzie, she is so beautiful and per-
fect, then demands :
“Lady, who are you ? For the sake of God, son of Mary’” (136)
She answers :
“I am she who makes lovers truly love ; under my subjection I have all
true lovers. My name is Venus, the Goddess of Love. I am she who
makes lovers have joy and tears, by my dart are wounded those who really
love, the fine, true, gentle heart feels the pain of it” (137, 138).
He begs her to alleviate his pain. By causing him to cease
loving 2 she asks. No, he would rather suffer.
“Pain, travail, anguish I will suffer, but I cannot depart from her for
whom I grieve. I ought indeed to curse my heart and hate my two eyes,
since they have so led me that I wish to die of love" (142).
“Wilt thou die for her and give up thy life, whence thy soul
will be damned and hers perish 2" asks the goddess (143).
“Lady, said the lover, surely it grieves me. Let God do his pleasure
both upon her and me. Weeping with hands joined, Lady, I beg your
mercy, that you should counsel me, for I am all foolish from love" (144).
At the request of Venus, he proceeds to speak of his lady's
beauty :
“Directly at the moment that first I saw her, I gave her all my heart in
love" (148).
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 65
All the wealth in the world could not ransom his heart from
her, it is so closely cemented.
“Certainly, if she kills me, then she is an enemy, then are the words
false when I call her amie. In her hand she holds my death and my life.
Let her do what pleases her, I can never hate her ” (152).
Heart and soul and body are in her service (153, 164). No
medicine or plaster can heal his wound. She alone can cure
him. She is “humble, courteous and simple, and beautiful and
well-spoken '' (155). He calls up all her features in succession,
eyes, nose, mouth, etc. God's saintliest apostle would love her
(I 59). Lover's three servants have turned against him :
“My heart is my provost, that I cannot bring to justice. My two eyes
are the ones who make the trouble ; the third are my limbs that they make
thin " (162).
She is humble, wise, full of sweetness (167). God made her
in order to have a pattern, but would find it difficult if he had
to do it again (168). Lover thinks of her night and day (174),
will serve her whatever happens to him (176).
“Surely, said the lover, she in whom I have put my heart is gentle and
humble, and adorned with all sense, and wise and debonair and very well
taught ; therefore I desire her love more than Paradise” (188).
Venus commends him for his faithfulness and offers to lead
him to the court of the God of Love, where he can present his
case. He shall have redress in three days. There follow
eight stanzas devoted to a description of Venus' mule, which
the birds help her to mount (218), and which kneels to allow
her to descend upon their arrival at the castle of Love. After
a brief parley with the gatekeeper, they enter, and passing
through the great hall in which the barons and princes attend,
they reach the chamber of the God of Love, and find him re-
clining upon a couch of flowers (235). In this palace there is
continual joy (242). A maid leads Lover to a room in which
he sees the two quivers of arrows belonging to the God, one
66 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
set whose wound causes hate, the other whose wound causes
love. No power can resist them (250). She next leads him to
a garden (251) where, under a tree, stands the tomb of a gentle
youth, over which the birds sing of true love. When these
songsters hunger, each kisses a flower and thenceforth suffers
neither hunger nor thirst again that day (253). The maiden
relates the story of this youth, her lover, slain in battle for her
and interred here by the God of Love. Returning to the great
hall, they encounter ten maidens with a bier upon which lies
the corpse of a true lover. This is embalmed and buried with
honor, his soul coming to dwell with the God of Love.
“Thus said the God of Love : I will do him much honor, as I rightly
should, since he died of love. His soul will live with me in joy and delight,
I will have the body buried with great honor’’ (280).
Returning from these funeral rites, Lover in the presence of
the barons and princes of the court, presents his case before
the God of Love. Venus pleads for him, as one who has suf-
fered more than Paris or Tristan, and his request is granted.
The nightingale, who volunteers, is commissioned by the God
of Love to write the charter containing the judgment. This
is read, to the approval of all present.
“The charter said that the damsel should love her lover loyally. If she
did not, the God of Love would take on her heavy vengeance. The God
of Love and Jesus Christ will have her talked of by every one, whence she
will have great blame in the world and will be made to dwell in hell. She
will never be loved by God or man, if she will not love her lover" (306,
307).
The god and the goddess seal the sentence. Armed with
this formidable document, Lover instantly takes his leave
and hastens to Florie, who roads the charter and sighs.
“‘Certainly,’ says she, “sweet lºve, I give you my love; willingly will I
seek medicine to remove your pain. In her arms she clasps him close with
great sweetness, and says: ‘Always, I will love you loyally.” Thus were the
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 67
lovers in joy all their lives. Now let us pray Jesus Christ, son of holy Mary,
that he comfort all lovers who are laden with love, and confound all proud
ones who have no pity” (314–5).
Thus ends this jumble of incompatible ideas.
In a very different tone is the treatment of love by Huon de
Mery, author of the Tormoiement de l’Antechrist,” a poem
assigned to the year I 235.” It narrates the story of a tourna-
ment in which the virtues contend against the vices, and in it
we find fully developed that tendency to allegory which gradu-
ally overspread all this love literature. Love is not among the
vices.
“By this word Fornication I here make you no description of it, by my
faith: Love has not so vile a name. No, for Love is born of Courtesy. Of
Love, which is without vileness, the description is elsewhere’’ (p. 32).
Elsewhere — that is, among the virtues. We find her in
the company we should naturally expect.
“Afterward, very well mounted, came to the tourney my Lady Largesce:
in her company she had Prouesse and Hardement, her eldest son. . . .
Then Cortoisie and Franchise together unfurled their standards" (p. 49).
* With Prouesse, who leads Love, with Cortoisie, her cousin, and Lar-
gesce, who resembles her, together with all these, rides Love" (p. 51).
Among the arms of Love are l’arc Turcois (p. 52) and the
dart dous et felon, named Dous Anemi (p. 53), with which
every one would wish to be wounded in the heart.
“For none has heart so evil, so proud, or so obstinate, that, if he feels
the dart of which the iron was dipped in courtesy, he would not be tender
and softened and courteous, whether he wished it or not : for Love has so
courteous a name that if a boor becomes acquainted with her, Love makes
him courteous and polished. And' she makes the cruel frank and tender,
and puts the proud on his knees, and intimidates the foolhardy’’ (p. 53).
It would make even Herod do is et paciems :
1 Ed. Tarbé, Col. des Poètes de Champagne, Reims, 1851.
* G. Paris, Litt. du Moyen Age, § I I I.
68 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“For who ever did fealty to the God of Love who was not made wise?
They serve such a lord as confounds and destroys all vileness.”
Indeed, no one is worthy even to see the helmet of Love
“if he is not courteous, tender, and benign, hardy and brave
and pure and well-bred" (p. 54).
We get into a purer atmosphere, though the neighboring
country is tame and barren enough.
“Now, if I have described Love here among the followers of Jesus
Christ, she is not always of his : only when she is fine and good, as hap-
pens in many places. That which one ought, that which is right, is to
love courteously : he who loves loyally is of the followers of Courtesy. If
not, he is not at all of his ’’ (p. 54).
It is interesting to note among these abstractions, as attend-
ants upon Largesce, Cortoisie, and Proesce, the chief Knights
of the Round Table introduced by name (pp. 59, 60). Some-
what further on, there is a distinct confession of indebtedness
to Chrétien de Troies (p. 77), in a passage expounding the
transit of the dart of Cupid, through the eyes to the heart.
We are told that Chrétien “ said better of the heart wounded
by the dart of the eyes than I can tell you.”
Although this poem deals with a tournament, we do not
escape from the judgment of the Court of Love. He who is
wounded by this dart seeks succor “from the ill that he has
within his heart, which is worse than toothache” (p. 79),
carrying his case before “ the justice who judges all lovers ”
(p. 80). This judge decides that Venus was not to blame, for
the doors of the castle were open, of which the eyes are the
doorkeepers :
“Thy eyes, who pictured the sight of her, have done thee a stroke of
treason " (p. 81).
But the eyes defend themselves, accusing the heart :
“The heart, they said, is lord of the house, we are the servants who do
his command without opposition.”
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 69
And Reason at last passes sentence :
* The heart was the occasion of the ill that it has.”
This allegory leads us to Guillaume de Lorris and the Roman
de la Rose," a poem written under the inspiration of love in
order to please her who is so worthy of affection that she
ought to be called Rose. The time is May :
“He has a very hard heart who does not love in May, when he hears
the birds on the branches sing their sweet, piteous songs " (section i).
The young man, in his twentieth year, wanders to the Garden
of Love, the abode of pleasure, which is surrounded by a high
wall, upon the outside of which are painted, as excluded from
the garden and obnoxious to love, Haize, Fe/ozzie, Vilemmie,
Coveitise, Avarice, Envie, Tristesse, Viellesse, Pape/ardie, and
Povreće. Entering through a narrow gate, he finds a joyous
company : Dame Oyseuse who guides him, Cortoisie who in-
vites him to dance, Deduit and his amzie Zéesce, who give him
friendly greeting. All these personages are minutely described
in complexion, features, and dress. There is, of course, music
and dancing, while the songs of the birds are as sweet as
those of sirens. Here Lover finds, arrayed in embroidered
garments (vi.)
“The God of Love, him who assigns lady-loves at his will. It is he who
rules lovers, and who beats down pride, and makes servants of lords and
of ladies when he finds them too cruel.”
By his side, a youth, Doug-Regard, holds his two bows —
One black and knotted, the other beautifully carved — and his
ten arrows. The five in his right hand were beautiful, the
best, Swiftest, and handsomest being named Biautés, while the
others were Simplece, Franchise, feathered with valor and
courtesy, Compaignie, and Biau-Semêlant, whose wound is
less painful than that of the rest, because promising a proxi-
1 Roman de la Rose, Piere Marteau, Orléans, 1878.
7o THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
mate cure. The other five arrows were Orguer, Vilenie,
poisoned with felonie, Homte, Desesperance, and Movel-Penser
(Faithlessness). Near Love stand Biauté, Richece, une dame
de grant hautece, Largesce, Franchise, Cortoisie, and Jonesce,
all of whom are fittingly described.
When the company separate in pairs, the delights of life
in the garden are dwelt upon, “for there is no greater paradise
than to have one's love at his will.” Lover wanders to a
fountain in which he sees reflected some roses, particularly
(xii) “one so very beautiful that, in comparison, none of
the others was worth anything.” Going to pluck it, he is
stopped by the thorns and nettles which surround it. At
this moment the God of Love shoots his first arrow, Biauté,
which strikes through the eyes to the heart :
“For through the eyes he has put the arrow into my heart with great
severity.”
Lover faints. No blood, however, flows from his wound,
and he tries to draw out the arrow, but the point remains in
his heart.
“Nor did I know what to do or to say, nor where to find a physician for
my wound ; for neither from herb nor from root did I expect medicine.
Toward the bud my heart drew me so that I thirsted for nothing else :
if I had it in my possession, it would give me back life. The sight and
the fragrance of it greatly alleviated my pain.”
Wounded in rapid succession by Simplece, Cortoisie, and
Franchise, he faints again, but cannot be frightened from the
Rose.
“Love, which surpasses everything, gave me heart and hardihood to
do its commandment.”
Though the thorns keep him at a distance, he is happy to
see the Rose and inhale its fragrance.
“Thus I had from it such reward that I half forgot my ills in the delight
and joy.”
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 71
But the God shoots Compaignie into his heart, renewing his
pain so that he faints thrice.
“On -coming to myself, I complain and sigh, for my pain grows and
becomes worse, so that I have no hope at all of cure or of relief. I would
rather be dead than alive.”
Finally Biau-Semblant pierces him, but this arrow bears
with it an ointment that alleviates the pain.
“It had agony in the point, but the ointment much assuaged this : from
one part it anoints me, from another torments me, thus it aids me and
injures me.”
Having rendered his victim thus helpless, the God of Love
calls to him to surrender at once. Lover answers :
“Sire, willingly do I render myself, I will never defend myself against
you. . . . You can do with me whatever you wish, take me or kill me . .
for my life is in your hands. I cannot live till to-morrow if it is not by
your will. I expect from you joy and health, which I shall never have
from another, if your hand, which has wounded me, does not give me heal-
ing. . . . And know that I have no anger ; so much good have I heard
spoken of you that I wish to put heart and body entirely in your service :
for if I do your will I can have no pain at all.”
He would kiss Love's foot, but the God raises him and
permits him to kiss his mouth “which no vile man touches,”
for Love is “ so sweet, so frank, and so gentle that, whenever
any one is devoted to serve and honor him, there cannot dwell
within him vileness nor evil nor any bad knowledge.”
(xv.) Lover thus becomes the vassal of Love :
“My heart is yours, not mine, for it is obliged, be it ill, be it well, to do
your pleasure.”
(xvi.) Love — after locking the heart of his servant with
a golden key — promises him great benefits if he will suffer
faithfully and execute his commandments. At the request of
Lover, the god teaches him all the duties of his position.
First, he must avoid l’?/ozzzzze :
“I curse and excommunicate all those who love vulgarity.”
72 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
He must not speak as Keux did, but should imitate Gauvain,
should be wise and gentle in speech, and greet politely all
persons he meets :
“Afterwards, beware not to speak evil words or ribaldries: never to
name a vile thing ought thy mouth to be opened. . . . Serve and honor
all women, take pains and labor to serve them ; and if thou hearest any
evil-speaker who abuses women, blame him and bid him be silent. Do, if
thou canst, what pleases dames and damoise/les, so that they hear good
things said and told of thee; thus thou mayest rise in favor. After all
this, beware of pride. . . . A proud man does just the opposite of what a
fine lover ought to do.”
He must wear fine, well-fitting garments, shoes, gloves.
"Do not suffer upon thee any dirt,” have clean hands, teeth,
and nails.
“Prepare thyself for joy and delight, Love cares not for a sad man : it
is a very courtly malady.”
Yet the lover must suffer : “ one hour weep and the other
sing.” If you can sing, dance, ride, or play viol or flute, do it
to increase your credit. Avoid avarice.
“Never did any one know aught of love who did not delight to give, . . .
for he who, for a glance or for a sweet Smile, has given his entire heart,
ought indeed, after so rich a gift, to give all his possessions freely.”
In brief :
“Whoever wishes to make Love his master should be courteous and
without pride, should have a well-bred and gay bearing, and should be
praised for generosity.”
“Afterwards give thyself to penance, so that night and day, without
repentance, thy thought should be in well-loving.”
Put your heart all in one place “ so that it should be there,
not half, but entirely without trickery.”
After you have thus given your heart, “ then will happen to
thee those events which are grievous and severe to lovers.”
Often, thinking of your lady, you must depart from people,
so that they shall not perceive your anguish :
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 73
“Thou wilt go apart all alone, then will come to thee sighs and plaints,
fears and many other pains, in many ways thou wilt be tormented, one
hour hot and another cold, red one hour, another pale, thou never hadst
fever so severe.”
Often you will forget yourself :
“And a long time thou wilt be like a mute image, which neither shakes
nor moves.”
You must think of your amie who is distant.
“Then thou wilt say: ‘God, how ill it is to me when I do not see that
place where my heart is : why did I send my heart there alone?’”
But if the eyes and feet could accompany the heart, would
they stay here 2
“Not at all ; they would go to visit the precious sanctuary of which my
heart is so desirous.”
Nothing you see pleases you. You wander about in hopes
of meeting your lady, pensive, sad, sighing. To see her
beauty would be a great joy, but would make your heart
burn.
“Every lover is accustomed to follow the fire that burns him. The
nearer he feels the fire, the more he approaches it.”
“As long as thou shalt see thy amie, thou wilt never seek to move,
and when thou needest to depart, thou wilt bear in mind all day long what
thou hast seen ; and thou wilt consider thyself grievously defrauded in one
thing, that thou hadst not heart or hardihood to speak to her, but wast near
her without uttering a word, like one foolish and taken by surprise. . .
If thou hadst been able to get from her only a fair salutation, it would
have been worth a hundred marks to thee.”
You will take every opportunity to pass her street and her
house.
“But conceal thyself well from the people, and seek some other occasion
... than her that makes thee go there, for it is very wise to conceal oneself.”
74 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
If you meet your amie where you may salute her or speak
to her,
“Then it is meet that thou shouldst change color, all thy blood will
tremble, words and sense will fail thee, when thou thinkest to commence.”
False lovers speak fluently, but true ones suffer battle and
have no peace.
At night, when you think to sleep, you commence to
tremble, you toss about “ like one who has toothache.”
“ Then will come to thy memory both the manner and appearance of her
who has no equal. I will tell thee a strange marvel : sometimes it will
seem to thee as though thou hadst her of the bright face in thy arms all
naked, as though she had become entirely thy amie and companion.”
Awaking, you weep and lament. How sweet would death be in
her arms All these torments would be repaid by the joy she
could give. Alas ! that is too much to demand.
“But if with no more than a single kiss the fair one deigned to ease me,
I should have very rich reward for the pain I have suffered. But hard is
that which is to happen : I may consider myself a fool, when I have put
my heart in such a place that I expect from it no benefit. I speak like a
fool and a child, for a look from her is worth more than entire delight
from another.”
And more in the same strain :
“During the night thou wilt struggle thus and take little repose.”
Before dawn, whatever the weather, —rain, Snow or tempest,
—go watch her house, listen at any opening to hear if she stir,
let her hear you sigh and complain, for “well Ought a woman
to have some pity for one who endures such ill for her, if she
be not very hard.” Kiss the door upon leaving, and go before
daylight, so that you shall not be seen. These wanderings
make lovers thin and pale. The fat are not true lovers.
Be generous to the pucele de l’ostel, that she may praise you
to your lady.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 75
“Do not depart from her neighborhood, and if thou hast such great
need that it becomes necessary to go away, take care that thy heart remain,
and return soon. Thou oughtest not to stay away.”
At these precepts of the god, Lover naturally wonders :
“I marvel how a man, if he be not of iron, can live a month in such
a hell.”
The god answers that Hope is the aider of those whom Love
holds in prison :
“It is true that no ills equal those which afflict lovers, but hope makes
them suffer such ills as may not be numbered, for the joy which surpasses
them a hundred times.”
In addition to Hope, the god gives Lover three other aids :
I. Dous-Pensers, “which soothes the irritation and, coming to the
lover, makes him think of the joy that Hope promises him, and then sets
before him the laughing eyes, the straight nose which is neither too large
nor too small, the colored little mouth whose breath is so fragrant; and it
pleases him much when he calls to mind the form of every member. His
solace redoubles when he thinks of a smile or a fair glance or a kind look
that his dear amie has given him.”
2. Dous-Parlers. You must have a trusted friend to whom you can
speak of your lady and from whom you can ask Counsel. It is sweet to
speak of her you love.
3. Dous-Regars. “In the morning your eyes have a glad meeting,
when God shows them the precious sanctuary of which they are so desir-
ous. . . . And when the eyes are in delight, they are so well-bred that
they cannot have joy alone, but wish that the heart should rejoice, and
they assuage its ills: for the eyes, like trusty messengers, send at once to
the heart news of what they see : and for the joy the heart must needs
forget its pain, and the darkness in which it walks : for just as the light
chases away the darkness, so Dous-Regars effaces the darkness in which
lies the heart that languishes night and day with love: for the heart does
not suffer at all when the eyes see her whom they wish.”
Thereupon the god vanishes, leaving Lover to his pains.
(xviii.) Bel-Acueil aids him to approach the Roses, which are
76 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
guarded by Male-Bouche, le jangléor, and with him Homte and
Paor, (xix.) When Lover seeks too hastily to kiss the Rose,
Zangier springs up and expels him, and Bel-Acueil disappears.
(xx) Not daring to return, his pain grows unbearable. (xxi.)
