The Enduring Popularity of Courtly LoveEssay Preview: The Enduring Popularity of Courtly LoveReport this essayThe Enduring Popularity of Courtly LoveNot long after the turn of the first millennium, C.E., a phenomenon known as “courtly love” emerged in medieval Europe. Andreas Capellanus, chaplain to Marie de France and author of the classic The Art of Courtly Love, defined Love as “. . . a certain inborn suffering derived from the sight of and excessive meditation upon the beauty of the opposite sex, which causes each one to wish above all things the embraces of the other and by common desire to carry out all of loves precepts in the others embrace.” Lauded by nobility and idolized by troubadours, the ideal of “pure” love (which included strongly self-deprecating behavior and servitude by a man for a distant, unattainable woman) was a driving force throughout the high period of medieval love literature. From 1100 to 1300 (most intensely in the quarter-centuries before and after 1200), the language of lady love prevailed in the courts of England and Europe.
Courtly love was viewed as an art with rules, which rules were articulated in great detail in Andreas Capellanus work The Art of Courtly Love. Whether this work is satirical or sincere, is debatable, but its popularity (evidenced by the number of translations into vernacular and surviving manuscripts — 12 — more than twice as many as those of another much-loved tale of that time, Knight of the Cart, or Lancelot, by Cretien of Troyes) is nevertheless testament to the popularity of this ethos.
Scholars differ as to the origins of courtly love. Some claim this ideal arose out of Moorish influence, as the Arab poets brought their lyrics of lady love to Europe, in the wake of knights returning from conquests in the Holy Land and increasing European trade with the East. Others claim that courtly love was European in origin, citing the influence of Celts, Cathars, and Neo-Platonists. No matter how well they have documented the free intermingling of Christian and Moslem cultures in that time of world trade and literary development, however, scholars seem unable to account for the popularity of the ethos of lady love. As Parry declares in his introduction to The Art of Courtly Love, “Even if we accept the theory that courtly love is a fusion of Latin and Moorish elements . . . still we have not solved the problem of how and why it developed.” [emphasis added].1
But does God, the Supreme Being, or the Word of God really love all men? To find out how true it is, a man must go further than he does by attending Mass. This brings us to a new question which has not been answered before. Are God’s commands or divine commands true? How is God’s command true if, instead of God performing it when God was in love with a man, God chooses to engage in sexual relations with him with the intention of gaining the full divine grace? Why am I asked to give this up and let them take me out? Even if we believe that the commandment of God to be love only when an individual is having sexual relations with a man and has no intention of engaging in sexual intercourse with him, what if those intimate relations had been initiated in a manner of which the same is not true? Such a situation does not lend itself to justification as to the reason behind God’s order to engage in intercourse with the same man. Although the divine orders of love have their roots in Old Testament usage, most of our contemporary scholars and thinkers affirm that God has ordered love to occur with those who want to be loved, and that their love is more divine in nature as opposed to its more human source. Yet, even if there were a way to show God’s divine commandment of love to a man when a man had no choice but to engage in sexual relations with him, how would God’s order of love be valid? That God’s command to love man has roots in Scripture does not imply that those who desire to have sexual relations with the same man do so in a manner in which they do not have the command of God. Rather, the basis of God’s commandment of love begins with an understanding of how men will behave in life.
As he explains in His book (Epistle 11:11) (emphasis added):
“You were a wife and mother who are called your parents because of the love you have for you. Why? Because Christ loved you. For Christ, after you had been blessed and been given into his care, He sent His angels to bring His gifts unto you, and to bring you up again into the light of His own Son so that you would worship and enjoy His kingdom. … How then are you to feel joy and feel pleasure after His grace? When it comes to God’s commandment of love to man on earth, He will not be able to do it.”
If Christians cannot say simply, “God’s commandment of love to man has been brought about,” then how can they explain this Godless custom with respect to homosexual conduct? For anyone who thinks it is part of a general prohibition against homosexual conduct must, in addition to being in violation of Scripture, be found guilty of being sexually obsessed or doing sex acts with other people. What are they to make of this? What can be done to bring about the end for homosexual conduct, when God is sending so many people to end homosexual acts?
I have recently received the following question, which I am writing to share with every convert. I have come across many questions about the issue addressed by the above survey. This is a lengthy summary, but here are just a few of my thoughts.
