St. Augustine
• The human being is the center of warring
elements: the unclean body and the
purified soul
• Visible world is an imperfect reflection of
the divine order
• Medieval literature, then, becomes
allegorical (a literary device in which
characters and events stand for abstract
ideas, principles, or forces).
• Matter, then, was the matrix in which
God’s message was hidden
• In Scripture, as well as in every natural
and created thing, God’s invisible order
might be discovered
• For example, the medieval romance would
be a cloaked message of divine revelation
Interpretation
• Reaching love and its purifying grace is
worth the pain of an earthly death,
dishonor, or severe pain
• In love, one would wander aimlessly
– Couldn’t concentrate on anything but the
mental image of the beloved
– Would lose appetite
– Would lie awake at night
• Crusades begin in 1090:
• Bring back new ideas from Islam
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Literature
Architecture
Trade -- all those things in the film
Heroic stories of the war that chronicle
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Historical fact
Christian Lore
Exciting fiction
New literate audience ready for exciting tales of Crusades in
their own language (the vernacular)
Medieval Romance
• Medieval romances started in 12th C:
written in the vernacular while Church
used Latin for services
• Fiction, tale of love and adventure popular
between 1100 and 1500
• 12th century France was first romance in
rhymed verse
The World of Chretien De
Troyes
Lancelot
1170
Audience
• Small, courtly audience
• Mostly women of the court
• New dependence on written instead of oral
tradition
Madonna Enthroned
1280-1290 by Cimabue
500 CE Byzantine
Madonna and
Child
Enthroned with
Saints 13051310
by Giotto
Illicit Relationship
• Stories based on illicit relationship
between man and woman of upper class
• Arranged marriages to gain land
• Romantic love was outside marriage
12th Century Verse Romance
Lancelot
• Written in vernacular French
• Belongs to a cycle of stories re:
semilegendary 6th century Welsh Chieftain
named Arthur
• Lancelot was first
• Filled with bloody combat, supernatural
events, and romantic alliances
• Code of courtly love
Courtly Love
• Cultivated in the courts of medieval nobility
• Nobleman longs for unattainable woman
• Establishes the courtly love tradition with
rules of wooing and winning a lady
• Laid the basis for romantic love in Western
literature and life
• Started manuals of conduct for European
aristocrats
Code
• Love had a purifying and ennobling
influence on the lover
• To love was to suffer
• Courtly love associated with distressing
symptoms: inability to eat or sleep
Required of the Knight
• Prove his love for his lady
• Perform daring and often impossible
deeds
• Willing to die for her
• Creates the feminization of the chivalric
ideal
• Earlier: field battle with heroic idealism and
loyalty between men
New Direction
• Arthurian romance redefined qualities of
heroism in the direction of sentiment and
sensuality
• Lancelot fights not for country, nor for his
lord, not for glory, but for love of his
mistress
• Contrast Gilgamesh, Achilles, Odysseus
Conflict
• Kinds of love:
– Fealty to King Arthur—his lord
• Official state [arranged] marriage
– Love of his lady
• True love
– Love of Jesus/Virgin Mary
• Allegorical because of St. Augustine
• The love of woman equated in Christian mind
with love for the Virgin Mary
• As Mother of Heaven and of Christ, mediator
between Judgment seat and horrors of hell,
• Mary was recognized in the 12th century as
spiritual equivalent of lady of chilvary and
crowned as Queen of Heaven
• Songs sung to her; cathedrals dedicated to her
• Cult of the Virgin developed