If these knights of Chivalry bestrode their warlike Rosinantes to show
an astonished world for the first time what could be done in the way of
Gallantry, the peaceful poets of Chivalry—the Troubadours and
Minnesingers—in turn mounted their winged Pegasus, and soared for the
first time to the dizzy heights of Ecstatic Adoration or Emotional
Hyperbole.
“Woman was regarded,” says Mr. Symonds, “as an ideal being, to be
approached with worship bordering on adoration. The lover derived
personal force, virtue, elevation, energy from his enthusiastic passion.
Honour, justice, courage, _self-sacrifice_, contempt of worldly goods
flowed from that one sentiment, and love united two wills in a single
ecstasy. Love was the consummation of spiritual felicity, which
surpassed all other modes of happiness in its beatitude. Thus, Bernard
de Ventadour and Jacopo da Lentino were ready to forego Paradise, unless
they might behold their lady’s face before the throne of God. For a
certain period in modern history this mysticism of the amorous emotion
was no affectation. It formulated a genuine impulse of manly hearts,
influenced by beauty, and touched with the sense of moral superiority in
woman, perfected through weakness, and demanding physical protection. By
bringing the tender passions into accord with gentle manners and
unselfish aspirations, it served to temper the rudeness of primitive
society; and no little of its attraction was due to the conviction that
_only refined natures could experience it_. This new aspect of love was
due to chivalry, to Christianity, to the Teutonic reverence for woman,
in which religious awe seems to have blended with the service of the
weaker by the stronger.”
These remarks, though applicable to Chivalrous poetry in general, refer
especially to the Italian species. The most important varieties of
Chivalrous poetry, however, are those of the Provençal, or French,
Troubadours, and the German Minnesingers. These must be briefly
considered in turn, as they present national differences of importance
to the history and psychology of Love.
(_a_) _French Troubadours._—As we live in a period in which the
newspaper has become the greatest of moral forces, we can most easily
realise the social influence of the Troubadours on reading, in Thierry,
that “In the twelfth century the songs of the troubadours, circulating
rapidly from castle to castle, and from town to town, supplied the place
of periodical gazettes in all the country between the rivers Isère and
Vienne, the mountains of Auvergne and the two seas.”
The wandering minstrels who wielded this poetic power were recruited
from all classes—nobility, artisans, and clergy. But, as Dr. F. Hueffer
remarks in his entertaining work on Provençal life and poetry, “By far
the largest number of the Troubadours known to us—fifty-seven in
number—belong to the nobility, not to the highest nobility in most
cases, it is true. In several instances, poverty is distinctly mentioned
as the cause for adopting the profession of a troubadour. It almost
appears, indeed, as if this profession, like that of the churchman, and
sometimes in connection with it, had been regarded by Provençal families
as a convenient mode of providing for their younger sons.”
In a time when distinctions of rank were so closely observed, it was
perhaps of special importance that these singers should be chiefly
persons of noble blood. Women, it is true, have at all times shown a
disposition to ignore rank in favour of bards and tenors; but the
mediæval nobles might have hesitated, frequently, to extend to commoners
the unlimited hospitality of their castles, and the privilege of adoring
their wives in verse and action. These husbands, in fact, appear to have
shown remarkable forbearance towards their poetic guests. No doubt it
flattered their vanity (overtone of _Pride_) to have the charms of their
spouse sung by a famous poet in person; and on account of the social
influence wielded by the Troubadours, owing to their successive
appearance at all the castles in the land, it was, moreover, wise not to
forfeit their goodwill. Sometimes, however, Jealousy held high carnival,
as, in the case of Guillem, the hero of Hueffer and Mackenzie’s opera,
_The Troubadour_, who was murdered by the injured husband, and the
faithless wife compelled to drink of the wine called “the poet’s blood,”
adulterated in a horribly realistic manner. The women, likewise, were
frequently moved by Jealousy—not in behalf of their husbands but of the
Troubadours, of whose art and adoration they desired a Monopoly, whereas
these bards were very apt to transfer their fickle affections to other
women.
Fickleness, however, was not the greatest fault of these Troubadours.
Their great moral shortcoming was that they paid no attention to the
borderline between conjugal and romantic love. Dr. Hueffer does not
recollect a single instance amongst the numerous love-stories told in
connection with the Troubadours, in which the object of passion was not
a married lady—a strange point of affinity with the modern French novel
to which he calls the attention of those interested in national
psychology. A case in point is that of Guirant (1260), one of whose
pastorals is analysed by Hueffer: “The idea is simple enough: an amorous
knight, whose importunate offers to an unprotected girl are kept in
check by mere dint of graceful, witty, sometimes tart reply.” These
offers of love are repeated at intervals of two, three, seven, and six
years, and finally transferred to the woman’s daughter, always with the
same bad luck. His own wife, meanwhile, is never considered a proper
object for his poetic effusions. Concerning the German imitator of
foreign customs—Ulrich von Lichtenstein, mentioned a few pages back—we
have likewise seen that his wife never entered his mind except when he
came home “tired and dilapidated, to be restored by her nursing.”
