Courtly Society
in
Medieval Europe
Social Classes
SECULAR
ECCLESIASTICAL
KING
POPE
NOBLES
CARDINALS
KNIGHTS
BISHOPS ABBOTS
MERCHANTS
PROFESSIONALS
CRAFTSMEN
PRIESTS MONKS
SUMMONERS FRIARS
PARDONERS NUNS
PEASANTS
freemen
serfs
PEASANTS
lay brothers and sisters
serfs
Chivalry
 Chivalry was a peculiarity
of the practice of war in
medieval Europe.
 The feudal knight was
supposed to be devout,
honest, selfless, just, brave,
honorable, obedient, kind,
charitable, generous, and
kind to women.
 complex rituals and rules
Courtly Love
and the
Roman Courtois
Countered Franco-German
ideal of Holy Roman Empire
with Charlemagne as saint
Nourished by
Celtic inspiration
Provençal eroticism
Islamic poetry
Theme: initiation, dedication,
metamorphosis and absorption
into a higher and fuller life
“Love is a cue for chivalric
adventure, and chivalry is a
means of deserving love”
Courtly
Love
C.S. Lewis:
“Humility,
Courtesy,
Adultery
and the
Religion of Love”
April
Très Riches Heures
of the Duc de Berry
The "rules" for this game are
roughly:
 Worship of the
chosen lady
 Declaration of
passionate
devotion
 Virtuous rejection
by the lady
 Renewed wooing
with oaths of
eternal fealty
 Moans of
approaching death
from unsatisfied
desire
 Heroic deeds of valor
which win the lady's
heart
 Consummation of the
secret love
 Endless adventures
and subterfuges
 Tragic end
Troubadour Poetry
 Origins in Provençal: Guillaume X considered to be
first troubadour poet
 Influenced by Moorish love poetry
 Troubadours and Trobiaritz flourished between 1100
and 1350 and were attached to various courts in the
south of France.
 Innovations:
vernacular language
passionate love poetry influenced by Islamic
love poetry
voice of amour courtois
love viewed as ennobling -- heightens one’s
sensibility
ARABIC POETRY
Abu Tammam Habib
To My Mistress
SPAIN: MOORISH POETRY
Ali Ben Abad
Serenade To My Sleeping Distress
Ungenerous and mistaken maid,
To scorn me thus because I'm poor!
Canst thou a liberal hand upbraid
For dealing round some worthless ore ?
To spare's the wish of little souls,
The great but gather to bestow;
Yon current down the mountain rolls,
And stagnates in the swamp below.
Sure Harut's potent spells were breathed
Upon that magic sword, thine eye;
For if it wounds us thus while sheathed,
When drawn, 'tis vain its edge to fly.
How canst thou doom me, cruel fair,
Plunged in the hell of scorn to groan?
No idol e'er this heart could share,
This heart has worshiped thee alone.
Secular
Lyric Poetry
 Ballades: poems with at least
three stanzas having the
same rhyme and metrical
schemes and repeating the
same last line: refrain
 Complaints
 Reverdies: spring songs
 Love Songs
Courtly Love
Aubades: poem or song
about lovers parting at
dawn
FRANCE: TROUBADOURS/TOBIARITZ
Guillaume X (1071-1127) #7
I shall make a new song
before the wind blows and it freezes and rains,
My lady is trying me, putting me to the test
to find out how I love her.
Well now, no matter what quarrel she moves for
that reason,
She shall not loose me from her bond.
Instead, I become her man, deliver myself up to
her,
and she can write my name down in her charter.
Now don't go thinking I must be drunk
if I love my virtuous lady,
for without her I have no life,
I have caught such hunger for her love.
For you are whiter than ivory,
I worship no other woman.
If I do not get help soon
and my lady does not give me love,
by Saint Gregory's holy head I'll die
if she doesn't kiss me in a chamber or under a
tree.
What shall it profit you, my comely lady,
if your love keeps me far away?
I swear, you want to become a nun.
And you better know, I love you so much
I'm afraid the pain will prick me to death.
If you don't do right by me for the wrongs I cry
against you.
What shall it profit you if I become a monk shut
in
and you do not keep me for your man?
All the joy of the world belongs to us,
Lady, if we both love each other.
Now to my friend down there, Daurostre,
I say, I command: sing this nicely, do not bray it
out.
For this one I shiver and tremble,
I love her with such good love;
I do not think the like of her was ever born
in the long line of Lord Adam.
August
Très Riches Heures
of the Duc de Berry
Almucs de Castelnau and Iseut de Capio, 12th century
ALMUCS DE CASTELNAU AND ISEUT DE CAPIO were from two towns of Provence
Almucs was probably a patron of troubadours, as was her son, Raimbaut d'Agoult.
