My son brought this home as a high school English assignment. I found it very interesting, because I think today's affairs have a lot in common with the Courtly Love of the middle ages.
The Twelve Chief Rules in LoveFrom The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus
Thou shalt avoid avarice like the deadly pestilence and shalt embrace its opposite.
Thou shalt keep thyself chaste for the sake of her whom thou lovest.
Thou shalt not knowingly strive to break up a correct love affair that someone else is engaged in.
Thou shalt not chose for thy love anyone whom a natural sense of shame forbids thee to marry.
Be mindful completely to avoid falsehood.
Thou shalt not have many who know of thy love affair.
Being obedient in all things to the commands of ladies, thou shalt ever strive to ally thyself to the service of Love.
In giving and receiving love's solaces let modesty be ever present.
Thou shalt speak no evil.
Thou shalt not be a revealer of love affairs.
Thou shalt be in all things polite and courteous.
In practising the solaces of love thou shalt not exceed the desires of thy lover.
The Art of Courtly Love From The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus
Marriage is no real excuse for not loving.
He who is not jealous cannot love.
No one can be bound by a double love.
It is well known that love is always increasing or decreasing.
That which a lover takes against the will of his beloved has no relish.
Boys do not love until they reach the age of maturity.
When one lover dies, a widowhood of two years is required of the survivor.
No one should be deprived of love without the very best of reasons.
No one can love unless he is propelled by the persuasion of love.
Love is always a stranger in the home of avarice.
It is not proper to love any woman whom one would be ashamed to seek to marry.
A true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved.
When made public love rarely endures.
The easy attainment of love makes it of little value: difficulty of attainment makes it prized.
Every lover regularly turns pale in the presence of his beloved.
When a lover suddenly catches sight of his beloved his heart palpitates.
A new love puts an old one to flight.
Good character alone makes any man worthy of love.
If love diminishes, it quickly fails and rarely revives.
A man in love is always apprehensive.
Real jealousy always increases the feeling of love.
Jealousy increases when one suspects his beloved.
He whom the thought of love vexes eats and sleeps very little.
Every act of a lover ends in the thought of his beloved.
A true lover considers nothing good except what he thinks will please his beloved.
Love can deny nothing to love.
A lover can never have enough of the solaces of his beloved.
A slight presumption causes a lover to suspect his beloved.
A man who is vexed by too much passion usually does not love.
A true lover is constantly and without intermission possessed by the thought of his beloved.
Nothing forbids one woman being loved by two men or one man by two women.
Was courtly love sexual? Of course today's scholars don't know. But it was supposed to occur within the context of the Code of Chivalry which upheld the principles of Church which deemed all sex beyond the need to procreate to be sinful. Even sex within marriage, unless for procreation, was taboo.
Many scholars identify courtly love as the "pure love" described in 1184 by Andreas Capellanus in De amore libri tres:
It is the pure love which binds together the hearts of two lovers with every feeling of delight. 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.
Here's a description of courtly love. Very much exactly the same as the emotional affair we all know to be so dangerous.
The conventions of courtly love are that a knight of noble blood would adore and worship a young noble-woman from afar, seeking to protect her honor and win her favor by valorous deeds. He typically falls ill with love-sickness, while the woman chastely or scornfully rejects or refuses his advances in public, but privately encourages him. Courtly love was associated with (A) nobility, since no peasants can engage in "fine love"; (B) secrecy; (C) adultery, since often the one or both participants were married to another noble or trapped in an unloving marriage; and (D) paradoxically with chastity, since the passion could never be consummated due to social circumstances, thus it was a "higher love" unsullied by selfish carnal desires.
Interesting post Sara. I had watched a show on the history channel a few years back. One of the things I remember is that there was a time where spouses were not allowed to see each other unclothed. Sex was allows in the dark, there was a sheet between them with a hole where, you know, he could put "it" through to her.
Yuck!! It's amazing that they ever had so many children back then!
LuvMyHusband Me: 41 H: 43 ch: 3 M: 7+ T: 10+ Bomb: EA 8/07, A over phone/net 10/07 Seperated: 9/07 H ended A/EA with OW again on 1/2008 Reconsile: 3/26/2008, H admitted PA
yes, exactly. They ennobled the adulterous affair, and made it the quest for young men to steal the affections of an older married lady. The woman did not even have the right to reject the lover's attention, and a married man had no excuse not to seek the favor of other women. All in the name of love.
I don't know if people back in the 12th century really bought these stories, but I know people today do. And keeping it non-physical seems to be lost in the past. Today's object of affection doesn't mind getting down and dirty.
Yes, even the EA's these days (when giving the proper chance) becomes a PA, its the next step towards the true love. Where years ago, the EA would have been 'enough'.
The whole idea of love was a painful yearning for the lover. Something that could not be maintained in marriage, even if marriage had been based on love (which back then it wasn't). But the lover was an object of obsession. And that's what we find with the affairs, that the love is a different kind of love. Maybe back then when servants tended to the children and all the menial tasks a man and a woman could keep the illusion of love going in a marriage, but today, with all the stress, it's impossible.