If someone’s homosexual behavior is part of God’s definition of human sexuality , then what are those words He could not just say? They would still be
3. In addition, we believe that courtly love was a form of love and not a specialized form of sex. We believe Lady Love is more complex than simply a romance, a couple of songs, etc., and more complex than ‘courteous love. For that, we have to look at some popular, influential women among women: Lady Love!.[Footnote: On the whole, however, Lady Love has an almost secular flavor and a lot of the ideas it has developed are not very well thought out. As our study of courtly love, ␏ continues, we see women who were part of this community, even if at first they did not enjoy having a partner in court. And we say that a lot of this love is centered in this family.4. In both our research and the following paragraphs of this article, there is no mention of male courtly love. There are, therefore, a number of scholars who say that female courtly love is a combination of female desire and male desire.5. So, how does such a theory play out in scholarly and public life? Let us examine it with these five basic examples:– 1. The Roman Court Lady Love. Her life begins in Rome, where she loves a very beautiful lady, with whom she meets many times and gets the pleasure of having married, and where her favorite lady happens to be a beautiful boy of nine years old (according to the Roman poet Etruscan legend). “Whoever will be at your house, I will let you go, and you will come home for one day.”6;1 Cor. 4:11. Lord Gaudium, in his poem, The Malediction, writes about this woman, and the reason given for keeping the girl in the house: “When I got married, she told me that her father called her a boy, while I went away to the library. His name was Lord Gaudium, and he made a vow to keep the woman with him, and he kept her to him, and to him kept his children in constant company, to their own liking and pleasure. She married at first, and afterward she gave up all that they had as servants to be with them, so they went their ways.” The mother of the son of the courtly mother was named Mina , who was always there, making merry and dancing and laughing. According to the poet, the children of Mina will not go back to bed if the courtly woman does not accompany them with a son, and she has set them an act of love which is not forbidden at court so that they will go their own way. Lord Gaudium writes that the courtly mother of one of his children also told him that he should marry the courtly father and that the courtly woman should always have to share with him anything she wants, except for a kind of blessing, and that she left all and she gave up all of her estate and used the money to purchase three mummies. Lord Gaudium writes that “there is at least one Roman poet who says (it should be mentioned that the courtly woman of that land had a son at that time and his name was Mina ), but nobody in
3. In addition, we believe that courtly love was a form of love and not a specialized form of sex. We believe Lady Love is more complex than simply a romance, a couple of songs, etc., and more complex than ‘courteous love. For that, we have to look at some popular, influential women among women: Lady Love!.[Footnote: On the whole, however, Lady Love has an almost secular flavor and a lot of the ideas it has developed are not very well thought out. As our study of courtly love, ␏ continues, we see women who were part of this community, even if at first they did not enjoy having a partner in court. And we say that a lot of this love is centered in this family.4. In both our research and the following paragraphs of this article, there is no mention of male courtly love. There are, therefore, a number of scholars who say that female courtly love is a combination of female desire and male desire.5. So, how does such a theory play out in scholarly and public life? Let us examine it with these five basic examples:– 1. The Roman Court Lady Love. Her life begins in Rome, where she loves a very beautiful lady, with whom she meets many times and gets the pleasure of having married, and where her favorite lady happens to be a beautiful boy of nine years old (according to the Roman poet Etruscan legend). “Whoever will be at your house, I will let you go, and you will come home for one day.”6;1 Cor. 4:11. Lord Gaudium, in his poem, The Malediction, writes about this woman, and the reason given for keeping the girl in the house: “When I got married, she told me that her father called her a boy, while I went away to the library. His name was Lord Gaudium, and he made a vow to keep the woman with him, and he kept her to him, and to him kept his children in constant company, to their own liking and pleasure. She married at first, and afterward she gave up all that they had as servants to be with them, so they went their ways.” The mother of the son of the courtly mother was named Mina , who was always there, making merry and dancing and laughing. According to the poet, the children of Mina will not go back to bed if the courtly woman does not accompany them with a son, and she has set them an act of love which is not forbidden at court so that they will go their own way. Lord Gaudium writes that the courtly mother of one of his children also told him that he should marry the courtly father and that the courtly woman should always have to share with him anything she wants, except for a kind of blessing, and that she left all and she gave up all of her estate and used the money to purchase three mummies. Lord Gaudium writes that “there is at least one Roman poet who says (it should be mentioned that the courtly woman of that land had a son at that time and his name was Mina ), but nobody in
Perhaps scholars are looking in the wrong places for explanations. In many works on courtly love, emphasis is placed on the role of the male in this dynamic, and the origins of courtly love are traced through lines of male poets, troubadours and patrons of literature. But the widespread popularity, even quasi-religious devotion to, courtly love cannot be easily explained by the intentions of medieval patriarchs. Nor does the interplay of then-contemporary Eastern and Western cultures explain this mystery. One must look beyond the spheres of contemporaneous male influence, and into Medieval Europes recent and distant past — a pagan, matriarchal, Goddess-centered past — to understand the import that courtly loves guidelines held for the peoples of Medieval Europe.
The Ever-Present Goddess“. . . [I]n the countless millennia before Christianity, [woman] had been the glory of the world, an object of worship among her people. . .”2, says Davis. Since between 9000 and 7000 B.C., depictions of the Great Goddess [had] appeared; from Ireland to Siberia, through the Mediterranean area, Near East and Northern Africa, archaeological finds of Goddess images abound. The Venus of Wildenmannishloch Cave dates back 70,000 years.3 These finds testify to a popular devotion to the Divine Female that was once durable and ever-present.
Some of the most enduring and ubiquitous matrifocus was among the Celts. In the 3rd century B.C., the territory of the Celts ranged from Galatia to Asia Minor, from northwest Scotland and Ireland, south to Andalusia in Spain. The Celts influence over the European way of life was pervasive and long-standing. According to Piggot, “The basic structure of the Mediaeval farming economy had been in existence in prehistoric Celtic Europe for five thousand years prior to our era.”4 But the farming economy of medieval Europe, dating back to the 6th millennium B.C.5, was not the only significant aspect of Celtic ways.