Reason descends from her tower and admonishes him to leave
love and folly, (xxii.) but he cannot, for “Love has so over-
come my heart, that it is no longer under my will.” He would
rather die than be false to Love. (xxiii.) He thinks of
Amis, tells him his state, and receives from him advice and
comfort. (xxiv., xxv.) He begs pardon of Dangier without
avail, and Amis counsels him to suffer and wait, (xxvi.)
Franchise and Pitié soften Dangier, the first saying : “If Love
by force made him love, ought you to blame him for it?” and
the other telling how greatly he suffers. Dangier relents and
cedes Lover the company of Bel-Acueil, who leads him within
the enclosure. (xxvii.) He is in paradise; he begs a kiss
which Æe/-Aca/ei/ refuses, because Chaszzé has forbidden it, but
Venus comes with her touch “whose flame has heated many
a lady,” and pleads for Lover. (xxviii.) He kisses the Rose,
but Male-Bouche rouses /a/ousie, (xxix.) who reprimands
Bel-Acueil, (xxx.) and Lover flees. Homte and Paor awaken
Dangier, who had fallen asleep, and Lover, again cast out,
renews his sighs and tears :
“For I am fallen into Hell. Male-Bouche, cursed be thou ! Thy faith-
less and false tongue has procured me this sauce.”
(xxxi.) To imprison Bel-Acueil, they build a tower with
four gates guarded by Dangier, Honte, Paor, and Male-Bouche.
Within the tower with Bel-Acueil is an old hag who watches
her every moment. (xxxii.) Lover laments, and in the midst
of his complaining, the romantic love-poem abruptly breaks off.
The satirical and learned piece, which Jean de Meun attached
to this, may be neglected as foreign to the purpose of this
investigation.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 77
It will hardly be necessary to call attention to the correspon-
dence between the precepts of the Roman de la Rose and
those which were found gradually unfolding in Bernart de
Ventadorn, Peire Rogier, and Chrétien de Troies. The hyper-
boles and metaphors of the poets have become the fixed prin-
ciples of a science, the sections of a code of laws. The God of
Love, his invincible power, his teachings, his penalties better
than all other rewards, his garden and palace open only to the
courteous ; the beauty which, as a dart, passes through the
eyes and wounds the heart; the suffering and sickness thus
caused, the dreams, the contradictory longings, the fear of the
loved one, the trembling and loss of sense in her presence, the
fear of detection by others ; the worship, the submission, the
complete devotion ; the appeal for pity, the exaggerated happi-
ness in the smallest recognition, the desire for the lady's
advantage, the benefits her loveliness spreads around her, the
valor and goodness with which she endows her lover, — these
sentiments and fancies have become immutable laws. Beauty
and life quickly disappear before this formidable machinery :
the lilies of the field give place to the tawdry fabrications of
the shop.
As a specimen of the mass of insipid imitative pieces, which
contain merely cold combinations of ingenuity, without a par-
ticle of truth or passion," we may mention the first part of
the Panthère d'Amour.” In the poet's dream, the Panther, a
noble beast that all others excepting the dragon love, attracts
him, but he is kept away from it by a hedge of nettles, brambles,
and thorns. The Panther signifies his lady (463), its colors
her virtues (471); for, as the Panther has the colors of all
other beasts, so his lady has all the graces and virtues of
womankind. The Panther's sweet breath that attracts and
* G. Paris, Litt. du Moyen Age, § 1 II.
* Le Dit de la Panthère d'Amours, par Nicole de Margival. Ed. Henry A.
Todd, Paris, 1883.
78 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
cures all the other beasts, signifies his lady's words, which all
gladly hear (495) and which have power to improve.
“None is so full of vulgarity, of pride, rage, or envy, that, if he will
listen to her, she will not make him cast out all evil and seek to do good"
(5 I 5 seq.).
The dragon who flees from the Panther signifies the envious.
The nettle is l’amoureuse pensée (565); the bramble, desire
which holds the lover fast while it hurts him ; the thorns, evil
tongues (585); the valley in which the Panther dwells, humility
(625), etc. *s
The God of Love appears and gives the poet a horse which
leaps the hedge, but on approaching the Panther, the lover
dares not speak. Love then leaves him in charge of Dous
Penser, Dous Souvenir, and Espérance, who examine him and
find him loyal. The God and Goddess of Love counsel him.
Venus even presents to him a poem to send his lady, but on
account of a dream, he dares not use it. The god gives him
advice and refers him to André le Chapelain, as one who has
expounded the whole doctrine of love, and to the Roman de la
Rose, where the complete science is to be found (1032). He
must give his lady a song, telling his faithfulness and his pains,
or, if he dare not present it in person, he must give it to one
of her friends to read to her. Not having courage even for
this, Lover is taken to Fortune (1925), whose palace is
described. He is cast into a heap of ruins in charge of Adver-
sity, but is released by Bone Volonté, who leads him to Pros-
perity, at whose side sits Grace. Pity and her daughter Merci
come, and with them the Panther. Lover's sense fails him, but
when Grace, Pity, and the others intercede for him, the Panther
yields. In his joy he awakens, and vowing eternal fidelity, he
consoles himself with singing.
The series of songs that follow, connected as they are by an
explanation in verse, suggest a distant resemblance to the con-
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 79
temporary Vita Nuova. No pain can keep him from loving
(2.226). The cause of his love is beauty, sense, and grace
(2259). Having told the reason of his love, he proceeds to tell
why he is joyful (2296). If Love gives one the heart to sing,
he surely ought not to fail, for he has put heart and body in
her keeping. At first he thought to possess his amie, but he
was deceived, for she avoided him, and thus put him in such
distress that he sang but little. Then he made this baladele
(2304) :
“My trouble has made me silent, for my lady flees from me. O good
Love, let me please her, that I may have subject for song.”
He fears his lady will never listen to him, but that she will
love another, a thought which brings him intense pain. But
Love would not do such evil to a true lover, hence he will sing,
for he must some day have his reward. So he makes a changon
that shows and reveals his state, past, present, and future (2379).
“I used to sing gayly but now laugh no more, for she who has my love
will not listen. Hence I am sad, and remain away from her, for I had
rather be absent than see another win her, which would kill me. But Love
will not permit such suffering to one who serves him entirely. Indeed, I
love her so that I shall never relax.”
He should not be blamed for loving, since his lady is praised
by all who know her. If less fine than she, he ought not to be
abashed, for Love fills hearts with humility, as Adam de la
Halle has sung : Fins caters, etc. Indeed, he would have great
joy if he could please her, whatever it might cost him. His
last Song is a chant royal.
“I thank you, Love, for the sweet pain that I feel for the most beautiful
and best in the world. I cannot deserve the sweet benefits you send me.
To delight me, I have hope, desire, and love, though I cannot attain the
love of my lady. My recollections cause evil to flee and youth to maintain
itself in joy. Lady, gentle of heart, beautiful to look upon, with fresh color
and laughing eyes, I may well tremble that I have dared to love in so
precious a place. Pity me, for I dare not reveal my love. I have no
8O THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
resource if you do not pity. Lady, I beg grace, if ever gentle heart shall
have pity on suffering : not that I have despair in bearing this pain; I
rather take pleasure in these sweet ills and joy in them, nor will I be cured,
for my hope is worth more than the full enjoyment of another.”
This work, in which his whole state is described, was written
for consolation at the Command of Love. It gives, as has been
remarked, a faint suggestion of the Vita Nuova, but compared
with the deep beauty of Dante's work, how vulgar and trivial
it seems
It would be tedious to enumerate the conceits borrowed from
earlier writers. The God of Love is resistless, lovers enter
his service and pay him homage (378, 403), he teaches and
advises them (IOO5, 1654, 1951). He is always magnificently
attired and is accompanied by a joyous company (I 53, 225,
980). Beauty, entering the eyes and wounding the heart, is
the cause of love (II.7.2, 2 IO5, 2569). Love is a sickness, the
greatest pain, though Sweet (1823, 2554, 2589). The lady is
the only medicine or physician to cure it (864, I 155). It leads
to inward struggles (I IOO). The image of the loved one
always lingers in memory (783, 1614). The lover fears to
displease her (685, 864, IO50, IO62, 1220). In her presence
he trembles and loses sense (I 18O, 21 12). He also fears evil
tongues (3, 9 IO, IQOO). Love Commands concealment (I 360,
1686, 2630). The lover is perfectly devoted and submissive
(1690, 1798, 2542) and faithful (1860, 22 IO, 2.226). He
receives great benefits (18, IO53, 246O, 2.565), he begs for pity
(1825, 2577, 2585). The end of his passion is possessio;:
(2I 69, 218O).
A characteristic subtlety is that of the ring (1285 seq.). It
must be of gold, the most precious, strongest, and firmest
metal, to typify faithful love ; the stone must be an emerald,
which gives grace to her who wears it and is the emblem of
hope : this must be turned to the inside of the hand to show
the concealment of love : the ring must be worn on the left
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 8 I
hand, as that is less employed in the vulgar offices of ordinary
life ; and so on.
Another interesting motive, one which has been before
referred to, is the constitution of loyal lovers into a sort of
guild or order of knighthood. Not daring to send his poem
directly to his lady, the author addresses it to several of her
friends,
“And to all those in general who love well and loyally” (21).
Besides the loyal lovers, one should also address the ladies.
The God of Love tells our poet that he should have revealed
his state. How 2 asks he ; and the god replies (4.13 seq.):
“Friend, there are in the country many beautiful dames and damaoiseles,
noble, well bred, and wise, who have been established by me to receive
service and homage from the good and wise.”
This offspring of the Courts of Love had also become an
established poetic institution. But enough of such threadbare
convention
The next step in this progress is that represented by the
continuation of the Roman de la Rose by Jean de Muen ; the
love-system, taken as a mere form, is employed to set forth
teachings in science, philosophy, morality, and religion. The
Chasteau d'Amor" is an account of the creation : the Breviari
d'Amor,” an encyclopaedia of the knowledge of the age.
* By Robert Grosstete, Ed. Cooke, Caxton Society, London, 1852.
*See Bartsch, Grundriss, p. 53, and Mahn, Gedichte, vol. i. p. 181.
VII.
CONTEMPORARY with this evolution of love theories in the
epic and didactic poems of the Langue d’Oil, there was a
parallel growth in the lyrics of the Langue d'Oc. In the
earliest of these lyrics is found the seed of the courtly concep-
tions which, when transplanted to the northern soil, developed
in such a systematic and logical manner. But during the same
time, the same seed was also flowering in the south. At first
unmethodical, here too, by endless imitation, the poetry hard-
ened into a set of conventional forms. The same sequence of
ideas, incessantly repeated, fixed itself into a system, and at
last we find established a philosophy and code of love, based
upon authority and taught as an art.
This conception, however, seems to have been borrowed
from the north, where it had been developed along the lines
already discussed, for it did not become a motive in Provençal
poetry until after the beginning of the thirteenth century,
The ideas found in the lyrics of the golden age of this litera.
ture are such as the poets derived from their predecessors, and
transmitted but slightly modified to their posterity. They
imitated each other and built their conceits upon the models
prepared by their fellow-countrymen, with no heed for any
foreign examples. This complacent self-sufficiency accounts
for the flimsiness of their thinking, and for the tedious same-
ness of their praises, their vows, and their complaints.
The following selections will exhibit the spirit of these
singers and show how slightly they built the edifice of their
love-system beyond the foundations of Bernart de Ventadorn.
Love personified as a being of irresistible power :
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 83
“All my thoughts are from Love, wherefore I think only of love, and
they are evil-speakers who say that a cavalier ought to think of anything
else.” — Raimon de Miraval, MW. ii. p. 118: D’Amor son.
Arnaut Daniel is vanquished by Love. — Bartsch, Chres. 137, 5 ,
G. Faidet held in uncertainty, id. 147, 26.
“ The teaching and the merit and the worth of you, lady, whom I suppli-
cate night and day, have led my heart with such good associations that
where most I suffer, I sing and rejoice; and since Love shows all her
power against me, all alone, whom she finds most loyal, neither force nor
knowledge avails me against her.” — A. de Marueil, M.W. i. p. 163 :
L'ensenhamezztz.
“Lady, we three, you, I, and Love, alone know, without other witness,
what was the covenant.” – 2d. ... Dozzzzza, zzos tres.
“And it is reasonable and right, in my opinion, that one should love the
best with good faith, even if it avails him not : he is foolish who revolts,
but I serve now, and never demand anything of her. For one asks enough
of a wise lord when he loves and serves him ; then if I love faithfully my
lady, whose I am, joy ought truly to come to me from it, for she is the
noblest that one can choose in the world.” — Pons de Caffdue?!, MW. i. p.
338. Ef es razos.
“Now I have great joy when I remember the love which holds my heart
firm in her allegiance : for the other day, I went into a garden beautifully
covered with flowers and filled with the songs of birds, and when I was in
that beautiful garden, there appeared to me the beautiful lily, and she took
my eyes and seized my heart, so that, ever since, I have no remembrance
or sense except concerning her whom I love.” — G. de Borneå/, // W. i. p.
184: Or at gram joy.
“Love indeed holds me in her command, so that in me begins many a
sweet pleasure, and I believe that God made me for her use and for her
worth.” — G. de Cab. MW. i. p. 1 ſo : Be we tem.
“I give myself to you by such a covenant that I have neither power nor
desire to depart while I live ; for Love has put me in your prison, since you
are the best that is, and have the most courtesy : for the lowest born when
he sees you is courteous and bears you good faith.” – Pons de Caft. MW.
2. Z. 341 ... Per azła/ coveme.
“Then I am indeed foolish, for I love her when it displeases her : Shall
I depart? No, for I cannot.”— Peiro/, / W. ii. p. 11 : Domics be sui fo/s.
84 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“Love wilt thou never do anything I wish 2 For this I pray thee,
thou who hast it in thy power, that thou turn her heart a little toward me.”
— A. de Marueil, M W. i. ?, 162: Amors / fara's fa.
“No man loves well and nobly who complains of Love, however ill she
treats him ; as she more grievously binds me, and burns and inflames me,
I have better desire.” — Peirol, Barzsch, Chres. 140, 12 : A/u/s home.
“When Love wills I sing, for other flower or leaf I pay no attention to.”
— Petrol, id. 139, 6.
“Love, from whom I every day ask help, has given me this advice ;
Love has commanded me to write that which my mouth dares not speak.”
— A. de Marueil, id. 94, 30.
“The sweet thoughts which Love often gives me, lady, make me say of
you many pleasing verses.”— G. de Cab. 2d, 73, 20.
Beauty causes love :
“She is whiter than Helen, more beautiful than any flower, and full of
courtesy, white teeth with true words, with frank heart without vulgarity,
fresh color with blond hair ; God who gave her the mastery, save her, for I
never saw a nobler.” —A. de Marue?/, 2d. 93, 27. See Ballade, 2d. 243, 35.
“Never since Adam plucked from the tree the apple whence we are all
in distress, did Christ give life to so beautiful a one, – a body well formed
and dear and faultless, white. and smoother than an emerald ; she is so
beautiful that I am sad, for she never heeds me at all.” — G. de Cab. MW.
i. ſ. 111 : Anc Zºus AW Adam.
“God himself, without question, made her of his own beauty and or-
dained that her great worth should be graced with humility.”— G. de Cab.
MW. i. p. 11.2 : Qu'eſh eis.
“Your tender person, your fresh color, and the Sweet pleasing glances
that you know how to give me make me so desire and wish for you that
now I love you, whence I the more despair.” – A. de Marueil, M.W. i. ?.
159 : Vostra gem cors.
“Every day you are more beautiful and pleasing to me, wherefore I wish
ill to my eyes with which I gaze at you, for they can never see you to my
benefit, but they see you subtly to my injury.”— Folguet de Marseille,
MW. i. p. 329 : A totz forms. -
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 85
Beauty strikes through the eyes to the heart :
“My first light was so clear to choose her, whence my heart believed my
eyes.”— Arnaut Daniel, Barzsch, Chres. 136, 27.1
“And since Love wishes to honor me so much that she makes me carry
you in my heart, I beg you for this grace, that you guard me from the
burning ; for I fear it for your sake much more than for mine ; and since
my heart, lady, has you in itself, if evil comes to it, since you are in there,
you must needs suffer it ; therefore do to me whatever will be good for you
and guard my heart as your dwelling.” — Folguez de Marseille, Bartsch,
Chres. 121, Io.
Eyes messengers of the heart. – 2d, 157, 4.
“My eyes sweetly made me a rich gift when they showed me her form
and her lovely laughing mouth.” — id. 245, 14.
“Therefore my heart is inclined toward her wherever I may be, for true
love joins and binds two hearts in distant lands.” — Peiro/, // W. ii. ſ. 5 :
Pezzo mos cors.
“Her beautiful eyes have indeed betrayed me like a false messenger,
and have put into my heart love of her which makes me suffer.” — id. ii.
£. 23 : Be 72 frahiron.
“Lance of love which wounds the heart without healing.”— G. de Cab.
MW. 2. f. I I I Lamasa d’amors.
“ Now I have indeed learned of Love, how he can wound with his dart,
but how he can gently heal I do not yet know. I know well who is the
physician who alone can give me health ; but what does this avail me if
I do not dare show her my mortal wound.”— Peire A′aimon, MW, i. ?.
134. A raz čezz.
Love brings anguish and suffering :
“You have taken from me laughter and given me pensiveness. No man
feels more grievous torture than I.” — G. de Cab. Barzsch, Chres. 75, I.
“For the fire that burns me is such that Nile will not extinguish it, any
more than a delicate thread will sustain a tower.” — G. de Cab. MW, i. p.
III : Que'el fuecs.
* Canello translates this, “my heart believed her eyes.”
86 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“Lady, I cannot tell you the hundredth part of the pains or the torture
or the restlessness or the suffering that I bear, lady, for love of you.” —
A. de Marueiſ, Bartsch, Chres. 98, 9.
“And you care not when you see me die; formerly you did with me as
one does with a child, making him cease crying by means of a little coin ;
and then when he has grown joyful and one takes away what was given
him, he weeps and has twice as much grief as he had at first.”— Aimeric
de Pegulham, Barzsch, Chres. 162, 15.
“But I, alas ! who suffer the burning and the pain that come from love,
with great suffering and injury, and my color grows pale ; — but I shall be
an aged man and all white like snow before I will complain of my lady.”
— G. de Cab. MW. i. ?. I I I Mas ieu /as. *
“Then I am indeed foolish, since I do not give up loving her ; for it
indeed seems to me folly, since no good comes to me from it : rather do I
see that now my pain grows which her person alone has made in me. By
my faith, I tell you, it is better for me to suffer my injury always for her,
even if she cares not, than that another should give me her whole love.” —
Folquet de Marseille, M W. i. p. 330 : Donca ben suž fo/hs.
“All the ills of love I have indeed learned, but the benefits I cannot
know at all ; and if it were not that I have good hope, I should think that
I should never have them : and I should have reason to be desperate, I
have loved so much and never yet was loved But if the benefit is so
sweet and pleasing as the ill is full of anguish and tribulation, I would
rather die than not await it still.” – 2d, 33.1 : Lo mals d'amor.
“Now is burning anew the ill of love which I had before ; for I feel a
pain come to my heart with an agonizing desire, and the physician who
could heal me wishes to detain me for long treatment, just as the other
physicians do. . . . From this I see that she will be good to me; for
Hippocrates, I have heard it said, teaches that a physician ought not
to fail in any advice that one asks of him.”— P. Raimon, M.W. i. p. 134 :
Emguera m vai.
“I console myself singing, for Love kills me with trouble, since she has
found me more true than any other lover.” — Peirol, MW. ii. p. 17. Mi
co/t07?.
Love conquers by suffering :
“A true lover ought to pardon great wrong and gently suffer injury in
order to gain.” — G. de Cab. MW. i. p. 1 ſo : Que ſis amans.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 87
“But suffer in peace, for they conquer who best suffer.” — G. de
Borneil, M W. i. p. 193 : Mas sufretz.