Besides pastorals of the kind just referred to, the Troubadours had
several other classes of songs, among them the tensons, or contentions
which were “metrical dialogues of lively repartee on some disputed
points of gallantry.” These may have given ground for the myth that
aristocratic ladies of this period “instituted Courts of Love, in which
questions of gallantry were gravely discussed and determined by their
suffrages,” as, _e.g._ whether a husband could really love his wife. The
question whether any such debating clubs for considering the ethics and
etiquette of love existed is still debated by scholars; but the best
evidence appears to be negative.
(_b_) _German Minnesingers._—The German wandering minstrels also
belonged mainly to the aristocracy, and imitated their French colleagues
in paying their addresses chiefly to married women—a fact for which, in
both cases, the rigid chaperonage of the young must be held responsible;
for man _will_ make love, and if not allowed to do so properly he will
do it improperly. Yet on the whole the Minnesingers, at least in their
verse, were less amorous than the Troubadours. As Mr. L. C. Elson
remarks in his _History of German Song_: “The Troubadour praised the
eyes, the hair, the lips, the form of his chosen one; the Minnesinger
praised the sweetness, the grace, the modesty, the tenderness of the
entire sex. The one was concrete, the other abstract.”
Abstractness, however, is not a desirable quality in poetry, the very
essence of which is concrete imagery. Accordingly we find that with few
exceptions the German Minnesingers are not as poets equal to their
French prototypes. It was Schiller himself who passed the severest
judgment on these early colleagues of his. “If the sparrows on the
roof,” he once remarked to a friend, “should ever undertake to write, or
to issue an almanac of love and friendship, I would wager ten to one it
would be just like these songs of love. What a poverty of ideas in these
songs! A garden, a tree, a hedge, a forest, and a sweetheart—these are
about all the objects that are to be found in a sparrow’s head. Then we
have flowers which are fragrant, fruits which grow mellow, twigs on
which a bird sits in the sunshine and sings, and spring which comes, and
winter which goes, and nothing that remains except—_ennui_.”
Schiller’s criticism, however, is too sweeping, for there were notable
exceptions to these sparrow-poets, concerning one of whom, Hadlaub, the
late Professor Scherer gives the following fascinating information in
his _History of German Literature_: "He introduces human figures into
his descriptions of scenery, and shows us, for instance, in the summer a
group of beautiful ladies walking in an orchard, and blushing with
womanly modesty when gazed at by young men. He compares the troubles of
love with the troubles of hard-working men, like charcoal-burners and
carters.
“Hadlaub tells us more of his personal experiences than any other
Minnesinger. Even as a child, we learn, he had loved a little girl, who,
however, would have nothing to say to him, but continually flouted him,
to his great distress. Once she bit his hand, but her bite, he says, was
so tender, womanly, and gentle, that he was _sorry the feeling of it
passed away so soon_. Another time, being urged to give him a keepsake,
she threw her needle-case at him, and he seized it with sweet eagerness,
but it was taken from him and returned to her, and she was made to give
it him in a friendly manner. In later years his pains still remained
unrewarded; when his lady perceived him, she would get up and go away.
Once, he tells us, he saw her fondling and kissing a child, and when she
had gone he drew the child towards him and embraced it as she had
embraced it, and kissed it in the place where she had kissed it.”
The gradual change in woman’s position, social and amorous, is indicated
by the differences between the earlier and the later Minnesongs. In the
early poems Professor Scherer remarks, "The social supremacy of noble
woman is not yet recognised, and the man wooes with proud
self-respect.... Another refuses himself to a woman who desired his
love.... A fourth boasts of his triumphs. ‘_Women_,’ says he, ‘_are as
easily tamed as falcons_.’ In another song a woman tells how she tamed a
falcon, but he flew away from her, and now wears other chains....
“In the later Minnesongs it is _the women who are proud, and the men who
must languish_.”
A still more remarkable change is noticed in the German Folk-songs which
followed the periods of Minnesong proper. “The women of these popular
love-songs are not mostly married women; _they are, as a rule, young
maidens_” [at last, pure Romantic Love!] “who are not only praised but
also turned to ridicule and blamed. The woes of love do not here arise
from the capricious coyness of the fair one, but are called forth by
parting, jealousy, or faithlessness. Feeling is stronger than in the
Minnesong, and seeks accordingly for stronger modes of expression.”
It is not a mere accident that true Romantic Love should have first
appeared in these Folk-songs. For these were the products of gifted
individuals in the lower classes, where chaperonage—arch enemy of
Love—was less strict than among the higher classes.