Courtly Love
What is “courtly love” and where
did the ideal originate?
• Courtly love is an idealized notion of pure,
enduring love that was popular in medieval
literature.
• In understanding courtly love it is advantageous to
present first a conceptual theory of love itself,
from the perspective of a Christian culture.
• In the ancient Greek language in which most of
the New Testament was written, there are three
words for love: eros, agape and philia.
What is “courtly love” and where
did the ideal originate?
• For the most part, eros,
translated often as erotic love, is
construed as covetous human
love, or love based on give and
take in a context of passion or
ecstasy.
• Philia, usually translated as
“friendship” is the type of love
that is also covetous, but
without passion.
• Agape is often translated as
“charity” a love that is based in
unconditional giving and
service.
What is “courtly love” and where
did the ideal originate?
• In the late 19th century, the philosopher Nietzsche
argued that Christianity poisoned the Greek
concept of eros, which was tied into sacred
fertility rituals. By negating human sexual love,
he argued, it was desecrated and despoiled and
became unholy and unhealthy vice.* But this
wasn’t always the case!
• While it is simpler to keep these variations of love
completely discrete, and without doubt they were
taught as being discrete, philosophical theologians
would argue otherwise.
What is “courtly love” and where
did the ideal originate?
• For two humans, the joining of bodies in sexual
love can be metaphorically tied to the unification
of each of us to one another in our very blood and
DNA.*
• In the Old Testament, the Song of Songs is often
viewed metaphorically as a combination of eros
and agape, the lovers portrayed as those who are
joining themselves in a ritualistic worship of God.
• In the New Testament, Jesus introduces the ritual
of Communion. Humans take part of the body and
blood of the deity and become in part, divine.
What is “courtly love” and where
did the ideal originate?
• Thus the death of the Christ becomes and ecstatic moment
where humans are transformed, for the human soul
achieves immortality. It is a departure from pagan sexual
fertility rights and human sacrifice, in that the body of
God, not human sexuality is the feast.
• In his first encyclical, Deus Caritas Est, Pope Benedict
XVI argues for the unification of eros and agape in the
way we should view one another and God. He argues that
human sexual love is also sacred, for with the commitment
of marriage, love becomes eternal.
What is “courtly love” and where
did the ideal originate?
• But how can human
love be both
completely pure and
passionate?
• How can love for
God be both pure and
ecstatic?
• This is the
conundrum of courtly
love.*
Ars Amatoria
• While Christians in the middle ages certainly had much
philosophical theology available on the various concepts of
love (St. Augustine, St. Dionysius) oddly (or perhaps,
simplistically) the Ars Amatoria emerges as an archetype
for the main conventions of courtly love.
• Written by Ovid, Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) was
basically a book on how to pick up a chick in Rome, and
how to survive, or not, if she refused!
• Ovid depicts a lover as a slave to passion, sighing and
trembling, growing pale and sleepless, and eventually,
dying, sick with love!
• This work was clearly a satire, but that was apparently lost
in the “purified” translation!*
Medieval Versions of Love
• While the goal of Ovid’s lover was sensual rewards, the
edited medieval version followed a different, idealized
model: The medieval lover while suffering from the same
disease, was expected to “cure” his love with a form of
religious (Madonna) worship.
• It is interesting to note, that the celebration of the holiday
of St. Valentine’s Day – formerly a Roman fertility festival
– began during the middle ages. It was thought that birds
found their mates on this day. St. Valentine was a Christian
condemned to die. The jailor’s daughter falls in love with
him and sends him notes of her undying—and functionally
unrequited love. She converts, impressed by his faith.
Medieval Versions of Love
• In modern times, scientists have isolated certain hormones
that are released during early love, which are closely related
to amphetamines. These are phenylethylamine,
norepinephrine and dopamine. It takes somewhere between
six months and three years for these chemicals to gradually
stop flooding your brain. Like drugs, they do interfere with
logical thinking. Only after they have abated can you begin
to consider that the relationship might be “true love.”
Chocolate also releases phenylethylamine (PEA), and in fact,
shortly after chocolate made its way to Europe from the New
World, nuns were forbidden to eat it, likely due to its
reputation as an aphrodisiac.
Medieval Versions of Love
• Marriage was just beginning to be a celebrated event among
the lower classes, and marriage laws begin to evolve.
• Contracts were drawn, especially if there was an inheritance
involved. Marriages were made as political or business
arrangements, but often they resulted from an unexpected
pregnancy. A priestly blessing was required to join the
couple when the woman was forced into the marriage.
• There was no divorce, but separations were common.
• Marriage as a sacred institution wasn’t made formal until the
16th century Counsel of Trent, in a counter-Reformation
move, when a priest was required to bless all marriages.