The lover is restless, always filled with visions of his lady :
“For the long hope and the long thinking, and the too much watching
and too little sleeping, and the desire to see you, keep my heart so unquiet
that I pray God a hundred times night and day that he give me death or
your love.”— A. de Marueiſ, Barzsch, Chres. 95, 18. See also 96, 39,
97, 21 ; but Žerhaps this £iece is based upon northern models.1
“In thought I gaze upon your body dear and sweet.”— G. de Cab.
Barzsch, Chres. 73, 24.
“I hold in remembrance the dear and sweet smile, your worth, and the
beautiful body, white and smooth.” — id. 75, 12.
“For the fresh color and the sweet, beautiful body I hold in such
remembrance that I think of nothing else.” — G. de Cab. MVV. i. ?, 1 ſo :
Que la fresca.
“I turn my eyes, noble prudent lady, toward the land where you are,
and when I cannot bring myself nearer to you, I hold you in my heart,
and think here of your sweet courteous person which makes me languish,
of the kind looks and the delight and the solace, of the worth and the
sense and the beauty, of you who have never been absent from my mind
since I first saw you.”— A. de Marueil, id. p. 161 : Vas lo ſays.
“For my heart guards you and holds you so dear that it makes my body
seem stupid ; for it puts all my sense and power there, so that, for the
sense it keeps, it leaves the body without guidance : when one speaks to
me, it often happens that I do not know it, and one salutes me but I hear
nothing ; and therefore no one should reproach me if he salutes me and I
do not reply to him a single word.” — Folquet de Marseille, Bartsch,
Chres. 127, 26.
“It often happens that I think and reflect so strongly that I do not hear
when I am spoken to, nor do aught but tremble and shudder.” — Gauce//n
Faidit, M W. ii. p. 9o: Manthas saisos.
Love leads to contradictions and foolishness :
“For I well know by experience that where love is, folly prevails in
place of sense. — Peire Raimon, Bartsch, Chres. 87, 26.
1 See the discussion, p. 98 seq.
88 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
This is completely expressed by G. de Borneil:
“I make a song bad and good, etc.” (id. Io9, I 5), a mere string of con-
tradictions, ending “She can bring me back to my proper sense, if she
deigns to hold me dear?” (IO4, 27).
“Without sin I embrace penance, and without doing wrong ask pardon,
and a noble gift I regard as nothing, and from rage I have good will, and
entire joy from weeping, and sweet savor from bitterness, and I am bold
through fear, and know how to gain from loss, and, when I am vanquished,
to conquer.” — Peire Vidal, Bartsch, Chres. 107, 31.
“My heart springs and trembles often, my lady steals it from me so
that I have no sense.” — Peirol, id. 139, 29. See also id. 169, 6.
“Lady, you and Love oppress me so that I dare not love you, and can-
not withdraw from it; one thing drives me away, another makes me remain,
one gives me courage, another makes me fear ; I dare not beg you for hap-
piness : like one wounded to death, who knows that he is dying and yet
struggles, I call upon you for grace with a desperate heart.”—A. de
Marueiſ, MW. i. p. 158 : Så m destrenhefz. }
“Wise and foolish, humble and proud, covetous and generous, and
cowardly and brave am I, as it happens, and joyous and sad ; and I can
be pleasing and annoying, and vile and noble and vulgar and courteous,
low and worthy, and I know evil and good, and I have the will and the
knowledge of all good qualities, and, if I fail in anything, I do it for
lack of power.” — A'ambaut de Vaqueiras, MW. i. 366 : Savis e folks.
The lover fears to declare his passion, trembles, and loses
self-control in his lady's presence :
“I am a faithful and loyal lover to you to whom I dare not express or
discover my thought, noble lady with fine courteous heart, so do I fear the
worth in you and the great nobility and virtue.” — Gauce/m Faidit,
Bartsch, Chres. 147, 33.
“And since you find no equal in beauty in the world, as I think, there.
fore it holds me in check and takes away my courage and keeps me back
so that I dare not beg anything of you.” – 2d, 148, 6.
“For it often happens that with full resolve, lady, I think to pray to you
for my sake, and then when my heart sees you, I am lost and have no
remembrance, but only look at you, and cannot and dare not pray to you,
nor can I express my love for you.” — id. 148, II. See also id. 157, 31
and 168, 17.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. - 89
“Good lady, your rich, well-known worth, and your form and your
pleasing bearing, and your mouth which I see Smile so sweetly have
so overcome me that I often become mute; and where I thought to
speak finely, I lose sense ; for with fear does one ask a rich gift, where-
fore I am timid.” — P. Raimon, M.W. i. p. 146: Bona domna.
“I do not at all dare to show her my pain, especially now, when it
happens that I see her ; I say to her with fear hidden things whereby
she knows how I feel ; and if I at all err in speaking, too great fear
makes me fail, which humbles the most expert.” – A. de Marueil, MW, i.
Ż. 168 : Ges no /’aus.
“Like the poor man who lies in a rich palace, who never wails, though
he has great pain, so much he fears to disturb the lord, so I dare not com-
plain of my mortal pain. Indeed I ought to suffer, for the one in the
world that I most desire and wish shows me disdain ; thus I dare not call
for grace, such fear have I that she will weary of me.”— Peire Vida/,
MW. i. ?. 222 : Si col ſauðres.
The fear of detection is universal. Almost always the lady
is addressed by an assumed name. Evil-speakers are con-
stantly reprobated. (Bartsch, Chres. I 53, 2 I ; I 56, 27 ; 208,
33 ; 245, 16; etc.). See the biography of G. de Cab. MW. i.
p. IO7 ; and that of A. de Marueil, id. i. p. 148, where we
read :
“And he was enamored of her, and of her made his songs; but he did
not dare tell them to her, nor to any one with the name in which he had
made them, but he said that he made them for another.” "
“You, whom I more desire than any other in the world, I blame and
disavow and, in appearance, love not ; all that I do for fear, you ought to
take in good faith, even when I see you not.” – G. de Cab. Bartsch,
Chres. 7.5, 5.
“I so fear her worth and her fine nobility, and I have such willingness
to do all her desire, and the evil-speakers give me such fear, that I do not
dare to complain to her, nor to discover nor show my true heart, but I give
her a thousand sighs every day on this account.” — P. Raimon, M.W. i. p.
136: 7am tem son / retz.
For the character of this secrecy, vide Biography of Guillem de Saint-Didier,
MW. ii. p. 37.
90 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“In thought I kiss you and fondle you and embrace you ; this loving
is sweet and dear and good, and no jealous one can see me.” – A. de
Marueil, M W. i. p. 161 : Pensan vos bais.
“Thus is lost whoever thinks either to say pleasing things or calumnies,
through discovering my heart, for I know the best of any how to defend
myself, for I can lie and remain truthful; there is a truth which is false
and lying, for whoever says what debases love lies toward his lady and
betrays himself. — A. de Marueil, M W. i. ?, 158: Aitan se perf.
“Against troublesome calumniators, evil-speaking ones, through whom
joy is destroyed, I wish that each lover would conceal and cover his heart:
for the world is to be held false, and one ought not now to speak the truth;
often it is better to lie and excuse one's self.” – 2d. f. 162 : Contra’ls
lauzengiers. -
“I beg, lady, that you understand me better than I speak, for I love
you a thousand times more than I show, and I keep away only through
fear; for I would be much more intimate with you, only one would say
that I am in love; so, it is true that I never loved anything so much,
but toward you I do not dare to show it.” — id. A. 164: Mie/hs gu'ieu.
“All ill-used, I was faithful and good, frank and humble and concealing
and fearing, without too much speaking and free from all deception ; and I
knew well how, among the discourteous, to conceal my joy, so that the
false ones — may God confound them — could not spread reports of our
love.” — Pons de Caft. MW. i. p. 34.1 : Totz mal mematz.
“If one demands of me anything about my sweet desire, Love Com-
mands me to say the opposite of the truth.” — Peiro/, // W. ii. ?, 15.
S’ozzz zezz.
Sometimes the lady is warned not to believe these evil-
speakers :
“Beautiful worthy lady, courteous and well-bred, do not believe calum-
niators nor jealous evil-speakers about me, who remain yours and do not
complain of another, nor can I ever again love any woman ; but I wish to
serve and honor them all for your sake, who are the most beautiful and
the most worthy.” – Poms de Caff. MW. i. p. 374: Belha domna valens.
See also B. de Born, Barzsch, Chres. I 13.
Religion and gallantry are blended together. See G. de
Borneil, “Reis glorios,” Bartsch, Chres. IOI ; Peire Vidal,
MW. i. p. 219.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 9 I
“For nothing may have any part in me but you alone, excepting God;
and if God must hold a fief, let him hold his part from you.”— A. de
Marueil, MW. i. p. 174 : Que res no y'aia.
“Humble and faithful and frank, I supplicate you, with loyal heart,
good and worthy lady, for you are the best in the world and most worthy
and gentle and frank and noble, and most gentle and joyous ; wherefore
I love you — may I never have other profit — so truly that I think of
nothing else, even when I pray God, whence on your account He forgets
me.” — Pons de Cap. MVV. i. p. 347 : Humils e ſis.
“If in belief I were so faithful to God, without fail I should enter
paradise alive.” — G. de Cab. Barzsch, Chres. 75, 16.
“I desire you more than God her of Edom.” — A. Daniel, id. 137, 26.
“If love availed me so that my affection pleased my lady, I should have
what seems to me a joy richer than paradise.”— Peire A'aimon, MW. i. z.
142 : Qué si me va/gues.
“Good lady, I think I see God when I gaze upon your tender body.”—
Peire Vidal, Diez. Poesie, p. 144, note 4.
“I always supplicate and adore toward the country where my lady is ;
and I even would hold as a lord a shepherd who should come thence.” —
A. de Marueil, MW, i. p. 169 : Tot ades sofley.
“While I live, what else shall I beg of God but that He should let me
find grace with you?”— Uc de Saint-Circ, Bartsch, Chres. 159, 13.
“Often I sigh and supplicate and adore toward the place where I see
her resplendent beauty shine.” — G. de Borneå/, // W. i. ?, 184: Soven
sos??r.
They express entire devotion : nothing else is of value
except the lady's love. Bartsch, Chres. 87, 17 ; I IO, 39 ;
I4 I, I6 ; I44, I2 ; I 54, 3 ; I 57, 33 ; 209, I 5 ; etc.
“I have great desire that I might come to her on my knees; from as
far as one could see her, I should come to her with joined hands to do
homage as a servant ought to do to his lord, and weeping ask for grace
without fear of evil people.”— P. Raimon, M.W. i. p. 134: Gran talent ai.
“ For no one wears a ribbon whom I would care to lie with or be her
lover, in place of receiving your salute.” – G. de Cab. Bartsch, Chres.
75, 23.
92 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“It indeed seems to me that love of you conquers me, for ever since I
saw you, my whole desire has been to love and serve you.” — id. 75, 31.
“ May God never include me among those who pray to Him, if I would
have the revenue of the six greatest kings, provided that grace and good
faith should not avail me with you ; for I cannot depart from you in whom
my love is put.” — id. 76, 25.
“Without any reserve, I am hers to sell and to give . . . I had rather lose
with her than gain joy from another.” — Peire Vidal, id. Io9, 7.
B. de Born, id. I I 3, I I, would rather think of her than have another.
He curses himself if he ever failed toward her, even in thought.
“Alas, I have not myself in my own power ; rather do I go seeking my
own ill, and wish much more to lose and injure myself with you, lady, than
to win with another.” — Aimeric de Pegulham, Bartsch, Chres. 161, 37.
“If any ill-bred calumniator has said ill of me, I had rather he had taken
from me my salvation ; for just as little as a fish lives without water, shall
I live if my destruction pleases my lady, whose I am to do all her commands.
Behold, if I love her without treacherous heart I have not so mortal an
enemy in the world that, if I hear her speak well of him, I will not choose
him for my lord.” – Pons de Cap. MW. i. 348 : E si negus. Same
thought in Peire Vidal, id. A. 222.
“Wherefore I am devoted and given up to true love and to her whom I
desire ; for my eyes have made me choose with fine taste the beautiful one
who is flower and mirror and light and head and guide of all good-breeding :
and since so sweetly she wounded my heart with a loving glance, I have
thought of nothing else, and no other good has been pleasing to me, and I
have no remembrance of anything but her.”— P. Raimon, M.W. i. p. 146:
Per qu' àeu li.
“Like one who loves and is not loved have I done, since I have long
loved in one sole place, for which I do not repent ; for I had rather serve
her in despair than have all my will of another ; and since I love her loyally
without deception, I believe that she is so worthy that I shall never have
injury from it.”— A. de Marueiſ, MW, i. p. 164: Aissi cum selh.
“Love has so entirely changed and turned me from other things, and
moved me at will, that all those I see seem to me foolish and stupid, for
from them I cannot have the solace of love, on your account, lady, from
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 93
whom my wish does not depart : and if I ever turn my heart to love another,
may I have no help from God, from Grace, or from Love.”—A. de Marueil,
MW. i. ?, 166 : Qu'aissi m'a tot.
“Like a true lover with frank, humble, and true heart, I live rejoicing in
the sole hope of Love, amidst the grievous pain that my heart bears, since
she made me choose one of whom no lies can be said in praising her, nor
can one third of the good that is in her be told.” — A. de Marueil, MW, i.
Ż. 168. A guiza de ſºn.
“I would have heartfelt love for you, and would wish ill to myself, and
would abandon singing and joy, and would die sadly without comfort, if I
saw that my destruction would please you. . . . I can well hate myself, but I
can never cease loving you.” – A. de Marueil, M.W. i. ?, 175. A vos
attraz.
“Dear love, sweet and frank, attractive and beautiful and good, my heart
abandons itself to you so that it gets no calm from another ; to you I bear
certain love without pride and without arrogance ; and I desire your love
more than Lombardy or France.” — Peire Vidal, M W. i. ?. 238 : Car
a/ziga.
“Now will my song turn to my lady whom I hold dearer than my eyes
or my teeth.” — id. f. 24.1 : Ar m 'er mon chant.
“Loyal Love has given me such a fine and firm will that I shall never
depart from you, lady, in whom I have my good hope ; you are so worthy,
courteous in true speaking, frank and gentle, gay with humility, beautiful
and pleasing, so that it is not to be said that you lack any good quality one
could wish in a lady ; and since your rich worthiness has risen so high,
suffer that I love you, for I wish everything that pleases you.”— Pons de
Cap. MW. i. p. 350 : Tan m'a donat.
“For seeing others I am blind, for hearing, deaf : her only do I hear and
see and gaze at.”— A. Daniel, M W. ii. ?, 75 : D'autras veger,
In general, the poet has loved his lady from the day he first
saw her, and has never varied an instant :
“The day when I first saw you, lady, when it pleased you to let me see
you, my heart left all other thoughts, and all my desires were fixed in you :
you placed longing in my heart, lady, with a sweet Smile and a simple glance,
so that you made me forget everything that exists.” – G. de Cab. M.W. i.
A. Yog : Lo form gaz'ze us wi.
94 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“When first I saw her, she pleased me so that I could not retain my
heart at all ; it was entirely with her and it is still there.” – Peirol, MW.
ii. ?. 28. Quant eu premier.
“I have loved her and wished always to do her commands ever since I
saw her, for I was never changeable toward her.” —-G, de St.-Didier, M W.
ii. p. 49. Amada l'ai.
The poet's devotion leads him to wish his lady every good, and
particularly induces him to sing and spread abroad her praises.
“Let not your rich worth harm me, for I cannot bear it for a day longer :
since I saw you I have had sense and knowledge to increase your fame by
my powers, for in many good places I have said it and made it heard ; and
if it should please you that you should deign to thank me, I shall ask no
more of your friendliness, but I shall prize the thanks as my recompense.”
— A. de Marueil, M.W. i. ?, 159 : AVo mi mogua.
“I should be indeed rich if I dared to speak her praise, for to hear it
would delight all ; but I fear that false calumniators, wicked and cruel and
unrestrained, might hear me, and I have too many enemies : it does not
please me that it should be known ; but when I see one of her lineage, I
praise her till my mouth bursts, I bear such love to her beautiful joyous
person.” – G. de Borneil, MW. i. p. 185: Ben fora ricz. See further G.
de Borneå/, id. 195 : B. de Born, 2d. f. 273 ; Ramóauf de Vagueiras, id.
p. 368.
“One cannot grieve on the day on which he thinks of her, for joy is born
in her and begins ; and whoever praises her does not lie, whatever good he
says; for she is the best, without dispute, and the gentlest to be seen in the
world.” — Peire Vidal, MW. i. ?. 224 : Qu'oz/u no pot.
“I must despair since I cannot know any reason why she should care for
me; nevertheless I will still keep all my mind for her, so that in my heart I
will love her secretly, and I will speak well of her in my songs.” — Folquet
de Marseille, MW, i. p. 320 : Desesperar m'ai.
“The great beauty and the fine worth that is in her, and all good quali-
ties that woman can have, put me now in good hope ; and I do not at all
think it can be possible that, where all other virtues are, there should not be
mercy; and since humility makes me bear my pain in good part, humility,
mercy, and discretion can avail me, if my lady only acquires them.” — id.
33 1: La grams be?/ſa/2.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 95
“Lady Auda, I do not wish to make ballads or songs which do not speak
of you.”— Pons de Cap. MW. i. p. 340. Dona n'A meda.
“If God wished to complete in one alone all the joy and the good and
the fine praises and the courteous acts and sayings of all the best ladies,
He might know truly that she whom I desire would have a hundred per
cent more.” — id. 346. Sº totz los gaugs.
The troubadours give constant prominence to the great
benefits of love.
Sometimes they discuss the subject in general :
“Very low would be put worth, entertainment, and gayety, if it were not
for love which always maintains prowess and makes people courteous, for it
takes the best.”— Petrol, Barzsch, Chres. Izo, 24.
“ It does not befit a true lover to make much ado, rather ought he to
conceal and hide his heart and be thankful for the good and the ill that he
sees of love ; for one is esteemed on account of courteous qualities and
when by knowledge he keeps himself from blundering ; for from a good
place comes a good recompense ; and if there were no love-making and
courtship, there would be no worth or service or honor.” — P. Kaimon,
MW. 7. A. 147: Masſis amazes.
\
“Happy is he whom love keeps joyous, for love is the climax of all
blessings, and through love one is gay and courteous, frank and gentle,
humble and proud ; wherever love is, one carries on a thousand times
better wars and courts, whence arise worthy deeds ; wherefore I have put
all my heart in love ; and since I have good expectation that it will enrich
me, I do not complain of the distress or the pain that I bear.” — Pons de
Cap, M W. i. p. 348: A struca es se/h.
“In great honor lives he by whom joy is entertained, for from it come
courtesy and solace, good-breeding and frankness and restraint, and heart
to love and will to serve, and discretion and wisdom and knowledge, and
Sweet speaking with pleasing replies, and all good qualities by which one is
gay and worthy.” — A. de Marueil, M.W. i. p. 156 : A gran honor.
For the meaning of joy in this passage, and often in these
poems, we have the following explanation :
“Without joy there is no worth, nor without worth honor, for love brings
joy, and a gay lady brings love, and gayety Solace, and Solace courtesy.” —
A. de Marueil, M W. i. p. 167 : Ses joy.
96 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
Sometimes they speak of their own experience of benefits :
“She is so worthy that, when I consider well, pride springs from it and
humility grows.” – A. de Marueil, MW, i. p. 161 : Tan es valen.
“Lady, noble and worthy, courteous and attractive, if I know anything
at all, the thought of you, which is my heart and my shield, gives and
teaches it to me : wherefore, for all my possessions I render you praise and
thanks.” – A. de Marueil, MW, i. p. 183 : Dona Żros e valens.
“If I know how to say or do anything, she should have the thanks who
gave me learning and knowledge, wherefore I am gay and a singer ; and
all attractive things that I do, I have from her beautiful pleasing person,
even when I only think of her with all my heart.” — Peire Vidal, MW, i.
