False can I be or true for her, Sincere or full of lies, A perfect knight or worthless cur, Serene or grave, stupid or wise.

Raimon of Toulouse:

In the kingdom of love Folly rules and not sense.

It was typical of this enthusiastic love that the social rank of the beloved, the mistress, was invariably above the rank of the lover. The latter was fond of calling himself her va.s.sal and serf, proclaiming that she had invested him with all his goods; even kings and German emperors composed love-songs, although in all probability they would have achieved their purpose far more quickly by other means; but in all cases we find the characteristic att.i.tude of the humble lover, looking up to his mistress. The underlying thought is obvious: Love, the loftiest value in all the world, is the great leveller of all social differences, a force before which wealth is as dust. "I would rather win a kind glance from my lady's eyes than the royal crown of France," was a favourite profession of the poets. Montanhagol, for instance, in a rhymed meditation, stated that a lady was wise in choosing a lover of a lower social rank, because not only could she always count on his grat.i.tude and devotion, but she would also have more influence over him, a fact which in the case of a social equal or superior was, to say the least, a little doubtful. This supreme reverence for love soon became an accepted doctrine. We constantly meet the thought that chaste love alone can make a man n.o.ble, good and wise. I will select a few ill.u.s.trations from a wealth of instances:

Miraval:

n.o.ble is every deed whose root is love.

Peire Rogier:

Full well I know that right and good Is all I do for love of her.

Guirot Riquier:

The man who loves not is not n.o.ble-minded, For love is fruit and blossom of the highest.

And:

Thus love transfigures ev'ry deed we do, And love gives everything a deeper sense.

Love is the teaching of all genuine worth.

So base is no man's heart on this wide earth, Love could not guide it to great excellence.

Giraut of Calenso said of the City of Love that no base or ignorant man could enter it, and the Italian Lapo Gianni sang:

The youthful maiden who appeared to me So filled my soul with pure and lofty thoughts, That henceforth all ign.o.ble things I scorn.

Dante in the _Vita Nuova_ calls Beatrice "the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtues."

The very thought of the beloved makes a good man of the lover:

"I cannot sin when I am in her thoughts."

a.s.serts the sincere Guirot Riquier, and he prays Christ to teach him the true love of woman.

While it was a generally accepted theory that love was the source of man's perfection, I know of only one pa.s.sage (by Raimon of Miraval) contending that woman, also, was perfected by love; everywhere else we meet the universal and silently accepted opinion that the essence of womanhood is something unearthly, unfathomable and divine. Perhaps the most cla.s.sical formulation of the new doctrine, to wit, that spiritual love is the begetter of all virtue and the mother of chast.i.ty, outside which there is nothing divine, is to be found in the poems of the somewhat pedantic Montanhagol:

The lover who loves not the highest love, Is like a fool polluting precious wine.

Let loftiest love alone within thee move, And purity and virtue will be thine.

Guirot Riquier expressed a similar sentiment:

For chaste and pure my love has always been, From my "sweet bliss" I've never asked a boon; If I may humbly serve her night and noon, My life be her inalienable lien.

Walter von der Vogelweide says: "Love is a treasure heaped up of all virtues."

As time went on the barrier erected between true spiritual love and insidious sensuality became more and more clearly defined; the former pervaded the erotic emotion of the whole period. Parallel with chaste love, sensuality continued to exist as something contemptible, unworthy of a n.o.ble mind; and it must be admitted that according to the contemporary "Fabliaux," later German comedies and Italian and French novels, the s.e.xual manifestations of the period, were of incredible coa.r.s.eness. As against these, spiritual love was not merely an artistic and theoretic concept, but the profound emotion of the cultured minds, and remained a powerful and creative force even in later centuries.

Spiritual love and s.e.xuality were irreconcilable contradistinctions; the man who thought otherwise was looked upon as a libertine. The following pa.s.sages from the poems of the troubadours and their heirs, the Italian poets of the _dolce stil nuovo_, will prove the historical reality of this relationship, the ideal of the declining Middle Ages. We need take no account of the German minnesingers, for although they shared the same ideal, they did not influence principle in the same way as the neo-Latin poets.

Bernart of Ventadour:

Lady, I ask no other meed Than that you suffer me to serve; My faith and love shall never swerve, I'm yours whatever you decreed.

Peire Rogier:

Mine is her smile and mine her jest, And foolish were I more to ask And not to think me wholly blest.

'Tis no deceit, To gaze at her is all I need, The sight of her is my reward.

Gaucelm Faidit:

Of all the ways of love I chose the best, I love you, love, with ardour infinite, Yours is my life, do as you will with it.

Nor kiss I ask, nor sweet embraces, lest I were blaspheming....

The most enthusiastic champions of pure love were Montanhagol, Sordello and Guirot Riqiuer. The former maintained that a lover who asked for favours incompatible with his lady's honour, neither loved her nor deserved to be loved.--"Love begets purity, and he who knows the meaning of love can never forsake virtue."

There is a controversy between Peire Guillem of Toulouse and Sordello, which contains the following pa.s.sages:

Of all mankind I never saw A man like you, Sordell', I wis, For he who woman does adore Will never flout her love and kiss.

And what to others is a prize You surely don't mean to despise?

Honour and joy I crave from her, And if a little rose she bind Into the wreath, Sir Guillem Peire, From mercy, not from duty, mind, That would be happiness indeed, Oh! that such bliss should be my meed!

A humble lover such as you, Sordell', in faith, I never knew.

Sir Peire, methinks what you express Is lacking much in seemliness.

In another poem the talented Sordello says:

My love for her is so profound I'd serve her, spurn and scorn despite Ere with another I'd be found-- Yet I'd not serve without requite,

and in another, after stating that he loves his lady so much that he would thank her even if she killed him, he continues:

Thus, lady, I commend to thee My fate and life, thy faithful squire I'd rather die in misery Than have thee stoop to my desire.

The knight who truly loves his dame Not only loves her comely face, Dearer to him is her fair fame Undimmed, unsullied by disgrace.

How grievously I should offend Thy virtue, if I spoke of pa.s.sion; But if I did--which G.o.d forfend!

Sweet lady, stoop not to compa.s.sion.

Although Sordello appeared so extremely modest, yet he was grieved to death because his lady did not return his love. There is a poem in which he compares himself to a drowning man whom the beloved alone could save.

This spiritual love (then as now) puzzled the commonplace, and was misunderstood and regarded with scepticism. Bertran d'Alaman taunted Sordello with his "hypocritical happiness" and "the whole deception of his love," and Granet, in a satirical poem, cast doubt upon his sincerity.

It is very significant to find that Sordello, that typical champion of chaste love, kept up a number of questionable liaisons with all sorts of women. Bertran reproached him with having changed his lady at least a hundred times, and he himself shamelessly confesses:

The jealousies of husbands ne'er amaze me, For in the art of love I do excel, And there's no wife, however chaste she may be Who can resist me if I woo her well.

And if her husband hate me I'll not grumble, Because his wife receives me in the night, If mine her kiss, if mine sweet love's delight, His pain and wrath my spirit shall not humble.