Lady Almucs, with your permission
let me request that in place
of anger and bad grace
you show a kinder disposition
toward him who slowly dying lies
lamenting amidst moans and sighs
and humbly begs reprieve;
but if you want him dead let him receive
the sacraments, to guarantee
that he'll refrain from doing further injury.
Lady Iseut, if he showed some contrition
he might be able to erase
the effects of his disgrace
and I might grant him some remission;
but I think I'd be unwise,
since by his silence he denies
the wrong he's done, to in any way relieve
a man who as so eager to deceive.
Still, if you can get him to repent his perfidy
you'll have no trouble in converting me.
you will find a fair welcome here!
Minnesänger
Medieval German poets,
who contributed to the
development of the ideas
of courtly love in the
13th and 14th centuries
German minnesänger
were willing to
incorporate the ideals of
courtly love into a
marriage framework -see especially Wolfram
von Eschenbach’s
Parzival
Detail from the Minnesanger Manuscript
Hartmann von Aue, 12th-13th century
Often a friend will greet me thus (his greeting
doesn't make me very glad):
"Hartmann, let us visit courtly ladies."
Let him leave me in peace and rush himself
to his ladies.
From these ladies I expect no pleasure
but waiting till I'm weary.
I have one mind with ladies:
as they treat me, I treat them:
because I get more for my time
with just plain women.
Wherever I come, there they are in droves,
and there I find one that wants me,
and she is my heart's delight.
A lofty goal beyond my reach -- frankly, who
needs it?
In my inexperience it happened once,
I said to one of these ladies:
"Lady, I have set my mind to loving you."
She looked at me down her nose.
So I tell you I want
to find the kind of women
who will save me from such woes.
Wolfram von Eschenbach, 12th-13th
century
You always sang at break of day
the sorrow of hidden love-the bitter after the sweet:
whoever took love and a woman's greeting
in secret
must now separate.
Whatever you advised the two of them
when the morning star rose up
then -- Watchman, be still about that now,
do not sing of it again.
 Whoever knows, or ever knew, what it is
to lie with a wife he loves,
with no burrowing when slanderers are
near,
that man does not have to steal away
when it is dawn,
he can wait upon the day-no need to let him out
in peril of his life.
Such love is in the giving
La Stil Nuova
 Italian courtly poetry
 Love for lady becomes sublimated
 Protagonist of the stilnovist song is
a young scholar in love with a star
 Calvacanti, Dante, Petrarch
 Development of the sonnet
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
from La Vita Nuova
Poem XVI
So many times there comes into my mind
The dark condition Love bestows on me,
That pity comes and often makes me say:
"Could ever anyone have felt the same?"
So forcefully and suddenly loves strikes
That my life would all by abandon me
Were it not for one last surviving spirit,
Allowed to live because it speaks of you
Hoping to help myself, I gather courage
And pale, drawn, lacking all defense,
I come to you expecting to be healed;
But if I raise my eyes to look at you
An earthquake starts at once within my heart
And drives life out and stops by pulses' beat.
Francesco Petrarca (1304-74)
Sonnet 90
She used to let her golden hair fly free
For the wind to toy and tangle and molest;
Her eyes were brighter than the radiant west.
(Seldom they shine so now.) I used to see
Pity look out of those deep eyes on me.
("It was false pity," you would now protest.)
I had love's tinder heaped within my breast:
What wonder that the flame burned
furiously?
She did not walk in any mortal way,
But with angelic progress; when she spoke,
Unearthly voices sang in unison.
She seemed divine among the dreary folk
Of earth. You say she is not so today?
Well, though the bow's unbent, the wound
bleeds on.
William Shakespeare: CXXX
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
Antiphonale-Responsoriale
16th Century Choir Book from Iberia
MUSIC
ANTIPHONAL LEAF
14th c., Italy, Tuscany(?)
Guillaume de Machaut
(b. around 1300-d. 1377)
 A poet and innovative composer-major figure in 14th c. French
literature and music.
 Apart from his celebrated
Coronation Mass, his art was
essentially of secular inspiration
 Found its most finished expression
in a series of Dits (stories in verse,
interspersed with lyric and musical
pieces).
 The author celebrated the
traditional themes of courtly love.
Queen with
Musicians
from
De claris
mulieribus.
by
Giovanni
Boccaccio
15th c. MS
Romance
Romance
Story of heroic adventure often
encompassing courtly love: a
chivalrous, heroic knight, who,
abiding chivalry's strict codes,
fights and defeats monsters and
giants, thereby winning favour
with a beautiful but fickle
princess.