A. 224: E s'ieu sai.
“I ought indeed to sing, since Love teaches it to me, and gives me brains
to say good things ; for if it were not for her, I should never have been a
singer, nor should I have been known by so many good people.”— Peiro/,
M W. Zz. 2 . Be72 dež chazzazz.
“The flame nourished by love burns me night and day, wherefore I
continually become finer, as does gold in the fire.” — id. Z. 5: Que’/ ſâama.
Sometimes they speak of the benefits all feel who approach
their ladies :
“Whoever sees her sweet, courteous, and gay person puts out of mind
and forgets every other joy ; since she can for pure delight do and speak
so attractively all that is becoming, that one cannot speak ill of her without
lying.” – A. de Marueil, M.W. i. ?, 167. Tot autre joy,
“ May God who made her so beautiful and worthy, save her and guard the
rich worth that she maintains, for no man who sees her has so hard a heart
that he does not honor her.” — Pons de Caft. MW. i. p. 339 : Dietzs gue
Ža fes.
“There is not in the world a vile person so ill-bred that he will not be-
come courteous if he speaks a word with her.” — G. de St.-Didier, M W. ii.
Ż. 40. Qu'el moſt nom es.
“The most ignorant man in the company, when he sees and gazes at her,
ought at parting to be wise and of fine bearing.” – Raimon de Mºraval,
MW. ii. p. 121 : Lo plus mescis.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 97
The lady is almost always untouched, while the poet
languishes : *
“For it is the custom that the lady should be hard and bear pride
toward him who humbles himself.”— G. de St.-Didier, M.W. ii. p. 41 :
Quar costuzz’es.
Sometimes she even mocks her lover :
“Often it happens when I am before her I say : Lady, what shall I do
She does not answer except by mocking.” — Peirol, M.W. ii. p. 17 : Ans
guazz / sºft.
They beg for pity :
“Now I ask you, my love, for succor, for I will die before I seek it else-
where.” — Petrol, Barzsch, Chres. 147, 3.
“I pray my lady, who holds my heart in pledge, as one who grants
mercy, that she should not have a cruel heart, nor believe false calumniators
about me, nor imagine that I turn toward another, for I sigh in good faith
and love her without deceit and without a truant heart ; and I have not
such courage as have false lovers who deceive ; by whom love is turned to
scorn.” — Gauce//z Aºazdzt, Bartsch, Chres. 143, 36.
“By grace and humility I beg you that you should find in yourself some
pity.” – A. de Marueil, M W. i. p. 59. Per merce. See particularly this
poet's praise of Merce as against Razo, M.W. i. p. 173.
“Love committed a great sin when she was pleased to place herself in
me, since she did not bring with her Grace with which to alleviate my pain;
for Love loses her name and belies it and is Dis-love plainly, since Grace
cannot succor when it would be worthiness and honor to her ; since she
will conquer everything, let her just once conquer Grace.” — A70/71eet de
Marseille, MW, i. p. 318 : Mout i fetz.
“Now I see that nothing but folly is this long affection, of which I have
made so many complaints that I have reproach and shame.”— Petro/,
MVV, ii. p. 4 : Ar vei.
Small tokens are of great value :
“Ah, when will the time come, lady, when I shall see that you will by
grace so honor me that you will deign to call me friend (amic.)?” — G. de
Cab. MVV. i. p. 1 ſo : Ai / guan sera. -
1 MW. i. 37, Qu'ieu am ; id. 66, Qu'ieu ames.
98 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“With a thread of her bright mantle, if it pleased her to give it to me,
she would make me more joyous and richer than could any other in the
world by taking me to herself.” – G. de Cab. MW. i. p. 116. Qu, aſ un Āſ.
" I ask of you no other recompense except only that it should please
you that I love you, and if it pleases you not, at least feign that it does
not annoy you.” — A. de Marueil, M.W. i. p. 175 : Qu'ieu mo us quier,
“She, whose liegeman I am without recall, kills me so sweetly with
desire that she would make me rich with a thread of her glove, or with
one of the hairs that falls on her mantle.” – G. de St.-Didier, M.W. ii, Ž.
39 : Tan belamen.
The end of their passion is almost always sensual : Bartsch,
Chres. 48, 33 ; I IO, 42 ; I I 3, 17 ; etc.
It would be easy to multiply examples of these conventions.
Enough have been presented to exhibit their character and to
show that, although the phases of love had acquired an almost
unvarying sequence and a formal shape, there was still no idea
of an art or a code of love, such as was early developed in the
north. We begin, indeed, to find traces of what seems like
northern influence. Guirant de Borneil relates and interprets
a dream of a falcon grown tame ; * in another place he advises
the lover to have a friend to whom he shall apply for advice
and comfort.” Rambaut de Vauqueiras mentions the God of
Love,” while both he and Pons de Capdueil refer frequently
to romances, Arthurian and other. Arnaut de Marueil appeals
to lovers and ladies :
“May fine Love, by her grace, put it in your heart that you should love
me : all the ladies and lovers, for Love's sake say ‘Amen.’” +
And in many places he seems to have derived hints from
the doctrinal tendencies of the French love-poems.
All the love-theories common in his day are summarized
by him in a poetical love-letter addressed to his lady." He
1 MW. i. p. 185. *id. p. 385. -
*id. p. 190. * id. p. 176 : E fin amor.
* Bartsch, Chres. 94; M.W. i. p. 151.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 99
suffers, but can have no relief unless it comes from her ; he
would tell her his passion by messenger, but does not dare,
fearing to displease her ; he would tell her in person, but the
sight of her beauty makes him forget what he would say :
therefore, at the command of Love, he writes what his mouth
dares not speak. He proceeds to praise her beauty and
courtesy, that make him pensive night and day, so that he
prays God to give him death or her love. All the good he
does or says comes from her. He has loved her from the
day he first saw her, and his love continually grows. His
heart never leaves her. Thoughts come as messengers from
her and call to mind her hair, eyes, color, mouth, bosom,
hands. All day he suffers and all night tosses about with-
out rest. At length he sleeps and dreams that he embraces
and kisses her, which makes him so happy that he awakes,
and his pains are renewed. He begs her to have pity upon
him (flower of beauty, mirror of love, shrine of honor, summit
of wisdom, chamber of joy ; such are a few of his epithets).
He joins his hands and prays that she will take him for her
servant, promise him her love, and give him hope.
“Lady, I do not dare beg you for more, but may God save and keep
you : if it pleases you give me my salvation ; since Love has conquered
me with you, may Love who conquers all things also conquer you with
me, Lady.”
This systematic treatment of love may have been inspired
by northern example. We learn from Arnaut's biography
that he read romances, undoubtedly in French." The piece
above described is written in the octo-syllabic couplet,” the
* MW. i. p. 148 : aquel Arnautz e cantava be e legia be romans.
* Le Couplet de Deux Vers, Paul Meyer, Romania, 1894, pp. 1–35. In ancient
poetry the couplet was a unity. The innovator seems to have been Chrétien de
Troies (p. 17) who made the sense often end with the first verse of the couplet.
His example is followed by other writers of the thirteenth century. In Provençal
the breaking of the couplet is even later (p. 26). We find it in Arnaut de Marueil
(p. 29). This reform is probably owing to the influence of the north (p. 31). If
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form used in the metrical romances, and the heroines of
several of these stories are referred to (Rodocaster, Biblis,
Blancafiors, Elene, Ysseulz, and others). The long descrip-
tion of the lady's beauty is apparently imitated from Chrétien.]
In another of his poems, Arnaut refers to Ovid as a teacher
of love :
“But Ovid sets forth that between earnest lovers riches give no rank.” 2
All this, it may be noted, is unlike the general spirit of the
Provençal lyrics and completely in accord with that of Chrétien
and his disciples.
Though thus systematized, love does not seem to have been
regarded as an art until that idea had become fully established
in the logical sense of the northern poets. Peire Cardinal,8
indeed, denies that love takes from him appetite and sleep,
and makes him suffer, that he dies for the most beautiful
one, that he adores her, etc., - the commonplaces of the con-
ventional system,--but he presents these forms in apparent
unconsciousness that there might be an art of love. One of
the earliest Provençal pieces in which such an art is implied is
a nouvel of Raimon Vidal (first half of thirteenth century) in
which there are quoted as authorities in matters of love, the
lyrics of the troubadours, such as Bernart, Rambautz, Miraval,
who knew more of love than Paris, Guirautz who knew more
than Tristan, Arnautz de Maruelh, and many others.” After
the beginning of the thirteenth century we also meet with a
few narrative and allegorical poems which plainly reveal their
northern inspiration.”
the north thus influenced the form of verse, could it fail to affect the mode of
thought in Provence 2
* e.g. Sauras cris, etc., Bartsch, Chres. 96, 14.
2 MW. i. p. 171. * Bartsch, Chres. I74, 12. 4 id. 217–228.
* For specimens, see Bartsch, Chres. 259, 265, 273; see also Bartsch, Gr.
§§ 18–19; allegorical poem by Peire Guillem, M.W. i. p. 241, not by Peire
Vidal, see Gr.. $39.
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THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. IO I
The most important extant narrative poem of this epoch is
the Romance of Flamenca. We know that the author had
read Chrétien, since he mentions several of his romances (657
seq.), but we should readily infer this fact from the character
of the piece itself. Many passages are directly imitated from
the French model and, though on the whole there is a trifle
more reality in the portrayal of human nature than the
northern poet treats us to, the spirit of the narrative, the
fine-spun conceits, and the overdrawn raptures are entirely
1n his vein. Love is an art. The hero, Guillem de Nivers,
had no experience of love but, having read all the authors
who tell how lovers should act, he knew what he ought to do
(1769), and as youth must love, he seeks a lady who can
bring him honor, and then Love compels him to love (1775).
Love is a powerful divinity :
l. 2043 : Guillem addresses Love : “What will become of me, I have
obeyed all your orders.” He suffers and is ill.
l. 2466: Love says to him : “ There is she whom I try to deliver and I
wish you also to try : but do not look at her so that it shall be perceived.
I will teach you to deceive the jealous fool.”
1. 272 I : Love is a great archer who shoots straight to the heart. The
wound does not appear without, but the wounded one loses vigor and can
be healed only by wounding another : then both heal each other.
l. 281 o : Love shows him his lady in a dream. He speaks on his knees,
but without fear, and she, yielding, discloses a plan.
1. 2970 : Love awakens him and Guillem reproaches him for having
done it so soon.
l. 3326 : The power of love : even Love has no force against love.
ll. 3718, 381 I : The power of Love.
ll. 3850, 3944: Appeal to Love for help.
1. 434o : Love a teacher : Res nom es Amors non ensein.
l. 5573 : Flamenca says: “Love is ruler and queen.”
The Lover suffers, is restless, grows pale, loses sense :
l. 2037 : Guillem does not sleep.
1 Roman de Flamenca, Paul Meyer, Paris, 1865.
I O2 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
1. 2354: Love takes away speech and hearing and makes men fools.
1. 2357 : Guillem is absorbed in listening to the nightingale,
l. 2390 : A Lover would not feel a slight blow.
l. 2999 : A Lover is pale, has blue rings around his eyes, his pulse is
feverish, he grows thin. -
1. 3oo7 : Love is worse than any other sickness.
l. 3450 : He dreams of his lady.
1. 5843 : The tint of Love : “Fin' Amor l’a donat un pauc De son tenc.”
But in contrast to the usual relation, Flamenca also sighs,
weeps, and suffers (562 I).
Subtleties, hearts exchanged, wounds, debates :
1. 1950 : His heart is with the prisoner.
1. 2084 : Love is a simple element : play on words, aimant and amant.
1. 2142 : Guillem faints at the sight of the tower in which Flamenca is
confined. His spirit goes and caresses her. When Love had done his
pleasure with the spirit, it returns to the body.
1. 2204 : His eyes are fixed on the tower while he dresses.
1. 2695 : In bed at night, he complains to Love. His heart is in the
tower, and one cannot live without a heart.
1. 27 18: He is wounded in two places, through the ears and the eyes.
1. 4016 : A debate in Chrétien's style : 1 Tort has. – Per que?— Si fai.
— cossif etc.
1. 4600 : Subtleties of argument, pains, delights, the lady's beauty,
subjection to Love. -
1. 5059 : Religion and gallantry.
ll. 6887, 7374 : Exchange of hearts by lovers.
The lover's ravishment at a small token :
1. 2570 : He sees her red mouth. He had not expected to obtain so
much from his lady in a year. His eyes are paid with seeing and his
heart with thinking.
1. 2605 : More than a thousand times he kisses the leaf of the prayer-
book where she had kissed it. He seems to have all the world and to
lack nothing.
1. 3190 : His joy in the prayer-book: touches it to his forehead, eyes,
chin, and cheek.
* See Note appended to chap. ii.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. IO3
A hint of the Courts of Love :
ll. 4180, 4318, 4535, 47.33 : Flamenca consults with her maids in regard
to the words Guillem has spoken, and takes their advice as to the answer
she shall render.
This brief analysis shows how thoroughly the author of
Flamenca absorbed and reproduced the spirit of Chrétien de
Troies. Nor was he alone in his submission to this influence.
As has been noted, others reveal the northern inspiration in
the form of their verse, in the manner of their thought, and
in the character of their imagery. Not only is this to be found
in narrative poetry, but at the same time there appear in the
lyric poems certain figures and subtleties which, as they were
foreign to the previous troubadours, though favorites with
Chrétien and his successors, may reasonably be ascribed to
their influence.
Among these may be mentioned a conceit employed by
Uc de St-Circ, which was perhaps originally the property of
Chrétien :
“I have three enemies and two evil lords, each of which distresses me
night and day, as if he would kill me: the enemies are my eyes and heart,
which make me wish for her who will not belong to me ; and one lord is
Love, who holds my true heart and my true thought in pledge ; the other
is you, lady, whom I love, to whom I dare not show or tell my heart, so
do you kill me with longing and desire.” – Barzsch, Chres. 157, 24.
Aimeric de Pegulhan presents a dialogue with Love, in
which, after he has been coldly and cruelly rejected by his
lady, the powerful god gives him comfort and advice :
“Love, does it seem to you that I shall ever have joy P Friend, yes,
by suffering and serving.” — id. 167, 17.
Guiraut de Calanso (id. 165) represents Love wearing a
golden crown, and speaks of the wounding with arrows against
which there is no defence, and of the palace with five gates
and four steps, where all live in joy, but which no ill-bred
person can enter.
IO4 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
Gaucelm Faidit finds his heart and his eyes traitors :
“Since my heart and my eyes have betrayed me, and my bad lady, and
my good faith, so that each would have killed me if it could, I must com-
plain as of bad servants ; and I will never again believe my eyes, lying
traitors, nor trust them without surety : for he is foolish who does foolish
vassalage and who belives he has at his command all pleasing and agree-
able things that he sees.”— MW. ii. p. 84 : Tres enemics.
He argues of eyes and heart in the orthodox manner :
“I supplicate always toward my lady who, without blow of lance,
wounded me so gently in the heart, with a sweet glance of her loving
eyes, the day she gave me her joy and her acquaintance: that glance
entered my heart so sweetly that it entirely delighted and soothed me :
and with her eyes she made me a courteous wound : she then knew how
to cure me courteously, wherefore I ought to be grateful and to thank
her.” — MW. ii. p. 105 : Ves ma domma.
Raimon de Miraval expresses a devotion as unreasoning as
that presented in La Charrette :
“If I ever do anything by which my lady is displeased, may God not
forgive her, if she forgives me it; for I do not wish to deceive or betray
her, nor to dispute that which she says ill to me. All which honors her is
honor to me, and I like all that pleases her ; and I wish to have wars and
hostilities for her.” — M.W. ii. p. 130 : S'ieu ja res ſauc.
These last two motives have indeed been met before, but
hardly so completely developed. In general, the later poets
show a stronger tendency to argue about the subject and to
fill their verse with fantastic theories. Love has become a
science.
“My songs spring from fine love more than from any other science,
for I should know nothing, were it not for love, and I should not buy
knowledge so dear.” — Aimeric de Pegulham, M.W. ii. ſ. 164. De
ſin’ amor.
This constant search for ingenious metaphors and meta-
physical distinctions, together with the delight in difficult
forms and rhymes, represents a tendency which found its
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. IO 5
fullest development in the dark or hidden poetry. The merit
upon which writers of this kind of verse most prided them-
selves was the obscurity of their songs. The more difficult
a piece was to understand, the more beautiful they considered
it. Arnaut Daniel seems to have been the founder of this
style, and it flourished largely in the thirteenth century."
Other of the late troubadours regarded their art as a branch
of the higher learning and claimed the title of Doctors of
Poetry.”
In spite of their intellectual acuteness, often on account
of this, the ideas of these singers leave upon the modern
reader the impression of childishness. The preponderating
importance assigned to petty details seems rather absurd, and
the play of their ingenuity often appears mere nonsense.
Still, it must be remembered that matters which are to us
the mere commonplaces of life had for them the attraction
of novelty and were frequently in themselves a great advance
in civilization. The immense value attached to courtesy
affords an excellent example. The importance of each step
toward refinement in manners can be well appreciated upon
a comparison of the primitive savagery of the old epics with
the increasing delicacy of sentiment and polite restraint
represented in the later romances.” Such a progress would
be chiefly owing to the influence of those high-born ladies
who inspired the loves and the songs of the troubadours.
To please them, one must be courteous, as well as generous
and valiant. Thus courtesy became the greatest of virtues,
the prerequisite and the effect of love, and the principle was
established that love itself is the source of every good.
* Diez, Poesie der Troub. p. 60. For trace of this influence in Dante, see
Vita Muova, § xix. : “Certo io temo d'avere a troppi communicato il suo intendi-
mento.” It is also to be found in the Divizza Com media.
* Diez, Poesie, etc. p. 62.
* Compare, for example, the sexual passion of Huon de Bordeaux with the
love of Cligès, Launcelot, or Y vain.
I O6 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
The poetic art, which was at first entirely a court produc-
tion, composed by and for the knightly order, gradually grew
more and more to be the possession of the middle class. After
the second half of the thirteenth century, the poets are almost
exclusively bourgeois, and the towns, with their increasing
strength and wealth, became the nurseries of song." Gradu-
ally all centered in Toulouse where the floral games barely
kept poetry alive. Though Love still furnished the chief
subject of song, it was not the early mundane passion,
but the love of the Virgin Mary and the love of God.”
Even the Alba was turned to the service of religion.” Fri-
volity had given place to earnestness, but the genius had
fled. The youth and strength of the Provençal lyric art
was spent in the gayeties of the courts, only its decay was
given to the service of philosophy and religion. In this
respect, indeed, it resembles the lives of many of its indi-
vidual votaries who, during their years of strength and pas-
sion, sang with light heedlessness in the sunshine of courtly
favor, and passed with grief in their declining days to the
stern penance of the cloister.”
When the serious middle class seized upon the heirloom
of chivalrous society, they retained the whole conventional
system, but interpreted it in harmony with their ideas and
surroundings. Allegory was their instrument for accomplish-
ing the great transformation and, under its fashioning vigor,
the love-songs which had amused a frivolous and fashionable
Society, yielded up a profound and all-embracing philosophy.
Every force of nature and every impulse of the human soul
was called Love,” and Matfre Ermengau, Master in laws and
servant of Love and of all faithful lovers,” could sit down in
1 Bartsch, Gr. § 2 I ; Chres. 211. 2 Gr. § 48. 8 id. § 26.
4 e.g. Peire d’Alverne, M.W. i. p. 89; Peire Rogier, id. p. 117; Bertran de
Born, id. p. 255; Folquet de Marseille, id. p. 31 5.
5 cf. Divina Commedia, Purgatorio, xviii.
6 M. Gedichte, i. p. 181, coxcix.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. Ioy
the spring of 1288 and write, under the title of Breviari
d'Amors, a rhymed encyclopaedia of the knowledge of the
time.
