THE COURTS OF LOVE.
There is yet one other important character in which I should wish to
introduce the lady of Provence to the gentle reader. It has already been
pointed out that to her influence the refinement of manners and the
high conception of the duties of gallantry in the early middle ages are
mainly due. But nowhere did her gentle sway exercise a more irresistible
power than in that truest domain of womanhood—love. This love was little
restrained in Provence by the legitimate bounds of marriage, but it was
not altogether lawless for that reason. There were certain rules of
conduct instinctively felt rather than definitely formulated, but which,
nevertheless, no lady or gallant cavalier could transgress with impunity.
Discretion, for instance, was a demand most strictly enforced by these
self-imposed laws of the loving community. No lady of good feeling would
have accepted the services of a knight who had failed in this respect
to a former mistress. Neither was it thought compatible with correct
principles for a lady to deprive another lady of her lover. Inquiries
into the antecedents of intended _cicisbeos_ were of frequent occurrence,
and only when a troubadour could prove his ‘being off with the old
love’ could he hope for a favourable reception of his vows. We indeed
know of one case at least where a lady, although herself desirous of the
services of a poet, effected his reconciliation with a rival beauty.
But this loyal feeling did not extend to that bugbear and scapegoat of
gallant society in Provence—the husband. No amount of verbal falsehood
or hypocrisy was thought unjustifiable in the endeavour to dupe his
well-founded suspicion. His resentment of injuries received was, on the
other hand, punished by the general interdict of polite society. Such, at
least, is the no doubt somewhat high-coloured picture drawn by Provençal
poets and romancers.
To the great influence of noble ladies on public opinion, and to the
_esprit de corps_ evinced by their recorded words and doings, we have to
trace back the general and time-honoured idea of the ladies’ tribunal,
or ‘court of love.’ To us in England Chaucer’s poem of that title has
sanctioned the name.[30] A prettier picture moreover can hardly be
imagined than that drawn by many old and modern writers of an assembly
of beautiful women sitting in judgment on guilty lovers, and gravely
deciding knotty points of the amorous code. The slight tinge of pedantry
in such a picture only adds to its mediæval quaintness. The only drawback
is that, like so many other pretty and quaint pictures, it has no
counterpart in the reality of things; not as far, at least, as the south
of France and the times of the troubadours are concerned. Friederich
Diez, the lately deceased great philologist to whom the history of
Romance literature and languages owes so much, has once and for ever
destroyed the fable of the ‘courts of love’ in connection with the
troubadours. This was done in 1825; but ever since the uprooted notion
has gone on producing fresh and powerful shoots in the fertile soil of
periodical and generally unscientific literature. It is, indeed, one of
the few dainties of genuine or pseudo-Provençal composition which have
been frequently and _ad nauseam_ dished up to the general reader of this
country.
The state of the case is briefly this:—
In 1817 the well-known French scholar, M. Raynouard, published his large
collection of Provençal poems, entitled ‘Choix des Poésies originales
des Troubadours.’ In the second volume of this work he has inserted a
long and elaborate inquiry of his own into the subject of the ‘courts
of love.’ He determines the period of their duration as the time from
the middle of the twelfth to the end of the fourteenth century or
thereabouts, and gives a somewhat minute description of the legal and
polite customs observed at these extraordinary tribunals. According to
him the members of the court were noble ladies guided by a written code
of love, their decisions again making precedent. An appeal to a different
tribunal was admissible. The parties had, as a rule, to plead their
cause in person; at other times, however, written documents—affidavits,
as we should say—were accepted, the latter frequently taking the form
of _tensos_. To these _tensos_, therefore, we ought to look for some
confirmation of these statements; and, according to Raynouard, such
confirmation is forthcoming in more than sufficient abundance. It is, as
we know, the custom in these songs of contention for the two disputants
to refer their case to the arbitration of third parties. ‘This _tenso_
will last for ever,’ says one troubadour, after having exhausted his
arguments. ‘Let us take our cause to the Dauphin; he will decide and
conclude it in peace.’ But here is the rub. The umpires mentioned on
this and many other occasions are always one or two, more rarely three,
individuals, generally friends of the contending parties, or else
well-meaning and courteous persons, men or women, who decide according
to the rules of common sense, or quote the opinions of celebrated
troubadours by way of rule and guidance. Not once is a ‘court of love’
mentioned in these _tensos_, nor indeed in any other poem, by a genuine
troubadour, The expression as well as the thing was unknown to them. Both
belong to a much later time.
The period of spontaneous production in the literature of most nations is
followed by that of classification. Byzantine scholarship and Athenian
tragedy belong to different phases of intellectual life. When the poetry
of the troubadours began to decay, grammarians and metrical scholars
sprang up, and artificial poetry flourished at the _Jeux Floraux_. In the
same sense it may be said that ‘courts of love’ could not exist while
love itself was alive. The laws of gallantry were inscribed in the hearts
of ladies and troubadours while the brilliant, buoyant life of Southern
France was in its acme. When this civilisation was crushed, when these
beautiful times lived but in the remembrance of a few, it might become
necessary to preserve in dead formulas and codes the remnants of a better
past. But even in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the south of
France seems not to have been a favourable soil for the ‘courts of love,’
as certain amateur societies of gallant and literary ladies and gentlemen
then began to be called. The chief witness on the subject, Andreas
Capellanus, who quotes several sentences delivered by these _curiæ
dominarum_, seems to refer chiefly to the north of France.[31] Another
Frenchman, Martial d’Auvergne, an advocate in Paris, has introduced the
technical language of the law into these amorous discussions; much to the
edification of his contemporaries (he lived in the fifteenth century), to
judge from the number of editions published of his work.
The sober truth arrived at by these and many other considerations too
long to mention may be summed up thus: ‘Courts of love,’ as established
tribunals with written codes, are altogether fictitious. Amateur
societies of that name occur in the late middle ages, but chiefly in the
north of France. To the troubadours the name and essence of ‘courts of
love’ were entirely unknown.
_PART III._
TECHNICAL