Courtly Love

"Courtly love" describes a particular set of rules for the conduct of amorous relations which was developed in the aristocratic courts of the South of France in during the 12th century. It seems that these practices were cultivated by noble-men and -women, to amuse themselves in their leisured pursuits. In other words, it developed as a kind of ritual practiced by a small, elite group of people. The influence of this new kind of love spread quickly, however, chiefly through the songs and sung tales of the troubadors who carried this new ideal to the rest of France and throughout Europe. In the north of France and in England, courtly love blended with the traditions of chivalric and romance literature.

As you will infer from the rules which governed its practice, courtly love was an extramarital pursuit. In fact, this ideology assumed that marriage was an institution devoid of love. ("Married love" is an oxymoron in this context.)

Some of the Rules of Courtly Love:

* Love requires suffering.
* The lover cannot eat or sleep.
* A lover lives in fear of many things: that he may offend his beloved, that she will scorn his love, that she will remove her love from him and give it to another, etc.
* The lover often uses an intermediary or helper to carry secret messages to the beloved.
* Love brings nobility of character to the lover.
* The lover cannot think of any other woman.
* A lover who wants his love affair to last for a long time must keep it secret -- this is important for the woman’s reputation, but secrecy is also important because if the affair were known it would cease to be special to the two lovers and it might attract the envy/interference of rivals.
* A lover must confess to his beloved if he has done something improper that may offend her.
* In a crowd, the lover must treat his beloved almost as a stranger.
* The lover must be a courageous warrior, and it should be clear to the beloved that her love inspires him to greater deeds.
* The lover must be humble.
* The lover should be well-mannered.
* "Sweet solaces of the flesh" should not be indulged in frequently (if the beloved permits such familiarity at all), lest they become wearisome.
* Jealousy in the lover is good (to be expected). It increases love; so does anger.
* He who is not jealous cannot love.
* Meetings between lovers must be difficult to arrange.
* Dreams of the beloved increase love.
* Absence increases love.
* The beloved lady should (eventually) accept acts of love eagerly, though she must keep the lover in suspense for a very long time.
* If love is not increasing, it must be decreasing.
* When made public, love rarely endures.
* The easy attainment of love makes it of little value; difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
* A lover often turns pale in the presence of his beloved. (His heart palpitates.)
* Good character alone makes a man worthy of love.
* If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.
* A man in love is always apprehensive.
* A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved.
* A true lover is constantly and without remission possessed by thoughts of his beloved.

Two principle catagories of love:

1) Celestial love -- love of God only (presumably involves chastity)
2) Natural love -- this kind of love may or may not entail physical consummation between lovers.

** A person was obliged to choose between these two kinds of love as they are clearly incompatible with one another. In fact, the code of courtly love was antithetical to Christian belief. It places the beloved in the place which Christians reserved for God. In practice, however, people seem not to have resolved the tension between the two systems -- at least they allowed the two to exist in tension in their literature.

For more information, see:

Capellanus, Andreas. The Art of Courtly Love. Trans. J. J. Parry. Ed. F. W. Locke. (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1961).