This poem is thus described by Bartsch :"
“The work embraces all the theological and natural knowledge of the
thirteenth century, founded upon the most widely differing sources, which
exhibit the author's learning and extensive reading. He begins with the
distinction between heavenly and earthly Love and presents it in a picture
of the Tree of Love, which is painted in the manuscripts and accompanied
with a prose description. Treating of heavenly love, he expounds the being
of God, as well as of the angels and devils. Passing to earthly love, he
describes heaven and earth, the heavenly bodies, the elements, precious
stones and their powers, the winds, the clouds, the rain ; the division of
time into days, months, etc., into the ages of the world ; the plants and
animals. Then he treats of mankind and its history, of the laws of nature
and of nations, of the love of God and of one's neighbor. There follow
sacred history, preaching, prayer with its different kinds. Further on, of
sins and penalties of Hell ; of the Last Judgment. The sins of every
rank from top to bottom are reviewed and censured ; this section is pecu-
liarly interesting from the standpoint of the history of manners. Then of
faith, the articles of belief, the life of Jesus, lives of St. Andrew and the
evangelists John and Thomas. Of love between the sexes and its dangers.
Discussion of true love, for which numerous selections from the Troub-
adours, sometimes also from the Trouvères, are cited as authorities, and
sometimes refuted. This part is the most important from the literary
standpoint. Thereupon he comes to conjugal love, to the love between
parents and children, and to education, with which the whole work con-
cludes.”
This is a surprisingly solid and nutritious fruit to have grown
from so fragile a blossom as the love-songs of the troubadours.
Born of hymns in honor of a heathen divinity, developed to
serve the requirements of illicit passion, and propagated as a
means of fashionable amusement and of courtly flattery, the
lyrics of Provence faded into didacticism and commonplace.
But before the day of their decline, they had impressed their
features upon every neighboring land.” France, Germany,
* Gr. § 34. * P. Meyer, Rom, 1876, p. 261.
IO8 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
Italy, Spain — all joined the monotonous chorus. The courtly
lyrics of northern France are in form and spirit merely a
reflection of those of the south, – a heightened reflection,
indeed, for the inspiration of love dominates them even more
completely." To quote examples would be ridiculous excess.
A glance at any collection will reveal an endless repetition of
the commonplaces of gallantry already set forth ad nauseam in
this study, and they add nothing to the precepts of the Roman
de la Rose.” In fact, these commonplaces are almost all to be
found in the refrains.”
In the north, too, the forms expressing worldly love, even
the immoral Pasſoure//e, were often turned to pious uses,” and
the Arthurian legends, in which this love poetry was from the
first so thoroughly incorporated and which were consecrated at
the beginning to the portrayal of profane passion and of
thoroughly worldly ideals, ended in the glorification of abnega-
tion and chastity.” Launcelot and Guinevere part in penitent
anguish to the solitary gloom of their separate convents, while,
in the splendor of perfect achievement, irradiated by the glory
of the Holy Grail, emerges the figure of the sinless knight.
1 G. Paris, Litt. du Moyen Age, § 125.
2 Examples abound even in Bartsch and Hornung’s Langue et Littérature
Françaises, 300, 301, 313, 353, 381, 491–506; and Bartsch's Chres. 221–23.I.
8 Jeanroy, Origines, pp. 120, 121; G. Paris, Hist. Litt. xxix. pp. 480–482.
4 Jeanroy, Origines, Appendix: Ave Maria, J’aim tant ; Li debonaires Diex
m’a misen sa prison : pp. 482, 483.
5 G. Paris, Rom. I 881, p. 465.
VIII.
THE butterflies die, and the loves of the troubadours were,
not infrequently, ended by the sudden hand of death. The
heartfelt laments which burst from the depths of earnest grief
soon became a conventional habit of mourning; and each poet,
imitating his predecessors, heaped the same curses and abuse
upon personified Death, set forth in the same phrases the injury
she had done, and eulogized the departed one with the same
hyperboles. The song of lament became as much a matter of
fashionable form as the weeds of the mourner ; and the lover
who had lost his mistress found that a due regard for propriety
demanded that he should complain of the tyranny of Death,
just as the lover whose mistress treated him with disdain was
impelled by the same reason to complain of the tyranny of
Love.
An early example of the song of lament is furnished by
Bertran de Born's famous poem upon the death of the young
king." He begins:
“If all the grief and the weeping and the sorrow and the pains and the
injury and the misfortune, that one might have in this sad world, were put
together, they would all seem light in comparison with the death of the
young English king.” — Stimming, A. 72 : Barzsch, Chres. I 14, 22 : St.
tuz; Jº do/,
He addresses Death :
“Powerful Death, full of sorrow, thou canst boast that thou hast taken
from the world the best cavalier that ever was of any people.”— Stimming,
A. 73 : Bartsch, Chres. I 15, 13 : Estența mortz.
1. Even in the Roland we have laments of a real lyrical character : see particu-
larly that of Charlemagne, ccxxxvi.- coxl., La Chanson de Roland, Léon Gautier,
Edition Classique, 1892.
I IO THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
The king is praised as the best of all in the world, and the
poem concludes with a prayer for the salvation of his soul.
Another piece on the same subject opens with the words : .
“I end my singing for all time to come, in grief and suffering, and con-
sider it finished, for I have lost my reason and my joy and the best king
that was ever born.” — Stimming, p. 70 : M W. i. p. 284 : Mon chan femisc.
This piece is devoted entirely to the praise of his valor and
largess.
Chrétien de Troies, who gathered so much of the spirit and
language of the Provençal lyric poetry into his narratives, has
also this topic in its full development. In Cliges, after Fenice
has taken the potion which gives her the appearance of death,
the people lament, calling out :
“God, what trouble and what pain has injurious Death made us !
Covetous Death, Gluttonous Death !” (5791)
They call the curse of God upon Death who has extinguished
all beauty. God has too much patience when he suffers her to
destroy his works. He ought to punish her for such an outrage.
When the physicians from Salerno ask the meaning of these
cries and tears, the people answer :
“Heavens, do you not know P All the world ought to lose its reason
with us, if it only knew the great damage and loss. Where did you come
from that you do not know 2 We will tell you, for we wish you to join our
sorrow. God had illumined the world with a light. Death has taken her,
the best she could find. Beauty, courtesy, knowledge, all virtue that woman
could possess” (5825–56). “In such wise they curse and blame Death "
(613 I).
Later Cligès, who also believes Fenice lifeless, delivers his
address to Death :
“Ha, Death, how vile thou art | " (6238)
He wonders that he lives when she is dead, and proceeds to
lose himself in subtilizing and puns. We have also the lament
of Launcelot in La Charrette :
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I I I
“Ha, vile injurious Death ! Death, for God's sake, why hadst thou not
so much power and virtue that thou mightest kill me before my lady ”
(43.18)
Here, indeed, the conventional form has buried true feeling.
The abuse of Death, the praises of the departed, the immoderate
clamor express nothing but love of show.
The troubadours, however, often touch a truer chord. Pons
de Capdueil's lament for the death of Donna Alazais is full of
beauty (Bartsch, Chres. I 23, 29):
“Of all the wretched I am he who has the greatest pain and suffers the
greatest torment ; wherefore I wish to die, and he who should kill me
would be kind, since I am so despairing. . . . Traitorous Death, truly indeed
can I say to you that you could not kill a better in the world.”
He wishes he had died first and desires not to survive his lady
long. The best has gone from the world, what is left is value-
less.
“Now we may know that the angels above are happy and joyous because
of her death . . . the angels praise her with joy and singing. He who was
never a liar ought to seat her in paradise above all others.”
He gives up singing to moan and weep and sigh.
Aimeric de Pegulhan (MW. ii. I 59) praises the Countess
Beatritz for her beauty, virtue, and social charm :
“Lady, youth is buried with you : and joy is entirely interred and lost.”
But the exaggeration of woe and desolation in such pieces
seems rather theatrical: The power of real grief rarely comes
forth to move our hearts. The spirit of form has slain the
spirit of life."
1 For a systematic treatment of these poems, vide Springer, Das Altprovenza-
lische Klagelied, Berlin, 1894.
IX.
AT the beginning of the thirteenth century, Italy was with-
out a literature, while its western neighbor possessed two, the
French and the Provençal, whose rich development was highly
admired and closely copied both at home and abroad." Many
of the troubadours visited Italy to enjoy the hospitality of her
princes. Their songs, composed in a kindred speech, were not
long without imitators, and we soon find a host of Italian versi-
fiers raising their voices to chant the woes and the joys of love
both in the Provençal and in their native tongue.”
The poetry thus produced was empty and formal, little more
than the translation of outworn formulas into a nearly related
language. The monotony of the originals has been fully illus-
trated. Some quotations are subjoined to show how completely
this monotony was reproduced on this new soil.”
Love is the only good :
“Love, the time in which I was without loving, it seems to me in truth
that, even though I lived, I was without life.” — Bonaggiunta, p. 142.
Love is an irresistible power, a god : *
“Love so presses me, and has so taken me, and in such wise conquered
me, that I think of nothing else.” — Enzo Re, f. 65.
“Surely it is no great dishonor when one is conquered by his better; and
the less, by Love, who conquers all.” — Guido delle Colonne, fl. 75.
“But if I have not aid from Love, who has put me in his prison, I know
not at what court to beg for justice.” — Stéfano, A. 94.
1 Gaspary, Geschichte der Ital. Lit. p. 51.
*id. pp. 54–55.
* The quotations are from Nannucci, Manuale, vol. i.
* For their discussion as to the reality of this personage, vide Goldschmidt, Die
Doktrin der Liebe bei den italianischen Lyrikern des 13. Jahrhunderts, Breslau,
1889.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. II 3
“Then I pray Love to aid me.” — Guido delle Colonne, p. 81.
“Since it pleases thee, Love, that I should make poetry, I will do all I
can to succeed.” — Federigo Secondo, p. 20.
The cause of Love is beauty :
“The beauty seen in you overcomes me, and the sight of your face.” —
Rinaldo d'Aguino, p. 101.
“Your great beauty, lady, has made me love ; and your good actions
have made me a singer.” — Mazzo Ricco, p. 132.
This beauty passes through the eyes to the heart :
“Thus, whence one hopes, Love wounds, and sends forth the dart ; it
wounds where one does not expect, passes through the eyes and pierces the
heart.”—Jacopo da Zentino, A. Z2O.
Love causes the worst sort of anguish :
“I only grieve. My delight is turned into melancholy. . . . My ills can-
not be told, nor the pains I feel.” — Folcacchiero, p. 17.
“I abound in so many torments that I lose all natural color; so does my
heart suffer and grieve.”—Enzo Re, p. 69.
“Her beautiful person has taken from me joy and laughter and has put
me in pains and in great torments.” — Odo delle Colonne, p. 87.
“Love has led me to sighs and weeping.” –Jacopo da Lentino, p. 113.
“No man can know what suffering is, except by experiencing the pain of
Love.”—Dante da Mazano, p. 31.5.
But
“By suffering one becomes victorious.”— Bonaggiunta, A, 151.
There is no rest for lovers :
“All the world lives without warfare, and I can have no peace.” — Fol.
cacchiero, A. 16.
“For you, beautiful one, I am put in loving thought and in great desire,
so that I cannot rest.” — A'inaldo d'Aquino, A. roſ.
The lover dreams of his lady :
“ It happens that, if I see her in dreams, I sleep and make love ; I be-
lieve I am awake, but I do not desire any other good.” — Ciacco de/7
Angieillara, A. 191.
I I4 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE,
“Fine true Love, to whom I am obedient, brings me into your presence,
so that I hold you closely embraced.” — Messer Polo, Ž, 56.
The lady is in the fover's heart :
“Within my heart I bear your likeness.” –Jacopo da Lentino, fl. 114.
He sends his heart to her :
“Thus attractive lady, my heart, which I send you, so that it shall tell
you my pains, remains with you, and I lose it.” — Chiaro Davanzati, f. 207.
Love is full of contradictions, - it is a madness :
“To love is indeed a delightful distress and can well be called sweet
pain.” — Guido delle Colonne, A. 74.
“More foolish is he who more loves.” — id, p. 76.
“I have become mad — loving too much.” — Tommaso di Sasso, p. 89.
“On account of my long continuance in great torment, I have changed
my nature ; so that I have joy in weeping and in laughing I feel distress,”
etc. — Meo A667-acciazzacca, Z. 203.
The lover trembles before his lady :
“Surely I fear indeed to show my wish.” – Pier delle Vigne, p. 28.
“ It does not seem that a man without fear can be in love ; for it is not
fitting to love without fear.” — Ranieri da Palermo, Ž. 51. -
“The power she has to kill or cure me I dare not tell with tongue for the
great fear I have that she will be angered.” — Falzo Zºe, Ž. 69.
“I am so bashful that I gaze at you secretly and do not show you my
love.” –Jacopo da Zentino, Ž. I 15.
There is the fear of detection, the desire for secrecy:
“Oh, might I come to you, loving one, like the thief secretly, and not be
seen.” — Pier delle Vigne, A. 26.
“I sing joyously, . . . but not for that do I show the cause of my joy, for
that would be a fault.” — Ranieri da Palermo, Ž. 51.
“I burn within, and try to appear so that I do not show what my heart
feels.” — Guido delle Colonme, Ž. 75.
Gallantry and religion are jumbled together :
“I set my heart to serve God so that I might go to Paradise. . . . I do
not wish to go without my lady, her who has blond hair and clear coun-
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. II 5
tenance, for without her I could not be happy, being separated from my
lady.” –Jacopo da Lentino, Ž. 123.
The poet is full of devotion, loyalty, and submission ; he has
been so from the first day; he worships his lady, loves to praise
her, and finds nothing of value compared with her :
“I never wished, nor do I wish, nor shall I wish anything except to do
all to please you.” — Foſcacchiero, Ž. 18.
“I put myself entirely in her command.” – Ruggerome da Palermo, p. 54.
“I have been at her will and shall be without fail.” — Enzo Re, p. 66.
“It is no distress to die if she has joy in it; for living pleases me only
for her true service.” – Arrigo Testa, p. 70.
“I had rather have pains for her than joy with another.” — Guido de/le
Colonme, Ž. 83.
“My gentle lady, since I fell in love gazing on your lovely face, I have
thought of nothing else than to obey your command.”— Chiaro Davanzazi,
£, 2O4.
“My lady, as soon as I saw you I was surprised by love ; nor do I
believe I have ever thought of anything but you.” — Fra Guittone, p. 169.
“Beautiful one, fearing I praise you in my song ; for surely I believe
that little would be the good I could say which could exalt you.” — Ranieri
da Palermo, p. 52.
“I have praised you much, my lady, in many places, for the beauties
which you have.” –Jacopo da Lentino, p. 116.
“I believe, indeed, that, if God had it to do, he could not fix his thought
on you so that he would be able to form your like.”— td. f. 122.
The lady's influence ennobles :
“The great nobility which I have found in you, lady, compels me always
to make poetry.”— Messer Polo, p. 55.
“Love has the virtue to make a vile man worthy. If he is rude, it turns
him to courtesy.”— Bonaggiunta, p. 142.
“Fountain of every good ; for from her springs every other earthly
good.” — id. f. 143.
“There is no joy nor good without comfort, nor without rejoicing, nor
rejoicing without fine love.” — id. f. 144.
II 6 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOWE.
They beg for pity :
“I beg pity of you and ask grace.” — Ranieri da Palermo, p. 49.
“I pray softly to Pity that it should go and repose in her.” — Enzo Re,
fº. 70.
“Surely Love commits great discourtesy, for he does not overcome thee
who goest mocking : to me, who serve, he does not give happiness,” —
Jacopo da Lentino, fl. 118.
“I pray you, my sweet enemy, that you exercise grace and pity.” —
Semprebene, p. 138.
“Grace, for God's sake, let it not please you that I perish.” – Bomag-
giunta, Ž. I5Y.
The end of their passion is possession :
“From the flower one hopes for fruit, and from love that which is
desired.” — Bonaggiunta, Ž. I45.
There is hardly a page devoted to these poets in Nannucci's
Manuale which would not furnish additional examples of these
conventions.
Here, too, we find the song of lament with all the old
machinery :
“Death, why hast thou made such great war upon me that thou hast
taken from me my lady, for whom I grieve? Thou hast slain the flower of
the beauties of the earth, wherefore the world has remained forlorn. Rude
Death, who hast no pity!”— Giacomo Pugliese, fl. 104.
The piece continues with the usual desolation, praises of
beauty, and wish that the lady's soul may rest in Paradise.
Pacino Angiolieri (p. 221) calls death, “Treacherous Death,
pitiless Death, cruel Death,” and exclaims :
“But God ought not to permit that such beauty should be thus spoiled
by thee, Death, since He created it” (p. 222).
He reviews the happiness of his love, – “I do not hope ever
again to be joyous,” — and closes by begging God to take his
lady's soul into His kingdom.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 17
The Italians had also the temzone, largely in the form of
sonnets, upon subjects connected with love." All the affecta-
tions of the troubadours, such as the rims cars and equivocs,
were imitated.” The courtly style was used in praise of the
Virgin Mary,” and Jacopone employs all the conventional
phraseology in his religious poems.” The romances of chiv-
alry and the Roman de la Rose were also not without influence.
The Italian love-poetry seemed about to imitate the didacticism
of the Provençal decline, as it had faintly reflected the glory of
its prime, when the downward movement was turned back by
original genius.
Chivalry never took firm root in Italy. Its customs, man-
ners, and literature were imitated, but they always remained
foreign, superficial, and unreal.” Even at the court of Fred-
erick II. they had no vitality," and in the free towns the
commons developed a far different ideal of living. That this
exotic literature did not miserably fade and perish was owing
to the influence of a great University, and of the genius which
it cultivated and inspired. Bologna, mother of studies, first
“ married Science to Art,” 7 and Guido Guinicelli rose to be the
poetic father of the love-poet Dante. Thus, while the bloom
of chivalric literature in France declined into flat, pedantic,
prosaic didacticism, in Italy a fresher blossom yielded a nobler
fruit. Guittone d'Arezzo, the “dear father ” of Guido Guini-
* Gaspary, op. cit. p. 82; Goldschmidt, Doktrin der Liebe, pp. 24, 25.
* Gaspary, p. 82.
*id. p. 133.
* Nannucci, Manuale, i. 376 seq., though some of the poems there printed are
not his.
* Gaspary, p. 61; Carducci Studi Letterari, Livorno, 1880, p. 19.
° In regard to the songs there written Gaspary remarks (p. 63): “Das Leben
der Verfasser war oft so bunt und stürmisch, so voll von Poesie ; aber in
ihre Verse ist nichts davon tibergegangen, weil sie nach einem gemeinsamen
Typus dichteten, der mit ihrer eigenen Empfindungsweise nichts zu thun
hatte.”
" Carducci, op. cit, p. 38.
II 8 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOWE.
celli,” is a characteristic representative of the old manner ; *
Guido himself wrote largely in the same style,” but a happy
invention, “the marriage of Science and Art,” originated a
new school which, after a brief conflict with conservatism and
stupidity, gloriously triumphed under the leadership of the
illustrious masters who made Florence the capital of the world
of letters.
The gift of Guido Guinicelli to Italian literature is thus
expounded by Gaspary : *
“This reform of poetry occurs under the influence of learning. Philoso-
phy, when Tommaso and Bonaventura were teaching, having risen to new
consideration, forced its way in learned Bologna even into poetry, which
received from it the content as well as the mode of presentation. In the
canzone of amore e cor gentil there stands at the beginning, as a philosophi-
cal thesis, the proposition that love takes its seat only in the noble heart, in
the heart that possesses virtue and high-mindedness, and this proposition is
then expounded by a series of similes.