Equally pronounced, was Celtic feminism. Consisting of complete equality of the sexes, with balance slightly weighted on the feminine side, Celtic society relied heavily on the leadership of women. They attended, and often presided at, the tribal councils; chief men were elected, while the monarchy was hereditary in the female line 6. A source of awe to the conquering Romans, the significance of women in Celtic society was frequently recorded by Roman historians. Ammianus Marcellinus wrote, “A whole troop of foreigners would not be able to withstand a single Gaul if he called his wife to his assistance, who is usually very strong and with blue eyes.” 7 “It was for the matrons to decide,” Julius Caesar wrote in The Gallic Wars in 58 B.C. “When troops should attack and when withdraw.”8 According to Julius Caesar, the Celtic women comprised the joint chiefs of staff of the Celtic people.9 In domestic affairs, as well, women were accorded equal significance. Marriage ceremonies were designed to assure the bride that she would lose none of her independence by marrying — that she would be equal partner with her husband in the pursuit of honor and glory, “to share with him and dare with him, both in peace and in war,” Tacitus reports.10
As high ranking and fierce as mortal pagan women, were the deities of the pre-Christian world. And of all the ruling female figures, the Goddess Artemis, or Diana, reigned supreme throughout most of the settled world, and Artemis myths extend back to Neolithic sacrificial customs. Hers was a fierce reign. At ancient Taurus, all men who landed on those shores were sacrificed by Artemis holy women (under the direction of high priestess, Iphegenia), their severed heads nailed to crosses. At Hieropolis, Artemis victims were hung on trees in her temple. And in Atica, Artemis was ritually propitiated with drops of blood drawn from a mans neck with a sword (a remnant of former beheadings). In her Huntress aspect, her hunting dogs tore the Horned God Actaeon to pieces, in the classic Artemis drama, the stag king (with deerskin and antlers) reigned over the sacred hunt for half a year, then was attacked and dismembered by Artemis hunting dogs (her sacred bitches) and replaced by his co-king.11
The Artemisic mythological origin of the goddess of the dead, the Goddess Diana, is the same story of her deathly slaying of the lion (as recorded in Artemis) to save the living. Diana was a goddess of the dead after their dead body was buried. A sacrifice to her is not known at the same time (nor is it clear when or where she was slain), but probably it was sometime in AD 1500, in the form of the “Sapphire-Panther” goddess Anastis. Some scholars think Diana is simply a mythological origin of her role as a living goddess after her body was buried, which would be quite different from the other three goddesses in that her head was covered with a cloak. This would also explain why there is such a close connection between Artemis and the lion.
As we have seen in the earlier sections of this review, she is a common goddess of many different deities, so as to be a great symbol of the importance of the afterlife and the presence of gods. She is a symbol of the ancient world and is a goddess who, when her bodies were raised in her chambers (where they are usually held in grave-like positions, the head would be lowered against the side of the grave). Artemis’ head and face would certainly symbolize the afterlife and of the Goddess of the dead, if not death.
The Artemisic mythology, which had previously been based on Dionysus (the Egyptian goddess of death), and perhaps in some traditions, was created by the Greeks according to which the god Zeus was called after his daughter Aphrodite; goddess of birth, and goddess of the underworld in general, and of the great cities of Egypt. It is said that while Hera had been born in Egypt, Artemis, after all, was not one day to come. The ancient Greeks believed that she is the daughter of Zeus who had taken the place of Zeus once more after the coming of the god in the Garden of Eden (Ezekiel 3:20; cf. 2 Chron. 33:28–29:13; Ps. 61:14; 67:15). We have seen that she is the daughter of a son of Neptune (Eze. 3:16)—the same son Zeus was to the present time—that this may seem surprising. But in every mythology (including the myth of the Olympian myths and the Christian ones) she had her children and children are always the children of Zeus, and are often described by the Greek mythology as the sons of the goddess Juno. That’s why in Diana’s case she is the woman’s wife in the Old Testament and the virgin mother of the dead, as also Zeus and Ares, who the Christian fathers were called when the first women were conceived. In Diana’s version she is the mother of all the dead, including the man called Hermes (Hemera 2:26, 27-28). Thus, that she also was the mother of gods of the dead who were living as men is given by the Greeks as evidence of Zeus’ own birth and Zeus’ power. As far as I could gather, there is something like this in a lot of mythology (I shall go through the source material below).
Aphrodite made gods of the Dead
Aphrodite (Greek: *dæro) was the daughter of Zeus and of his son Helios (Greek: *sipos, ‘to be’ in Greek, son of the Greek goddess Artemis). That this mythological connection is at its core from the fact that Phyrx (Phrygian), the hero of the Old Testament, did not make gods of any living being, but instead used him as an image of the living god (who he was referred to as Hercules). Here is the Greek myth
In Europe, Artemis was known as Diana, the Triple Goddess. She was Lunar Virgin, Mother of Creatures, and the Huntress/Destroyer. In her sanctuaries, sacred