Conventions of Courtly Love
• The lady, always a beautiful,
righteous and exemplary woman,
was married to a noble, or
otherwise completely
unattainable – far away, a sworn
virgin, a nun, or even dead!
• The courtly lover was reduced to
pure, idealized adoration,
completely chaste and faithful
service and devotion, unfailing
obedience, and undying, eternal,
passionate love.
• Failure to gain sexual relief often
resulted in death. Or something
like death.
Conventions of Courtly Love
• Many seduction poems would use this
metaphorical death to make the argument that the
beloved should consent to sexual intercourse.
• Another motif associated with love and love
sickness was the idea that it was a “hunt” and the
“hunted” – often a fox or hart – was wounded and
“killed” either by the lover or the lady, usually
with a not-so-subtle arrow. This metaphor points
do a different type of “death” and a different type
of ecstasy—not exactly courtly!
Conventions of Courtly Love
• Medieval gardens become
common settings for the
allegory of courtly love.
The notion of the “rose”
and the “garden” were
common symbols of pure
womanhood, and gentile
(civilized) wooing within
the confines of court
society. (Cultivated
garden vs. wilderness)
Conventions of Courtly Love
• The gardener gently tends the garden, nurturing
his beloved rose. (If the lady IS available, this type
of wooing might move courtly love to accepted
human love.)
• The symbols originate with Mary and the Garden
in Eden. Gardens were places of exquisite beauty,
but civilized, a place of tamed passions.
• Pastoral poems later on will adopt this “garden”
concept as a rationale for a more open approach to
natural sexuality.
Courtly Love in Literature…
• A hundred years earlier, Ibn Hazm (994-1064) had
published his own treatise on love in Andalusian Spain:
The Neck-Ring of the Dove.* It is likely another strong
influence on this ideal, as it later develops in Europe.
• Visions of the lady-as-saint are presented in Petrarch’s
Laura and Dante’s Beatrice – also in the allegorical poem,
Pearl.
• Many romances also include elements of this in stories of
chaste knights serving royal queens, especially in the
stories involving Lancelot and Guinevere.
• A debate for the courtly love conundrum is found in the
allegorical poem, Le Roman de la Rose.
Courtly Love in Literature…
• The first half of Le Roman de la Rose, written in
1230 by Guilliaume de Lorris sweetly describes
how to woo a maiden in terms of “plucking” a
rose within the boundaries of the medieval garden.
• The second section of the poem, added in 1280 to
the unfinished original by Jean de Meun, mocks
this whole weird discipline, and is a cynical satire
of the purity of women, the church, society, and
love itself!
Courtly Love in Literature…
• Through modern times, Le
Roman de la Rose influenced
many debates – literary and
otherwise – on the nature of
love.
• Chaucer translated this poem
from Old French into Middle
English, and it serves as fuel for
his “Knight’s Tale.”
• As the spark of humanism fires
up, the notion of courtly love
fades. Pure, distant love, eternal
love and adoration don’t find a
place in the new reality.
Courtly Love in Literature…
• Shakespeare, in the more enlightened Renaissance, would
create Rosalind to acknowledge that, “Men have died from
time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for
love.” (As You Like It 4.1.81-92) (However, see The
Winter’s Tale, and the dueling pastoral love poems of Sir
Walter Raliegh and Christopher Marlowe…)
• In Romeo and Juliet, this is the love Romeo has, and
discards, with Rosaline, in favor of a more satisfying,
though ultimately deadly, love with Juliet.
• However, remnants of courtly love, mocked or otherwise,
appear as de rigueur conventions in pastoral and seduction
poems through the centuries.
Courtly Love Codex
• The radical behavior of courtly love was codified in a
three-volume treatise by the 12th century writer Andre Le
Chapelain (1185): “Book of the Art of Loving Nobly and
the Reprobation of Dishonorable Love.”
• Andre was believed to have been a chaplain in the court of
Eleanor of Aquitaine, wife of Henry II (1154-1189) and
both the Queen and her daughter Marie commissioned his
writings.* (See Henry and Becket, Canterbury program.)
• From this comes a belief that the origins of this ideal might
have been castle life, where there were many young
knights who were expected to serve a beautiful Queen.**
…And in Life!
• While the reality of castle life, and the
teachings of the Church toward women and
marriage, may have influenced the concept
of courtly love, perhaps more importantly,
the ideal provided a model by which people
could bear the deaths of their beloved, for
the doctrine codified eternal love that lasted
beyond the grave.
…And in Life!
• In a time full of early
death, especially of
women in childbirth, the
script of courtly love made
a framework people could
follow within the
workings of the society; it
was perhaps a salve for
the loss of a young lover
or a child, and helped to
provide a context for the
remaining fervor of love.