“The question regarding the being, the origin, and the operation of love
was an old one ; it had busied the Provençal writers, and the Italians had
treated of it very often, and with special preference. But the solution had
throughout been the same, consisting of those trivialities which each bor-
rowed from the others. Love, so it went, arises from seeing and being
pleased ; the image of beauty goes through the sight into the soul, seats
itself in the heart, and fills the thoughts, – a superficial treatment which
describes the matter, instead of seeking for fundamentals. In Guido's
canzone there appears, in lieu of these commonplaces, another conception :
Love seeks its place in the noble heart, as the bird in the foliage ; nobility
of heart and love are simultaneous and inseparable, like the sun and its
splendor ; as the sun, when it has purified the gem from all baser elements,
* “O caro padre meo . . . A vo’ in ció solo com’ a mastr'accorgo” (p. 39).
Rime dei Poeti Bolognesi. T. Casini, Bologna, 1881.
* Guittone wrote an Art of Love in a series of sonnets, for analysis of which
vide Goldschmidt, op. cit. pp. 50 seq., and La Poesia Giovanile e la Canzone
D’Amore di Guido Cavalcanti, Salvadori, Roma, 1895, pp. 17 seq. That Guittone
elevated the system of love is proved by what he omitted from the twelve precepts
of André le Chapelain, and what he added to them, id., p. 21.
* Gaspary, p. Io9.
4 pp. 104–106.
* THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I IQ
lends the stone its magic power, so does the image of the beloved kindle
the heart which nature has made pure and noble ; and as water extinguishes
fire, so the least touch of vulgarity quenches love. The feelings that pro-
ceed from the beloved are said to fill him who yields himself truly to her, as
the power of God streams into the heavenly intelligences. – Thus had the
conception of love changed ; the earthly passion is clarified, brought into
connection with the highest that the soul knows ; it is a philosophical con-
ception of love, and in the similes which serve to found and to expound it
in so rich and varied a manner, the old repertory has entirely vanished :
“‘The sun smites the mud all day, but it remains vile, and the sun loses
no heat. The arrogant man says: I am gentle by descent ; I liken him
to the mud, noble worth to the sun.’
“We recognize here the thinker, who seeks significance and expressive-
ness in the image, even if he does not always attain the beautiful. . . .
“The striving after depth, and at the same time a new power, a new
earnestness, is what distinguishes this movement from the old. Love and
my Lady remain abstractions, but they receive a different significance. My
Lady is still the embodiment of all perfection ; but she becomes at the same
time a symbol, the incarnation of something higher. Love for her passes
beyond her to virtue, to the highest good ; the chivalrous love of the Pro-
vençals has been transformed into spiritual love. Poetry receives a sym-
bolic and allegorical character ; its proper purpose becomes gradually the
presentation of philosophical truth masked in a beautiful veil of imagery,
according to Dante's definition. This admixture of learning is, in and by
itself, no real poetic element : but the new content stands in the closest
relation with the personality of the poet, and is not simply adopted from
without : the learned symbolism saves him from the old phrases, and thus
occasionally feeling itself again attains freedom. And here we have the
great departure from Guittone. Guittone moralized and argued, and
remained thereby flat, dry, and prosaic ; Love and knowledge, head and
fancy, are not united in him as in the new school ; he offers merely the
naked truth, the beautiful veil is lacking ; there are lacking the poetic
imagery and warmth of feeling, as we find them in Guido Guinicelli, for
example, in the conclusion of his famous canzone, the most perfect that we
possess from him. God accuses the soul because it has likened its earthly
love to heavenly things, and it excuses itself :
“‘Lady God will say to me, what do you presume 2 (my soul being
before him). You passed the heavens and came even to me, and in vain
love used me for a comparison ; for to me belongs the praise, and to the
queen of the worthy kingdom, through whom ceases every lie. I can say
I 2C) THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
to Him : She had the appearance of an angel that belonged to your
kingdom ; it was not a sin if I gave her my love.’” "
Transported to Florence this philosophical tendency attracted
the rising generation, absorbing the youthful literary genius of
the city. The forms which court poets had fashioned for the
lyrics and romances of chivalry were adapted to fresh condi-
tions. The virtues of the philosopher were substituted for the
virtues of the knight, and the exaggerated laudation of prin-
cesses was vivified in its new application by the loftiness of an
enthusiastic idealism.” This movement, too, led to the arid
region of abstractions, a region whose withering breath the
great world-poet himself did not escape; but its first steps were
through an enchanted garden, luxuriant with fragrant flowers.
Here the dust and ashes through which we have been plodding
spring into sweet life.
Although the old forms and images remain, the fresh vivid-
ness of feeling, and the real meaning which they represent,
transfigure them. If the change is not apparent in each indi-
vidual poem, it cannot be missed in the perusal of half a dozen
composed by any writer of this school. Even in the following
selections, which have been chosen with the purpose of merely
illustrating the retention of the old formulas, the reader can-
not fail to perceive the breath of new life. We give together
examples chosen indifferently from Bolognese and Florentine
writers, for although the school of Florence represents a higher
development than that of Bologna, the two are yet so closely
* “I provenzali svolsero ció che potremmo chiamare la fisiologia e la patologia
dell'amore, e tanto la svolsero che per quella parte i nostri niente più trovarono
a dir di nuovo ; ma i provenzali non assorsero anche alla questione filosofica
dell’amore, essi non posero o almeno non trattarono sul serio il problema flella
natura di esso, come fecero gl’ italiani, ed e questa una differenza che, dal Guini-
celli in poi, fu già rilevata qual nota caratteristica dell'arte nostra che si emanci-
pava.” Primordj della Scuola Poetica Italiana da Bologna a Palermo, E. Monaci,
Nuova Antologia, 2da serie, vol. 46, p. 616; see also Carducci, Studi Letterari,
pp. 40, 41; and Goldschmidt, Doktrin der Liebe, pp. 25–37.
* Gaspary, pp. 21.5–217.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 2 I
connected in tendency that it would be useless to separate
them.
Love is an irresistible god whom lovers serve and obey, and
who aids them in their efforts :
“Suffering and weary, I have no courage, for thou, Love, dost assail and
combat me ; against thee I cannot remain standing, for thou dost at once
strike me to earth.” — Guido Guinicelli, p. 42.
“Love has given me to my lady to serve her.” — id. p. 41.
“O my lady, didst thou not see him who held his hand upon my heart,
when I answered thee hoarsely and softly, in fear of his strokes P”—Guido
Cavalcantz, ž. 266.
“Only Love compels me, against whom avails neither force nor restraint.”
— id, f. 280.
“Love, I am not worthy to call to mind thy nobility and thy wisdom :
therefore I ask pardon if, desiring to praise thee, I fail.”— Zapo Gianmi,
A. 246.
“Ballata, since Love composed thee in my mind, where he resides, go to
her whose great attractions shot an arrow through my eyes into my heart.”
– 2d. f. 249.
See also the conversation between Amore and Madonna, by
Lapo (p. 241), in which Love intercedes for the lover.
The cause of love is beauty. This passes through the eyes
to the heart, and there inflicts a grievous wound :
“Your lovely salutation and the gentle glance you give me when I meet
you, kill me.” — Guido Guinicelli, Ż. 42.
“The stroke came with such force that my eyes did not withstand it at
all, but it passed into my heart, which bore it and felt itself grievously
wounded.” — id. A. 38.
“In the midst of my heart she cast a dart which cut it in pieces and
divided it. . . . Through the eyes it passes like the lightning which strikes
through the window of the tower and breaks and crushes what it finds
within.” — id. Z. 42.
See Tommaso Buzzuola, p. 357 ; the dart passes through the eyes as
light through glass.
“He (Love) then drew sighs from my eyes, which were cast so forcibly
from my heart that I fled terrified.” — Guido Cavalcanti, p. 267.
I 2.2 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE,
This idea of sighs pressed from the heart through the eyes
is characteristic of the new manner of the Florentines.
* They turned their eyes so that they saw how my heart was wounded ;
and how a little spirit, born of weeping, had issued from the midst of the
wound.” — Guido Cavalcant?, ?. 271.
“She wounds me so when I see her that I feel a sigh tremble in my heart.
From her eyes, for which I burn, there issues a very gentle spirit of love,
which is full of such virtue that, when it reaches me, my soul departs as
one that may not bear it.”” — id. A. 283.
The doctrine is explained by Guido Guinicelli:
“It seems that from true delight fine love descends gazing at what
pleases the heart; that, when one sees a pleasing object, it surrounds the
heart with thoughts and at once desire grows.” — ?. 36.
The parts of the body are personified : they speak or depart
from the owner :
“The heart says to the eyes : I die because of you. The eyes say to
the heart : Thou hast undone us.” — Guido Guzmáce//7, Ž. 42.
“When my soul was revived, it called to my heart, crying : Art thou
now dead, that I do not feel thee in thy place P Then answered my heart,
which had little life, alone, a wanderer and comfortless, so that it could
scarcely talk, and said : O soul, help me to rise.” – Laffo Giann?, ?. 248.
The effects of love are suffering almost to death, which is
increased by the coldness of the lady :
“From that the loving heart should derive pain and weeping, and should
lament its misfortune.” — Guido Guizzice//, /. 37.
“My cruel lady has so stricken me that I feel such pain within me that
my soul is forced to depart from my heart.” — Onesto Bolognese, fl. 158.
“My soul, suffering and fearful, weeps over the sighs which it finds in
my heart, so that bathed in tears they issue forth.” — Guido Cavalcanti,
A. 267.
1 These little spirits were favorites with the Florentine poets. See Vita Nuova,
ed. D'Ancona, 1884, p. IO4 : See also Nannucci's Manuale, G. Cavalcanti, p. 282 ;
Lapo Gianni, p. 254; Gianni Alfani, p. 3O4; Dino Frescobaldi, p. 336. For the
philosophical origin of them from Avicenna through Albertus Magnus, vide
Salvadori, op. cit. pp. 64, 65.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 23
“Lady, I suffer still when I remember the painful strokes and the
agonies which my desires suffered when I looked into your loving eyes and
sustained passion in every member.” — Laffo Gianni, p. 256.
“A battle, strong and fierce and hard, which lasts so cruelly that I
change color and boldness abandons me.” — Dino Frescobaldi, p. 332.
“By the weeping that my eyes do, alas ! they make others aware of the
bitter pain that my heart bears.” — id. p. 336.
Sometimes the lady is heartless or mocks her lover :
“I do not hope ever to find pity in her eyes; she is so light-hearted.” –
Dino Frescobaldi, Ż. ??6.
“Lady, you mocked them (sighs) Smiling.” – Zapo Gianni, Ż. 256.
The lover suffers day and night:
“Neither day nor night do I stop thinking thoughts of anguish, so that
I am never out of torment.” — Zoffo Bonaguidi, Ż. 362.
He becomes speechless and senseless, trembles before his
beloved, hardly dares think of her:
“I cannot speak, for I burn in great pain, like one who sees his death.”
— Guido Guánicel/7, p. 42.
“I am assailed by love of her with so fierce a battle of sighs that I am
not bold enough to appear before her.” — id. p. 43.
“Like a gentle amorous ray, from your eyes there came to me a splendor,
which so overcame me with love that before you I have always been afraid,
so did fear encircle my heart.” — Zapo Gianni, Ż. 244.
“I feel so undone that I dare not, even in thought, beg for grace : for I
find Love who says: ‘She seems so gentle that one cannot imagine any
man in this world could dare to look at her if he did not first tremble'; and
I, if I gaze at her, must die.” — Guido Cavalcanti, p. 283.
Love must be concealed from hostile ones :
“Thou bearest tidings of sighs full of suffering and much fear; but have
care that no one sees thee who is hostile to nobility.” — Guido Cavalcanti,
A. 277.
The worship of the lady, the laudation of her beauty and
virtues, and the expression of entire devotion are carried far
I 24 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
beyond anything that we have hitherto encountered. The
passage already quoted from Guido Guinicelli (p. I 19, "Lady,
God will say ”) furnished a model below which later poets
would be loath to sink.
Beauty is thus praised :
“It seems that all worth is placed in her : I can briefly tell of it : My
lady is of all ladies the rarest joy. Indeed she is a rare joy to see when
she appears, decked and adorned, for she makes all about her shine and
fills everything around with joyousness. At night, if she appears, she gives
it splendor, as the sun during the day ; she so lights up the air that the
day becomes very envious, since it alone had brightness, and now the
night comes to vie with it.” — Guido Guánicelli, Ż. 40.
“She passes through the street so adorned and so gentle, of one she
casts down his pride, and to another she gives a salutation ; and she makes
him of our Faith if he does not believe it already. And any one who is vile
cannot approach her : I will tell you a greater virtue of hers : No man can
think evil after he sees her.” — id. Z. 45.
“Who is she that comes, so that every one looks at her, who makes the
air tremble with brightness P and leads with her Love, so that no one can
speak, but each sighs 2 . . . Our mind is not so high, nor is there in us such
worthiness, that we can of ourselves know anything about her.” — Guido
Cavalcant?, ?. 270.
“This angel, that appears to have come from Heaven, seems by her
speech the sister of Love, and her every little act is a wonder. Blessed the
soul that she salutes ’’ — Zapo Gianni, f. 245.
“Thou wilt go first to that joy through whom Florence is resplendent
and is prized.” – Gianni A/fami, Z. 305.
“I have attempted to praise your beauty and the unbounded wisdom
which is in you, and I cannot tell how it truly is : therefore I grow afraid
to praise you, and I cannot find words so high that your worth is not still
higher.”” — Zoffo Bomaguidi, Ż. 360.
1. Among countless examples, attention may be called to the following : Guido
Guinicelli, pp. 43, 44; Guido Cavalcanti, p. 268; Lapo Gianni, pp. 247, 250, 254;
Giraldo da Castello, p. 363.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 25
That the vile in heart cannot love is an undisputed doctrine:
“Love always repairs to the gentle heart, as a bird in the forest to the
green leaves. Nor did Nature make Love before the gentle heart, nor the
gentle heart before Love.” — Guido Guinicelli, p. 33.
“For I do not think that one of low heart can be acquainted with such
matters.” — Guido Cavalcanti, p. 286.
“Whoever has no love, and does not feel it, I think, cannot show any-
thing of himself that pertains to nobility.” — Guido Orlandi, p. 299.
Love refines and ennobles the lover :
“The noble desire that I have for this youthful lady, who has appeared,
makes me despise vileness and rudeness.” — Zapo Gianni, p. 246.
“My gentle lady, the virtue of love, . . . . thanks to you, has done me
such honor that it teaches me and forbids that I should ever care for a vile
thought.” – Laffo degli Uberti, Ż. 260.
The lady elevates all who approach her;
“By you are all beauties refined, and each blooms in its manner when
you show yourself.” — Guido Guinicelli, p. 45.
“No man can think evil after he sees her.” — id p. 45.
“He who does not see you can never be worth anything.” — Guide
Cavalcanti, p. 268.
“Blessed the soul that she salutes " " — Lapo Giann?, ?. 246.
“Wherever this beautiful lady appears there is heard a voice that comes
before her, and it seems that with humility it sings her name so sweetly
that, if I would tell it, I feel that her worth makes me tremble, and sighs
move in my soul, which say : Behold, if thou gazest on her thou shalt see
thy virtue ascended to Heaven.” — Guido Cavalcant?, ?. 282.
The lover expresses entire devotion :
“You show haughtiness to me, sweet lady, and I beg pity of you at
whose pleasure, it seems to me, all things stand : Your servant bows to
you, and I hope to have restoration from you, worthy lady.” — Guido
Guánicel/7, p. 37.
“It pleases me to die for love of her.” — id. Z. 41.
I 26 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
“If she then changes countenance and color, I shall quickly tell her that
nothing else pleases me, except that which contents her, and whatever she
wishes, I wish it too.” — Zapo degli Ubert?, ?. 262.
Yet there is much complaining and begging for pity :
“Ballata, when thou shalt be before the gentle lady, I know that thou
wilt tell sorrowfully of my anguish. Say : He who sends me to you, is
woeful ; since he says that he does not hope ever to find pity amidst such
courtesy as accompanies his lady.” — Guido Cavalcanti, Ż. 283.
“My new song, since I am distant from her who has her soul adorned
with love, go for the comfort of our life, and beg that she have mercy on
me. Let thy manner be courteous and soft, when thou shalt stand humbly
before her, and tell her of my infinite pain.” – Laffo Gianni, Ž, 257.
“Little woeful ballad, go showing my tears. . . . If she turns in pity
toward thee to listen to the pains thou bearest, wailing, woeful, and
ashamed, picture to her how my eyes are dead from the great and strong
strokes that they received from hers at my departure, which now I weep in
song.” – Gianni A/fanz, ž. 305.
The end of their desire is never carnally expressed, as it was
in the old troubadours. A small token or a salute is frequently
all they ask. If the lady does not disdain them they are
happy :
“She was so courteous to me that she did not disdain my soft speaking:
whence I wish sweetly to thank Love, who made me worthy of so great
honor.” — Zapo Gianni, f. 246.
The entire tendency of this poetry is toward a high
spiritual ideal. The body no longer fills the singer's thoughts.
It is rather a symbol of something higher. Physical beauty
becomes the expression of spiritual beauty; character and
purity of soul are frequent themes ; the words spirit, soul,
virtue, humility, lofty mind occur constantly, and although the
old frivolous conventional formulas are employed, they are
interpreted to suit the deeper and richer thought which
inspired this more serious group of poets.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. 127
That the burden of thought should in many cases outweigh
the poetical inspiration was inevitable. In many even of
Dante's verses, this fault is painfully evident, and in slighter
writers it results in the dreariest allegory. Dino Compagni
furnishes an excellent example of this in his poem L'Inte/.
ligenza. At the beginning we have the spring, birds, flowers,
dancing, etc. Seated under a pine by the banks of a stream,
the poet feels the ray of love penetrate his heart. After
speaking of the benefits of love, he describes the beauty of
his lady, her blond hair, her complexion, even her dress.
Naturally he trembles, unworthy as he is, before this beauty
that enlumines the world. He next describes her palace in
the East and, in telling of the pictures that adorn it, he inserts,
among other things, a long historical romance of Julius Caesar,
translated from the French. In the palace he beholds the con-
ventional entertainments, and at length he confesses his love,
concluding his poem with a complete explanation of his
allegory, in which we discover with languid interest that his
lady is Intelligence.” Francesco da Barbarino uses the old
conventions in much the same way in his Documenti d'Amore.
Love is the source of all good ; illicit love is called rabiem.
There is a reunion of the servitors of Love at the castle of
the God. The twelve ladies who form a sort of Court of
Love are Docility, Industry, Constancy, etc.” Brunetto Latini,
though writing with a more direct purpose of conveying
instruction, halts to describe Nature as a beautiful lady with
golden hair, beautiful eyes, red lips, clear-cut nose, silvery
teeth, white throat, and other beauties that language fails
to convey.”
1 If he be really the author.
* For selections, see Nannucci's Manuale, i. 489 seq.
3 Thomas, Francesco da Barbarino, etc. Bib. de l’École franç. d'Athènes et
de Rome, fasc. 35, pp. 56, 57.
* Tesoretto, Nannucci, op. cit. p. 435.
I28 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
Here we find the same decadence which overtook the poetry
of Provence and of France. It was in the midst of such
tendencies as these that the poets who wrought in the
sweet new style rose and flourished, and gave to the world
him who lived the New Life and who sang of its struggles
and its triumph.
X.
DANTE was the greatest poet and the strongest champion of
the school that formed the sweet new style. In the Vita Nuova,
the Volgari Eloquio, and the Commedia, he maintains its superi-
ority. Recognizing Guido Guinicelli as his poetical father, in
so far as he was a writer of rime d'amor, Dante assigns as his
own personal merit the quality of reality. “I am one who,
whenever Love inspires, note and then sing what he dictates.” "
And, in fact, it is reality and mastery of style, rather than
originality, which raise many of the lyrics of the Vita Nuova
above those composed by his friends. We find in these poems
the same formulas, the same figures of speech, the same motives,
and the same philosophy that dominate the verse of Guido
Cavalcanti and his circle.”
