Courtly love

Medieval literature is filled with examples of knights setting out on adventures and performing various deeds or services for ladies because of their "courtly love".

The term "courtly love" appears in only one extant source: Provençal cortez amors in a late 12th-century poem by Peire d'Alvernhe.

[5] It is associated with the Provençal term fin'amor ("fine love") which appears frequently in poetry, as well as its German translation hohe Minne.

[15] Roger Boase admitted the term "has been subjected to a bewildering variety of uses and definitions", but nonetheless defended the concept of courtly love as real and useful.

[17] The practice of courtly love developed in the castle life of four regions: Aquitaine, Provence, Champagne and ducal Burgundy, from around the time of the First Crusade (1099).

This new kind of love saw nobility not based on wealth and family history, but on character and actions; such as devotion, piety, gallantry, thus appealing to poorer knights who saw an avenue for advancement.

By the late 12th century Andreas Capellanus' highly influential work De amore had codified the rules of courtly love.

In contemporary Andalusian writing, Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah (The Ring of the Dove) by Ibn Hazm is a treatise on love which emphasizes restraint and chastity.

[23][note 1] Scholars who endorse this view value courtly love for its exaltation of femininity as an ennobling, spiritual, and moral force, in contrast to the ironclad chauvinism of the first and second estates.

[5][23] However, other scholars note that courtly love was certainly tied to the Church's effort to civilize the crude Germanic feudal codes in the late 11th century.

According to scholar Ardis Butterfield, courtly love is "the air which many genres of troubadour song breathe".

According to scholar Christopher Page, whether or not a piece was accompanied depended on the availability of instruments and people to accompany—in a courtly setting.

[37] Paul Gallico's 1939 novel The Adventures of Hiram Holliday depicts a Romantic modern American consciously seeking to model himself on the ideal medieval knight.

Among other things, when finding himself in Austria in the aftermath of the Anschluss, he saves a Habsburg princess who is threatened by the Nazis, acts towards her in strict accordance with the maxims of courtly love and finally wins her after fighting a duel with her aristocratic betrothed.

However, it is unclear what a poet should do: live a life of perpetual desire channeling his energies to higher ends, or physically consummate.

Denis de Rougemont said that the troubadours were influenced by Cathar doctrines which rejected the pleasures of the flesh and that they were metaphorically addressing the spirit and soul of their ladies.

[38] On the other hand, scholars such as Mosché Lazar claim it was adulterous sexual love with physical possession of the lady the desired end.

This kind consists in the contemplation of the mind and the affection of the heart; it goes as far as the kiss and the embrace and the modest contact with the nude lover, omitting the final solace, for that is not permitted for those who wish to love purely.... That is called mixed love which gets its effect from every delight of the flesh and culminates in the final act of Venus.

[18] On the other hand, continual references to beds and sleeping in the lover's arms in medieval sources such as the troubador albas and romances such as Chrétien's Lancelot imply at least in some cases a context of actual sexual intercourse.

Some poems are physically sensual, even bawdily imagining nude embraces, while others are highly spiritual and border on the platonic.

[5] A continued point of controversy is whether courtly love was purely literary or was actually practiced in real life.

Historian John F. Benton found no documentary evidence in law codes, court cases, chronicles or other historical documents.

Philip le Bon, in his Feast of the Pheasant in 1454, relied on parables drawn from courtly love to incite his nobles to swear to participate in an anticipated crusade, while well into the 15th century numerous actual political and social conventions were largely based on the formulas dictated by the "rules" of courtly love.

[39] Likewise, feminist historian Emily James Putnam wrote in 1910 that, secrecy being "among the lover's first duties" in the ideology of courtly love, it is "manifestly absurd to suppose that a sentiment which depended on concealment for its existence should be amenable to public inquiry".

[40] According to Diane Bornstein, one way to reconcile the differences between the references to courts of love in the literature, and the lack of documentary evidence in real life, is that they were like literary salons or social gatherings, where people read poems, debated questions of love, and played word games of flirtation.

Many scholars believe that Andreas Capellanus' work De amore was a satire poking fun at doctors and theologians.