Courtly Love: The Strange Medieval Influence Upon Contemporary Romance

 

Bibliothèque nationale de France, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Courtly Love: The Strange Medieval Influence Upon Contemporary Romance

By Eric Silverman

In today’s world, most people want a loving, romantic, long-term exclusive relationship, and eventually marriage and family. But, here’s the strange thing: the model for love, sex, and romance most of us inherit/intuit comes from combining a mix of disparate sources that actually don’t fit very together very well. Today we’ll focus on one of the fascinating sources that subtly shapes our romantic sensibilities to show why it is in tension with some of our other relational goals.

Courtly love was a relational phenomenon amongst the upper classes in Europe from roughly the eleventh to fourteenth century. It was a model for relationships that gave women more choice and power in relationships than many previous models. It is one of the original models for relationships where interpersonal romantic-sexual relationships could occur solely grounded in considerations of personal attraction and preference, rather than practical considerations. Where marriage was often shaped by considerations of economics, class, and politics. Courtly love was possible between a much broader range of individuals. The fullest systematic description from the day can be found in The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus.

This romantic relationship was typically:

Adulterous- While marriage was shaped by boring, unromantic considerations, courtly love was a possibility amongst those who had enough wealth for an amount of leisure and perhaps enough responsibilities or status to require substantial time away from their spouse. Personal attraction to another’s beauty, character, or charm could be the basis for such relationships. And these were driven with a strict focus upon the romantic and passionate.

Paul Hudson from United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0
<https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Idealized: Courtly love was thought to improve character by destroying greed (one was generous to one’s lover), engendering ‘chastity’ (due to its a pseudo-exclusive commitment to the courtly beloved in addition to one’s spouse), motivating humility, risk and sacrifice motivated by the passion of romance. Supposedly one was attracted to the great virtue, charm, and beauty of the beloved.

Transcended Class: While courtly love was not entirely free of class considerations—in practice one had to have higher status than a peasant to have the time, resources, and social opportunities for courtly love—It did allow for more a lot more class flexibility than marriage. From the middle class upwards, the ornate speeches of courtly love were designed to set aside class as one was idealistically drawn to the deep character and beauty of the beloved, which knows no class.  

Medium Term: While Courtly Love was ‘committed’ in the sense that you weren’t supposed to have more than one courtly romance at a time, it wasn’t expected to be lifelong. In fact, much is written about tactics to keep romance alive since it naturally seemed to diminish after a couple of years. Just as euphoric romantic attraction tends to diminish over time in most romantic-sexual-marital structures. However, much of this advice sounds like bad high school dating advice: make your lover jealous, limit time together, keep the relationship secret, pretend you are angry and act aloof, etc.

More Romantic than Sexual: Much of the focus of courtly love is on romance rather than sex. The stories of courtly love idealize and exaggerate the significance and hope of even a mere kiss of a small personal token to represent the beloved’s care for us. It is impossible to know how many of the courtly romances actually involved sexual intercourse. But, there was good practical reason to avoid sex within courtly romance… after all, the queen’s child needs to look a lot like the king rather than her favorite knight.

Courtly love plays a import role in many of the medieval and renaissance era stories. The love triangle between King Arthur, Queen Guinevere, and Lancelot is the most famous story of courtly love. It also plays an important role in the Three Musketeers. Much of the musketeer’s exploits serve to hide the Queen Anne’s Courtly affair with the Duke of Buckingham. In Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote transcends even the broad class boundaries of courtly love by bestowing his love upon a low class bar maid.

Let us return to the upshot of courtly love for our current sensibilities. It is wonderful that our culture enables us to make our relational decisions based on attraction and free choice rather than economic or social demands. Yet, there is something incompatible when we try to combine a passionate medium term model for relationships with the ideal of life long-exclusive marriage. Most people find it impossible to maintain the euphoric level of attraction associated with passionate courtly love long term. So, when people marry for passionate romance, but find that the intensity of passion dies down after a few years they are often disappointed. And contemporary neuroscience suggests there are biological reasons why it is difficult to maintain that level of attraction long-term. So, perhaps, we should be wary of overvaluing something as fleeting as the intensity of romance. We should enjoy it while we have it, but a life long relationship can be about companionship and commitment even if the intensity of romance waxes and wanes.

Some Relevant Links:

Some Scientific Claims About Passionate Attraction

https://www.today.com/health/how-long-does-passion-last-four-stages-love-t108471

A Movie Clip of Lancelot and Guinevere’s Courtly Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y21WTmf0V4I

A song from Into The Woods satirizing the melodrama of medieval courtly love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvsDObIQFhg

Link to The Art of Courtly Love

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Art_of_Courtly_Love.html?id=3FLusNnbiF8C