A brief analysis will illustrate the closeness of the relation-
ship between Dante's youthful productions and the current
poetry of his age, a relationship which has often been remarked
but never sufficiently emphasized. This similarity will appear
much more Štriking if we separate the verse from the prose and
consider it by itself, for the narrative of all the circumstances
which surrounded the composition of these poems endows them
with a beauty that they would not otherwise possess, and gives
them an appearance of novelty not their own. It will hardly
be necessary to follow the order of ideas hitherto laid down.
That Dante has employed all the conventions of his day is too
obvious to require exemplification. Every reader will recall
the passages. Love is represented as a god, as a feudal lord
ruling over vassal lovers, as a helper of his faithful subjects;
* Purgatorio, xxiv. li. 52–54.
* For an analysis of Guido's verse, vide Salvadori, op.cit. pp. 23–36; Il Trattato
d'Amore, pp. 39 seq.
I 3O THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
love is better than any other good; gentle ladies constitute
the Court of Love; faithful lovers or gentle ladies are always
addressed as a distinct class; the cause of love is beauty, which
enters the eyes and strikes to the heart ; its effects are grievous
sickness and pain, sighs, pallor of Countenance; the lover is
always dreaming of his lady," often so absorbed as not to per-
ceive his surroundings; his feelings are in a whirl of contradic-
tions; he trembles in his lady's presence, and loses control of
himself; he fears detection ; he worships her, and is completely
submissive to her will ; he loves to praise her, exalting her to
the heavens; she ennobles him, and benefits all who see her ;
he begs for pity; the end of his passion is her most gracious
salutation. It is obvious that hardly one of the conventional
love-notions suited to his experience is omitted by Dante.
Considering the verse by itself, we find less than half of the
poems which differ in manner or in thought from those of the
Florentine School or of the Troubadours.
§ III. This is an address to lovers and those of gentle heart.
Dante narrates his vision of Love feeding his lady with his
burning heart, an incident which recalls a number of well-
known stories.” The sending of such poems to be interpreted
was not unknown in Dante's day.”
§ VII. This opens with the address to lovers. It is appar-
ently a lament for the loss of his lady, though Dante explains
it otherwise in his prose commentary. “My loss is the great-
est of all,” he exclaims. "Love, not through my goodness, but
through his own nobility, had made me joyous, but now I have
lost all.”
§ VIII. Ist. A lament, calling upon lovers to weep because
villainous Death has destroyed the beauty of a lady, and Love
himself grieves.
* Not, however, as in the sensual dreams of the Troubadours. Scherillo, p. 11.
2 Vita Nuova, ed. D'Ancona, pp. 32–36; Scherillo, p. 38.
* Vide above, p. 117; also Gaspary, i. p. 8o ; Salvadori, p. 41; Scherillo, p. 8;
cf. with Dante's vision, the Dragon in the Dieu d'Amors, ante, p. 62.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 3 I
2d. A lament, abusing Death, telling the evil it has done in
taking courtesy, virtue, and loving joyousness out of the world.
If it were not for the commentary it would be impossible to
distinguish these pieces from the customary song of lament
already illustrated.
§ IX. The poem contains a vision of Love, who directs the
poet to serve a new lady. This particular experience, of
course, belongs to Dante's life, but it comes under the general
class of cases in which Love, in one form or another, gives the
Lover advice and instruction.
§ XII. The Ballade is addressed (as was common among
the Troubadours and Italian poets") and told to find Love and
go with him to the lady in order to beg for pity, and to inform
her that Love made the lover do what displeased her, that he
has always been hers without failing ; that if she orders him
by messenger to die, he will obey. All this is thoroughly in
the style of the Troubadours. He concludes with further
instructions to the Ballade.
§ XIII. The poet, having stated that all his thoughts
speak of love, proceeds to set forth his contradictory feelings
and to beg for pity. This sonnet is wholly conventional.
§ XIV. He tells that his lady mocks him, but ought to
have pity, for he explains that, on approaching her, Love drives
out his spirits, and he changes appearance. We have met all
these thoughts before.”
§ XV. The same topic. When he sees her he almost dies.
§ XVI. Often meditating on the grief of love, he thinks to
heal his hurt by seeing his lady, but instead of being cured he
is injured more severely. Here, again, we have the conventional
situation.
§ XIX. He opens with an address to the ladies, then speaks
of his lady, not to complete her praises, but merely to relieve
* MW. i. 329, 349 ; Nannucci, i. 27, 54, 66, etc.; vide ante, p. 126.
* Vide Scherillo, p. 54; also ante, p. 97.
I 32 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
his mind. An angel begs God that his lady should be called
to Heaven, which lacks nothing else, but God replies that she
must remain to console one who will say in Hell to the ill-fated
ones : " I saw the hope of the blessed.” (This has been tor-
tured into a prediction of the Divina Commedia, but it has
every appearance of a mere exaggerated contrast in the con-
ventional manner. Moreover, Dante says nothing of the kind
in the Inferno.) All who see his lady become noble or die;
no one who speaks with her can end ill. Love says: “How
can mortal be so lovely and pure ?” Her color is pearl.
Beauty proves itself by her. From her eyes issue spirits of
love that strike through the eyes of the beholder and pass to
the heart. No one can look fixedly at her. The canzone is
addressed and told to go (avoiding the vulgar) to ladies and
courteous men, who will send it to the poet's Lady. It cannot
be necessary to call attention to the conventional elements
here.
§ XX. Love and the gentle heart are one; Love the
master, the gentle heart his mansion. Beauty in woman
pleases the eye, and in the heart is born a desire which
awakens the Spirit of Love. The same happens in the heart
of woman. This philosophy is, as Dante states, that of
Guido Guinicelli.
§ XXI. “My lady carries love in her eyes, and makes
gentle that which she regards. Pride and rage flee from her ;
sweetness and humility are born of her words. When she
smiles it is a new miracle.” Here we have the same sort of
praise as Guido Cavalcanti and other Florentine poets bestowed.
§ XXII. These two sonnets grow out of an event in the
lady's life, and have no predecessors. They have nothing
conventional about them excepting a few inevitable tricks of
language and the hyperbole at the close of the second.
§ XXIII. This is a poem expressing an experience of
Dante, which has no conventional model.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 33
§ XXIV. This exalts his lady above two others, and con-
tains a play upon words which recalls Chrétien de Troies and
the Troubadours.
§ XXVI. A sonnet beautiful in diction, but conventional
in thought. His lady's salute makes all tongues silent, while
eyes dare not look. She is clothed in humility, a miracle.
To him who sees her she sends a sweetness through the eyes
to the heart, and from her lips moves a Spirit of Love that
says to the soul : “Sigh.” "
§ XXVII. The praise is continued. The effect of her beauty
is to render others noble, and to give them honor. Thinking
of her gentle acts brings sighs of love.
§ XXXII. A truly original lament, differing in spirit from
the usual forms, as can readily be seen from a comparison with
his earlier pieces of the same kind (§ VIII). There are, of
course, conventional elements, such as the address to the ladies
at the beginning and end, and the idea that no vulgar heart
can think of her, while all gentle souls must weep.
From this point the poems reflect events in Dante's life
which have no parallel in the conventional love-system. They
are therefore all not only original in thought, but largely original
in manner. We note merely a few lingering conventional forms.
§ XXXIII. Address to gentle hearts, –sighs wander forth,
— she has gone to a world worthy of her virtue. Perhaps
there is so much of the customary figurative language here
because the poem was written for another.
§ XXXIV. The first stanza is not very original. “When
I think I can never see my lady again, I long for death,” is its
burden. In the second stanza, which Dante tells us expresses
his own feelings, we have the glorious idea of the mortal beauty
transfigured into spiritual beauty that spreads the light of love
through Heaven.
* A. de Marueil, M.W. i. 163; Malo fas, cors, car te potz abstener, Quant te
parli de lieys, que non sospires.
I 34. THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
§ XXXV. Love in the heart urging the sighs forth.
§ XXXVI. Personified Love.
§ XXXVII. Nothing conventional.
§ XXXVIII. Address to the eyes.
§ XXXIX. Thought speaking and dwelling with him, -
soul and heart speaking together, — spirit of love from eyes to
heart. As soon as Dante departs from his deepest feeling
for Beatrice, he seems to employ more of this conventional
imagery, common to Chrétien and others.
§ XL. Sighs from heart to eyes, – personified Love.
§ XLI. Others called upon to weep for the vacant city.
(See reference to Cligès, p. I IO.)
§ XLII. Address to ladies, – sigh from heart. In spirit it
is without a model.
The consideration of the verse of the Vita Muova apart from
its prose, therefore, shows that up to the period of Beatrice's
death Dante followed closely the models furnished by his prede-
cessors and contemporaries. Not only does he use the same
poetical vocabulary, as would, indeed, be inevitable, but he has
the same feelings and ideas as the others. With the poems
about Beatrice's death, we enter upon the truly original part
of his youthful work. Conventional feelings are discarded
under the pressure of that calamity. Even the poetical vocab-
ulary becomes more thoroughly his own. His style has grown
to be one that no Florentine School can write. It is the
expression of his own character, his own experience, his inmost
life.
The prose narrative, all written after the death of Beatrice,"
partakes of the characteristic originality which distinguishes
the later poems. Being a narrative of Dante's own life, it
naturally has the merit which he claims for himself, that of
reality, and for this very reason, by fitting all the poems into
their proper place in his experience, it gives vitality even to
1 See Vita Nuova, ed. D'Ancona, pp. xvii, xviii.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 35
the conventional pieces of his early years. This advantage
ought never to be overlooked in a critical consideration of the
Vita Wuova. Imagine the songs of the most frigid of the
Troubadours set exactly into his career, each conventional
phrase explained as the outcome of real circumstances, the
expression of real feeling, and note how they begin to pulsate
with life. The legend of Guillem de Cabestaing and that of
Jaufre Rudel throw upon their inferior pieces a beauty not
their own, and the real history of Dante's inner life has immor-
talized some of his poems which are not superior to those
written by several of his contemporaries.
§ I. At the very outset our interest is aroused by the words
Vita Muova. To the lovers of Provence their passion had often
been the commencement of a new life. Rambaut d'Orange
sings :
“With new heart and new desire, with new wisdom and new sense, and
with a new beautiful manner, I wish to begin a good new poem ; and who-
ever receives my good new words will, indeed, be newer in his living, for an
old man ought to be renewed by them.”— MW. i. p. 67.
Many of these poets celebrate the change that came over
them on meeting the beloved, but there is in Dante's state-
ment a directness that carries a conviction of its absolute
sincerity.
§ II. He meets Beatrice in the spring, trembles before her,
becomes a faithful servant of the God of Love, and does all his
commands. Here is all the old machinery, but how different
the effect | Not only do we have the addition of the mystic
number nine, the scholastic doctrine of spirits, the grave seri-
ousness of the Latin sentences, the ideal picture of Beatrice,
but the story is told in so veracious a form that it is hard to
doubt its truth.
§ III. The same remark applies with even greater force to
this section, for here it is easy to compare the effectiveness
I36 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
of the vision narrated in prose and the same in verse. We
may admire the condensed strength of the sonnet, but it might
seem merely an exercise of fancy were it not for the prose
account. It is this which convinces us that Dante really had
that vision. There is a characteristic touch which exhibits the
change that came over Dante's thought in his later years.
The sonnet merely says that Love went away weeping : in
the prose he carries the lady toward Heaven.
§ IV. The conventional love-sickness is vividly described.
§ V. The necessity of concealment has been often remarked.
There are even cases in which one lady has been used as a
screen for love meant for another.” But Dante here intro-
duces corroborative circumstances in connection with the acci-
dent which suggested this subterfuge to him. The chance
that the lady happened to be between him and Beatrice, and
the reported words of the gossips which he overheard, are
strong evidence of truth.
§ VI. A conventional poem of praise is mentioned.
§ VII. Here are stated the circumstances attending the
composition of a poem, and they furnish its only title to
originality.
§ VIII. The same remark applies to this section.
§ IX. The poem appears on the face of it to be an excuse
for unfaithfulness in love. The prose narrative shows its con-
nection with Dante's experience, and saves it from common-
place. Here, again, we note the Superior convincingness of
the prose account.
§ X. This same circumstance can be paralleled from the
lives of the Troubadours,” but the spirit of Dante's story is
1 That this superior effectiveness is not owing to the fact of its being in prose
is proved by § XXIII., where the narrative in verse is as free and unaffected as
that in prose.
* See Biography of Guillem de Cabestaing, M.W. i. p. 107; Folquet de Marseille,
id. p. 316.
* Bertran de Born, M.W. i. p. 257; Pons de Capdueil, id. p. 337.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 37
different, and the later circumstances corroborate the present
one in such a way as to vouch for its reality.
§ XI. We are told the effects of his lady's salutation.
These are the same as other poets have sung, but the way in
which they are here set forth renders them more credible.
§ XII. This poem, and the idea of Love commanding and
aiding the lover, are conventional. The episode derives its
reality from the circumstantial narrative of the vision, and
particularly from the conversation between the poet and the
god.
§ XIII. In this poem the contradictory thoughts of Dante
are conventional. In the prose we have the philosophical idea
Momina sunt consequentia rerum ; the thought springing from
the poet's sentiment, wherein he bases his faithfulness upon
the stability of his lady, - “My lady is not as others whose
hearts are lightly moved ’’; and also the thought, which had
its roots in his character, that calling for pity is hateful to
him. When the thoroughly conventional poem is compared
with this prose, which embodies Dante's thinking and experi-
ence, it is easy to see how completely the originality of the
first part of the Vita Nuova lies in the prose narrative.
§ XIV. Here, again, the prose, preserving the circumstances,
saves the poem from commonplace.
§ XV, XVI. Though in these paragraphs there is nothing
in the thought, either of the verse or of the prose, that differs
from the customary ideas, yet the way in which the questions
presented themselves to Dante shows that he did not merely
follow the fashion of the day, but that from his own reflection
he deduced the mode sanctioned by custom.
§ XVII. With this paragraph we pass to the praise of
Beatrice, and we may stop here to summarize the results of
our study of the previous sections. The verse, by itself, is
hardly to be distinguished, excepting by an occasional excel-
lence of style, from that of many other writers of the same
I 38 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
school. What raises Dante above all others is that he records
his own experience, and the fact that he records his own
experience is made evident in the prose narrative. He passed
through the conventional states which fashion prescribed for
all lovers, but while for others these were mere conventional
states, for Dante they were real. It was from the fact that
lovers actually trembled, suffered, dreamed, and praised, that
this system of love arose; and while many wrote of these
things simply because they were prescribed by precedent,
Dante wrote of them because they were a part of his own
experience. From his heart-struggles he could have formed a
code of love, had none been in existence ; he used the elements
which he found ready to his hand only after they had been
verified in his inner life. Yet, on the other hand, if he had
not directly stated to us what he felt in these early years, we
should hardly have guessed it from the formulas found in his
youthful poems. His prose account of these beginnings of his
new life is the evidence that he sang, not what fashion, but
what love inspired.
§ XVIII. In this paragraph are narrated the circumstances
that led Dante to speak no more of his own condition, but
merely to sing the praises of his lady. He abandons all thought
of himself, and with entire devotion adorns his ideal of her.
§ XIX. The circumstances here told are merely external.
Dante's idea that he should address only gentle ladies shows
that his praises will run in the conventional form. We are
prepared, therefore, for the canzone that follows, which is an
echo of the thoughts common to Bologna and Florence.
§ XX. There is nothing significant for Dante's inner life
or experience in this paragraph. We learn, however, that his
poems were made public as they were composed.
§ XXI. This is a mere comment on the accompanying
sonnet, which contains, as we have shown, the customary ideas
of the Florentine school.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 39
§ XXII. This is an exact account of certain circumstances
connected with the death of Beatrice's father, and leading to
two sonnets. Dante is here so careful to give the occurrences
just as they happened, and to explain the departure from the
facts in the sonnets, that this one case would lead us to give
credence to all that he narrates. It seems to be a typical
example of the way in which the events of Dante's life were
transmuted into poetry. Since he would gladly have ques-
tioned the ladies, if it had been proper, he writes as though he
really had questioned them and received their answer, thus
transforming his desire into a fact, and certain words that he
overheard into a formal reply directed to himself." As Dante
is not here expressing his own emotion the phraseology is a
little strained, particularly in the second sonnet ; * but spring-
ing from a real event, they contain nothing in the conventional
form.
§ XXIII. An account of a dream of Beatrice's death on
the ninth day of Dante's sickness. The poem is a version of
the prose. Both are of exceeding beauty. Here, in the first
poem dealing with the death of Beatrice, we reach the abso-
lutely original Dante. His love experience had been like that
of others, and he expressed it in the current fashion. His soul
experience after the death of Beatrice was one that he alone
had passed through, and out of it grew the Divina Commedia.
In the Vâta Mazova, as soon as he speaks of Beatrice's death,
he attains a power of utterance new to the world, and an
originality of thought born of emotions beyond the reach of
any but the choicest spirits.
§ XXIV. Dante returns to the praise of Beatrice with a
* E però che volontieri leavrei domandate, se non mi fosse stata riprensione,
presi materia di dire, come se io leavessi domandate, ed elle mi avessero risposto.
E feci due sonetti; che nel primo domando in quel modo che voglia mi giunse di
domandare; nell'altro, dico la loro risponsione, pigliando ció ch'io udii da loro.
si come lo m'avessero detto rispondendo. Ed. cit. p. 160
* e.g. Sarebbe innanzi a lei piangendo morto.
I 4O THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
play upon words which he explains in the prose. His love,
freed from all self-seeking, now makes him happy.
§ XXV. This explanation of his use of personification is
another evidence of the reality of Dante's story." If he feels
it necessary to explain everything that is at variance with
actual fact, surely that which remains unexplained must be
absolutely true. His care here, and in § XXII., appears to
us a strong corroboration of every fact stated in the Vita
AVuova.
§ XXVI. Merely a prose version of the accompanying
SOn net.
§ XXVII. A few words to connect this sonnet with the
preceding.
§ XXVIII. The prose contains nothing significant.
§§ XXIX-XXXI. These three sections contain a dry state-
ment of Beatrice's death, a consideration of the number nine,
and the mention of a Latin letter. There are here two insoluble
puzzles, and there is little that bears upon Dante's emotional
experience.
§ XXXII. The prose is a mere introduction to the verse.
§ XXXIII. Here is stated a fact that led to the composition
of the sonnet.
§ XXXIV. An explanation of the poem.
§ XXXV. A statement of the circumstances which make
the sonnet intelligible.
§§ XXXVI-XXXIX. The episode of the donna pietosa.
The prose is necessary to explain the verse, which would
mean little if we did not know the circumstances which
produced it. This same statement holds true of almost all
the verse of the Vita Muova. It is to be noted, however,
that while the verses in the first sixteen sections would be
interpreted as merely conventional love-songs or lamentations,
those in this part could not be so regarded. There is none
1 For its relation to the theory of love, see Goldschmidt, op. cit. pp. 22, 23.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I4 I
of the conventional system here. We should know from the
verses themselves that they refer to a real experience. Exactly
what that experience was it requires the prose narrative to
explain, although the sonnets in §§ XXXVIII. and XXXIX.
might be understood by themselves.
§ XL. The return to Beatrice. None of these events are
paralleled in the codes of love. The prose and verse together
narrate an experience for which Dante could find no predecessor.
§ XLI. Bereaved lovers often called upon others to share
their grief. Dante did not simply call upon others. He first
saw these pilgrims, then thought of the circumstance, and
afterwards spoke to them. Every poem is thus connected
with the concrete reality.
§ XLII. We pass here to the Divina Commedia. These
two ladies, for whom Dante strove to write something new,
were apparently the occasion of that wonderful vision of which
we are told in § XLIII.