Traditional Material
The matter of Rome:
Alexander the Great
The matter of France:
Charlemagne
The Matter of Britain: King
Arthur
Arthurian Legend
 Historical: Romano-Celtic dux
bellorum who fought the Anglo-Saxon
invasions
 Major texts:
 12th century
Geoffrey of Monmouth’s
History of the Kings of Britain
 Chretien de Troyes’ romances
 13th-14th century: French prose
romances
 15th century: Malory
MAY
Très Riches Heures
of the Duc de Berry
The Knight of the Cart,
or Lancelot
Introduced the French knight, Lancelot and the concept of
amour courtois (courtly love) into Arthurian romance
Chretien de
Troyes
Attached to the Court at
Champagne, under the
patronage of Countess
Marie de Champagne,
daughter of Eleanor of
Aquitaine and Louis
VII of France
Lancelot
becomes
the queen’s
champion,
protector,
and lover
Perceval: The Story of the
Grail
by
Chretien de Troyes,
12th c.
First Grail Romance
Grail not here associated
with the cup of the Last
Supper or the cup used to
catch Christ’s blood
A symbol of beauty and
mystery, but not of religious
devotion
Church’s response to
Amour Courtois
Obviously disapproved of the cultic status
of the lady and the tacit approval of adultery
Encouraged infusion of Christian ideals into
literature:
Grail romances
 Sublimated love: Dante’s Divina Commedia
 Used the language of courtly love in the
veneration of the Virgin Mary
13th-14th Century:
French Grail Romances
 Robert de Boron, Joseph d’Arimathie and Merlin, c.120212
 Didot Perceval: Perceval le Gallois ou le Conte du Graal,
c.1210-20
 Vulgate prose cycle: French Cistercian retelling of Estoire
del Saint Graal, Estoire de Merlin, Lancelot du Lac,
Queste del Saint Graal, and Mort Artu, c. 1215-30
 Roman Du Graal and Lancelot Cycle: variant versions of
the Vulgate Cycle, c. 1230-1320
Cistercian Spirituality
 Transforms the grail into “the Holy Grail” -- the cup in
which Joseph of Arimathea caught the blood dripping from
Jesus’ wounds
 Claims that Joseph of Arimathea brought the grail to Britain
 Grail quests become the central activity of the Arthurian
knights, especially Gawain, Perceval, and Lancelot: none of
whom can achieve the grail because of their impurities.
Introduction of
Galahad,
son of Sir Lancelot
and the maiden
Elaine, who,
because of his
purity is able to
attain “The Holy
Grail”
Notre Dame du
Chartres
1145-1220
Gothic Cathedral
Religious Lyric
Poetry
Devotional songs
Hymns
Marian lyrics
Carols
Dante’s Divina Commedia
Dante greets Beatrice
Dante in the Dark Wood of Error
Map of
the Inferno
(Hell)
and
Purgatoria
(Purgatory)
Paolo and
Francesca
Vision of
the
Paradisio
(Paradise)
Realism and the International Style
Limbourg Brothers, Tres Riches Heures, 15th c.
FEBRUARY
JULY
Medieval Towns
Rise of the Middle Class – merchants, artisans,
professionals – dependant on commercial exchanges
Guilds – trade “unions” – protected buyers and sellers
Charters of self-government – city-states with elected
officials
Bourgeois vernacular literature
Fabliaux: humorous narratives
Novelle: realistic, contemporary stories
Dits: urban poetry
Novella
The novella is defined as a short, prose narrative, usually
realistic and often satiric in tone.
Novella is an Italian word deriving from the feminine
form of the word for new. The quality of newness in the
novella is, perhaps, best associated with the
contemporary subject matter of the stories
Novelle (pl.) are based on current local events -- with a
viewpoint that ranges from amorous to humorous and
satirical to political or moral.
The characters in a novella are placed in a realistic
setting, complete with the rhythms of everyday life and
conversation.
Novella
Boccaccio’s Decameron
Collection of 100 novelle
with a frame tale
Frame tale realistically
details the Black Death in
Italy
Novelle: short tales based
set in realistic settings
with a variety of characters
from all social classes
Ten young people leave
Florence during the Plague
to find respite in the
countryside. They decide to
pass the time by telling
stories to each other:
Ten stories
For
Ten days:
The Decameron
Geoffrey Chaucer
 First great English
poet
 Early works reflect
courtly concerns and
ideals
 Influenced by
French and Italian
models
The Canterbury
Tales
 Chaucer’s masterpiece
 Frame: Pilgrimage from
London to Canterbury
 Brilliant portraits of
English characters
 Tales include many
genres: romance, sermon,
fabilaux, lai, etc.
Christine de
Pisan
1364-ca. 1430
 First European professional
female author
 Prominent in the “Debate
about Women”
 Works include courtesy
books, military treatises,
dream visions and The Book
of the City of Women
From Christine de Pisan, 'Works'.
Copyright ©, The British Library
Citizens of
The City of
Ladies, 15th
c. MS.
Christine
De Pisan
Chatting
With a
Woman
in
Armor,
15th c.
ms.