To sum up the results of our study of the Vita Nuova &
Dante uses the conventional system of the Troubadours and
of his contemporaries, until he comes to the poems upon the
death of Beatrice. This grief moves him out of the path of
precedent ; his feelings and his expression at once become
Original and without a model. The episode of the donna
piezosa and his return to faithfulness to Beatrice also stand
alone as the products of his own experience. That even the
conventional poems are not merely conventional, but are also
the products of his experience, we learn from the prose nar-
rative, which is found to bear the marks of truthfulness. Our
results thus confirm Dante's own judgment in the Purgatorio."
Asked by Buonagiunta da Lucca if he was the author of the
poem Donne ch'avete intelletto d'amore, he replies : " I am one
who, when Love inspires, note; and as he speaks within me,
so do I express it.” Thus he claims superiority on the ground
1 § XXIV, 49–84.
I42 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
that he sings only of his real experiences, and not according to
the promptings of fancy or of fashion.
We have said that Dante used most of the conventional
forms: let us see in what manner he transmuted them. There
are, to be sure, many that are unchanged, excepting as their
effect upon us is modified by our knowledge of the story into
which they are fitted. Such are the following: Dante loves
at first sight, his love being caused by beauty; he seeks his
lady, his mind is all given to thinking of her; he falls into
sickness, weeps and seeks solitude, calls upon Love to aid him,
passes through the battle of diverse thoughts, trembles and
becomes as one dead in her presence, professes absolute devo-
tion ; 1 he writes appeals to her pity, hoping that they will
reach her by chance ;” he addresses faithful lovers as a class,
divides the courteous from the vulgar on grounds of love; he
reasons about Love as did Guido Guinicelli and Guido Caval-
canti, and praises his lady as they praised theirs.”
On the other hand there are certain conceptions and certain
articles of the code of love which are so modified as to be
original creations. It is to be noted that these are all to be
found, not in the verse, but in the prose. Most prominent
among them is the conception of the God of Love. The ideas
borrowed from feudal relations have left few traces in Dante's
phraseology, and the picture of a joyous youth surrounded by
a gay court has given place to that of a veritable god. Ecce
deus fortior me, guì veniens dominabitur mihā, says the Spirit
of Life. Thenceforth Love ruled Dante so that he compelled
him to do all his pleasure, yet never without the faithful coun-
sel of reason ($ II). Every time that Love appears visibly, he
appears alone. In the first vision he is a lord of fearful aspect
who comes in a cloud of fire (§ III). He speaks loftily in Latin,
* “Let her by messenger command me to die,” etc.
2 s XIV.
* See §§ XX seq. and D'Ancona's edition, p. 197.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 43
2
as he does again in a later vision, and his words are not easy
to understand (§§ III, XII). In the second visit, Love as a
pilgrim has a less impressive form and his words are simple
and direct, but his sudden disappearance gives evidence of his
divinity (§ IX). Again he comes, speaks obscure words, gives
his son minute advice and vanishes ($ XII), to reappear a fourth
time, though without definite features, in Dante's joyous
season ($ XXIV). In each case the personification has a distinct
meaning, as Dante himself tells us (§ XXV), and in each case,
the figure has truly the characteristics of a great, powerful, and
serious-minded divinity, instead of being a light creature of the
fancy.
In harmony with this conception is Dante's introduction of
the mystic number nine. Every great crisis of his love-story
turns upon this number. Nine marks his first submission to
Love, nine marks the first vision of Love, nine marks the hour
in which Loves declares himself as the center of a circle while
his servant is not so. Of course this number is used when
Love does not appear. The name of Dante's lady comes ninth
among sixty (§ VI); nine is the hour of the vision of Beatrice's
death (§ XXIII), of her death itself (§ XXX), and of the
return of Dante's soul from the dozena pietosa to his blessed
one (§ XL). It is also used as a symbol of the miraculous on
account of its perfection as connected with the Holy Trinity
($ XXX). Such associations of religion and death would ill
accord with any but the most ideal conception of the God of
Love. They clothe this figure with an awfulness and a true
divinity befitting the elevated character of Dante's feelings
and separating his conception by a great gulf, not only from
the frivolous youth who rules the garden of Love, but even
from Guido Cavalcanti's terrible archer.” We are therefore
justified in calling this a great original creation.
* This fact proves that the mystical number was connected with Beatrice after
this poem had been written, probably after her death.
* Nannucci, Manuale, i. 266.
I 44 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
A second point is the exaltation of Beatrice. The Trouba-
dours, poor Court-poets praising powerful princesses, had estab-
lished the convention of humble devotion on the part of the
lover and exaggerated laudation of the mistress, who is almost
always serene and untouched by passion. This convention
was reinforced by the natural diffidence of love and its natural
idealization of the beloved object, until it became an indispen-
sable formula with every school. The Florentines, as we have
seen, followed the example of Guido Guinicelli in carrying this
idealization to great extremes, but in none of the others does
it seem so real and so original as in Dante. At the first meet-
ing, Beatrice is the glorious lady of his mind (§ II)." Her
salute springs from ineffable courtesy, which has its fit reward
in Heaven ($ III). She is the most gentle one, his beatitude,
the destroyer of all vices and queen of virtue (§ III). When
it pleases her to deny him her salute, he places all his happi-
ness in those words which praise her (§ XVIII), though her
praise is too lofty for his powers. The ensuing poems of
laudation express the conventional formulas, though the prose
gives even these some reality. Then comes Beatrice's death,
and the praise of his lady on earth is carried over naturally
and without a break to the praise of her in Heaven. Spiritual
beauty had come to master Dante's love even before Beatrice
passed “to live in Heaven with the angels and on earth with
his soul.” ” This unhindered transition from this life to the
next seems to us one of the most original, fundamental, and
powerful achievements of Dante's genius. With it we leave
the region in which flourish the multitudinous Arts of Love
and pass into that which contains the solitary sublimity of the
Divine Comedy.
Closely connected with this topic is the end of Dante's love.
In the old system love was declared incompatible with mar-
\ 1 Here again it is, not the verse, but the later prose that furnishes the examples
of originality. * Conv., cap. ii. p. I I I, Fraticelli.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 45
riage: so it was to Dante, but for a very different reason.
His passion was a passion of the soul, without a touch of
any other element. No earthly relation could enter his
thoughts. He does not mention the marriage of Beatrice, he
even avoids naming things and places." Not once does he
mention Florence, and in his account of the places in which
his experiences occurred, one may be by a river, another in a
church, another in a garden or a room, but in no case are we
told anything further of the situation. His book deals only
with the states of his soul, and places and persons are men-
tioned merely as they effect such states. Actual localities and
actual names — such a prominent feature of the Divizza Com-
772edia — have no relation with this idealism. The end of his
desires, too, could be nothing less ideal. It must be a state of
soul or something that affects his state of soul. We therefore
find that, at first, Dante's happiness lay in his lady's gracious
salutation, afterwards in those words which praised her, and
finally in ecstatic contemplation of her transfigured spiritual
beauty in Paradise.
How did his lady's gracious salutation operate upon Dante's
soul ? The first time that he received it, on the ninth hour of
the day, he appeared to see all the ends of bliss and was taken
with such sweetness as sent him inebriated from the people
(§ III), and whenever his lady greeted him afterwards, he
pardoned all his enemies, was filled with charity and humility,
and to any question could answer nothing but “Love.” The
Spirit of Love also took possession of his body, so that he
trembled and moved as a heavy inanimate thing, so that it
appeared that in her salutation lay his happiness, which often
surpassed and overflowed his capacity (§ XI).
Supreme happiness was also brought to him at a later time
by the praise of his lady. Love appears saying: “Bless the
day that I took thee, for thou oughtest so to do.” His heart
* Gaspary, op. cit. pp. 231, 233.
I46 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
is so light that he hardly recognizes it as his own (§ XXIV).
When the people crowd to see his lady, he feels wonderful
joyousness (§ XXVI). Love which was at first harsh to him,
is now so tender within his heart, that his sighs beg for more
benefit (§ XXVIII).
The death of Beatrice is at first simply a grief. Dante
weeps and is envious of all who die, but in the midst of his
sorrow comes the thought of his lady's spiritual beauty amongst
the angels ($ XXXIV), and at length, after his backsliding,
this conception has the power to lead him away from his
lamentations to study in order that he may worthily treat of
her.
As the whole book thus treats of the states of the lover's
soul and of that which modifies or affects such states, all the
conventional machinery of the Arts of Love is transformed to
serve this new purpose. We have traced some of these
changes; let us consider three others in which the alteration
is most obvious.
I. The doctrine of love passing through the eyes to the heart.
This is woven into the structure of the Vita AVuova both in
the verse and in the prose. It is first expressly stated in the
Canzone of § XIX. “From her eyes, when she moves them,
issue Spirits of Love that strike the eyes of whomsoever gazes
at them, and pass till they find the heart.” It appears again
in §§ XX, XXI, and XXVI. But Dante is very careful that
his words shall be taken in the most ideal sense, for, after
stating that the mouth is the object of love, he takes pains to
add : " In order to banish every vicious thought, let him who
reads remember what is written above, that the salutation of
this lady, which was the operation of her mouth, was the end
of my desires while I was permitted to receive it (§ XIX).
2. The Courts of Love.
An echo of these mock tribunals is found in § XVIII. Up
to this point Dante has addressed the faithful in love : from
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I47
now on he addresses gentle ladies. In the episode narrated in
this section, there is indeed no case formally presented and
argued, and there is no judgment rendered, but we have never-
theless many of the elements of the Courts of Love. One
lady acts as spokesman for the whole company; she asks Dante
about his love, there follows a consultation among the ladies,
and then the same one asks for further information, and
renders, if not a formal judgment, at least an implied reproof,
and from that moment Dante sings in a different strain, one
which carries out in practice what was contained in the words
that this presiding lady had spoken. Instead of a decision
which was feigned to be binding upon the lover, we have here
a suggestion which operates in his soul and leads him volun-
tarily to do what his better nature commands.
3. Concealment."
According to Dante's own account, he took extraordinary
pains to conceal the object of his love. Those who asked
him about it, he calls “full of envy,” and their question a
“ wicked asking.” He feigned love to two ladies in order
to further this purpose. Even after many knew his secret,
he wrote “not telling the name of this most gentle one’’
(§ XXIII).
What was the name of this lady ? We hold it to be certain
that the Vita AVuova deals with the love of Dante for a real
woman. The circumstances narrated of her life and death and
the care that the poet takes to explain even slight variations
from the reality” make any other hypothesis absurd. When
Dante writes love-poems to Philosophy, he tells us that her
eyes are her demonstrations and her smile her persuasive
power,” but we hear nothing of the kind about Beatrice.
Moreover, Philosophy may give him pain and may seem dis-
1 Vide Scherillo, pp. 56 seq.
* See pp. I 39–14.I.
* Conv. 2, xvi.; 3, xv.
I48 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
dainful, but he never has anything to conceal in his love of
her, nor would he in his pursuit of any other abstraction, —
political, scientific, or religious.
There arises, however, the further question, was Beatrice
the real name of Dante's lady, or did he, following the example
of the Troubadours, give her this assumed name for the
purpose of concealment 2 If we consider the verse, written
during the progress of his love, apart from the prose, written
after Beatrice's death, we find that during the whole period of
concealment, her name is not once spoken. Why should it be
thus suppressed, if it were not her real name 2 The first poem
in which it appears is in § XXIV. This is a significant case,
for Beatrice is mentioned in connection with another lady, and
this second lady has two names, one real — Giovanna — and
one assumed — Primavera. The name coupled with Momma
Vanma is Monna Bice, that coupled with Pº imavera is Amor.
After the death of Beatrice her name appears in the verse
three times, §§ XXXII, XLI, and XLII. There was no
longer reason for concealment; there would be no sense in the
use of an assumed name.
The prose confirms the inference drawn from the verse.
She was called Beatrice (she who blesses) even by those who
did not know her name." Thenceforth, even in the prose, she
is, with one exception, “this lady,” “the most gentle one,”
etc., until (§ XII) Love, in telling Dante to remit the disguise,
speaks of “Our Beatrice.” Her name occurs again in the
scene of the mocking (§ XIV) and when the death of her
father is told (§ XXII), both cases in which a writer would
hardly think of using any but the real name. Again, after
the vision of her death, Dante calls, “O Beatrice,” but his
voice is so broken with sobs that the ladies around could not
understand his words. This fact would have no importance if
Beatrice were not the real name of the lady. Thus from the
* Non sapeano che si chiamare, ii.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I49
Vita Nuova itself, we draw the conclusion that Dante's lady
was a real woman and that her name was truly Beatrice."
There is no difficulty in discerning the reason why the
Troubadours concealed their love and thus established the
conventional usage which was binding upon all lovers who
followed the correct form, but Dante's reason is less obvious.
We cannot think that he merely followed a course laid down
for him by custom, since he expressly states that he did the
will of Love, who commanded him according to the counsel of
reason (§ IV). There must, therefore, have been some deeper
thought.
In the first place there is the external motive that he might
give annoyance to his lady, as he did to his second defence.
Those who asked him about his love were full of envy and
their question was with evil intent (§ IV). He is much com-
forted when he finds that his secret is safe (§ V). He is
equally troubled when the fair defence departs (§ VI). Love
appears and directs him to transfer his simulated love to
another in such a manner that its character shall not be per-
ceived (§ IX). Only when his lady denies him her salutation
does Love come at the ninth hour and tell Dante to remit the
disguise and disclose his love to Beatrice (§ XII).
External motives, however, play but a small part in Dante's
soul-history. What he does is according to the promptings of
his deepest feelings and thoughts. The commands of Love
always represent some profound spiritual change in his nature.
That such is the case in this matter of concealment, we should
judge from grounds of general consistency and our interpreta-
tion of Dante's motives will be in harmony with this judgment.
During the whole period of concealment and for some time
afterward, Dante's love had for its end his lady's gracious
salutation, that is to say, it was not complete within his own
* The Convito also supports this view ; and the form and the words of Beatrice
in the Purgatorio seem conclusive.
I 50 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
soul, but required the act of another to render it perfect.
During this same period Love appears to Dante always in
some form of sadness. In the vision of § XII, in which the
god tells him that it is time to remit the disguise, he sighs
and weeps as he looks upon him; and when Dante asks, “Why
do you weep ’’’ he replies in those enigmatical words : Ego
tanguam centrum circuli cui simili modo habent circumferentiae
partes : tu autema non sic.
Love weeps out of sympathy with Dante, because he is not
as the center of a circle. The man who is as the center of a
circle, or, in other words, the self-centered man, finds the whole
world harmoniously grouped around him. Every desire of his
soul carries with it its own fulfilment. His happiness does
not depend upon what any other being can do or say, for he is
his own happiness. He has a serenity of soul which cannot
be moved, while he works out his higher destiny oſºme Hast,
o/ime Rasſ." *
Dante was not so. He was worn with grief because his
lady had denied him her salutation. There was no happiness
for him when that was withheld, and Love, perceiving his sad
case, wept and spoke those words that seemed so obscure.
Gradually the grief which Dante felt made his spirit stronger.
After a few poems of complaint, he speaks no more of his con-
dition; and then comes the great change. When one of the
ladies asks him the end of his love, he replies that formerly it
was his lady's salutation, but now, since it has pleased her to
deny him this joy, his Master Love has placed his happiness
in that which cannot fail him, in those words which praise his
lady. Note the change. His happiness cannot fail, because
it no longer lies in anything external to himself. He, too, has
become, at least for the moment, as the center of a circle from
which all parts of the circumference are equidistant. For the
first time Love comes to him joyously, saying: “Bless the day
6 Vide De Imitatione Christi. lib. i. cap. xxv, Io. Londini, 1879.
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 5 I
in which I took you, for you ought '': and Dante's heart is so
light that, in its new condition, it hardly seems to be his
heart.
The bearing of this interpretation upon the motive of
Dante's concealment is plain. While his love was imperfect,
dependent upon Beatrice for its reward, it was his comfort to
keep every envious person from knowing it. This was the
dictate both of feeling and of reason. When the very conceal-
ment destroyed its own purpose and led to the denial of the
salutation, it was time to end it, but alas ! the love was not
yet perfect, and the hapless lover was doomed to bear the
mockery even of his own lady. When his spirit had been suf-
ficiently chastened by suffering, he became self-centered and
Serene. Now, at last, he not only needs no concealment, but
he actually uses every effort to publish his love. He is won-
derfully glad when people crowd to see his lady, and he wishes
even those who cannot see her to know of her all that words
can tell (§ XXVI).
Dante's use of the conventional motive of concealment,
therefore, like his use of all the other prescribed formulas of
love, is characteristic and original, because it springs from his
own experience and expresses the conditions and changes of
his spiritual life.
Under the conventional phraseology and the conventional
practices, we discover a beating heart and a living soul.
Dante's love was imperfect at first, but it was so real and so
absorbing as to open a new life. His sufferings and disappoint-
ments perfected his love, and he reached a stage of happiness.
This, however, was not destined to endure. Beatrice died, and
the lover found that he was not altogether as the center of a
circle. He grieved exceedingly. Then he was unfaithful.
Again rescued by grief, he gained a new conception, and
Beatrice in Heaven guided his life. Then, indeed, his love
was perfected and the New Life was fully opened.
I 52 THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE.
We commonly call Dante's little book 7/e Wew Zife, as if
therein were written the story of this life. The title is false.
What Dante wrote was all under the rubric /mcipit Vita Nova.
It is not the new life, but the beginnings of the new life.
Through all these experiences of struggle and suffering, he
rose till he was able to live under the sweet influence of
Beatrice in Heaven. That, at length, was the new life of
which he here recorded the opening, and of which the last son-
net in the Vita AVuova marks the perfect fulness.
The story of Dante's New Life is not told in the Vita
AVuova, it is told in the Divāna Commedia. No conventional
formulas could serve to express anything so unprecedented.
He must write of his lady what was never said of any woman.
His love led him to study. He sounded the depths of evil, he
climbed the mountain of well-doing and vanquished his sins,
the smile of Beatrice lifted him to the contemplation of God.
Such was the New Life of which his first little book recounted
the beginnings, and of which the full history is recorded in the
allegory of the three canticles of his great poem.
Our study has exhibited the evolution of certain literary
formulas from the rudimentary state to perfection. He who
listened to the free dance-songs of the peasant girls in honor
of the love goddess would never dream of Beatrice in Paradise.
Yet the germs were there. The formulas developed by the
Troubadours in praise of courtly mistresses, the subtlety of
Chrétien de Troies, the theorizing of Guillaume de Lorris, and
the codified principles of André-le Chapelain seem like a fulfil-
ment rather than a promise, – a fulfilment destined to fade in
the dullest of allegory. But in the home of ancient culture a
new vitality is given to the outworn forms. They speak the
THE SYSTEM OF COURTLY LOVE. I 53
actual thoughts of living men. Grasped by a great world-poet,
they are adjusted to the deepest and tenderest experiences of
his soul, until he bursts the fetters of all human conditions
and, through the death of her whom he loved, is led to the
fountains of eternal life.
VITA.
LEWIS FREEMAN MoTT was born in New York City, Sept. 29th,
1863. He received his early education in Grammar School No. 55, and
passing thence to the College of the City of New York, he was graduated
with the degree of B.S. in 1883. After one year of study at the Columbia
College Law School, he was appointed Tutor in the College of the City of
New York, his work being in the departments of English and Logic. He
was made Instructor in English in 1895. In 1886, he received the degree
of M.S. from the same college for a thesis on “The Origin of the Name
English.” From 1891 to 1896, he studied under the Faculty of Philosophy
of Columbia University, pursuing courses in Romance Literatures and
Romance Philology under Professor Cohn, Professor Todd, Professor
O'Connor, and Professor Speranza, and courses in German (Language,
Literature, and Faust) under Professor Boyesen and Professor W. H.
Carpenter. Besides brief articles in the Modern Zanguage Moſes and
the Academy, he published, in 1892, Dante and Beatrice, an Essay in
Anterpretation.
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