By Maria Padhila
I hope you will excuse me getting medieval on you. But whenever I do research into times and places apart from the USA in this century, I’m struck by how much we accept the current dominant relationship structures as a fait accompli, as natural as the blooming of a jonquil. People get married, and it’s two people, and it’s a man and a woman, and it’s for life, right?
Well, ’twas not ever thus, and in times when people lived even closer to the Christian biblical and church authorities, it seems to have been less thus than any other time.
I’ve been doing research on troubadour poetry and of course the viewpoint on relationships during the 12th and 13th centuries in what is now Southern France struck me.
If you have about five hours or are planning a trip to Languedoc, open a bottle of wine or enjoy a bowl of berries and play on this website. It’s highly accessible where many others on the subject are scholarly, and the primary sources are in Occitan, and if you think I can read that, you must have drunk that wine already.
While the troubadours also excelled at political satire, they’re most remembered for singing about looooveee. So much of our present concepts of “romance” come from these times and the development of rituals of “courtly love.”
But the actual romantic rituals of the time had little to do with the Valentine’s Day/soulmate/eternal bliss/suburban status quo model many of us accept as the heights the heart can reach. It makes an interesting study in how relationship forms evolve to meet the needs of those in power and the forces of changing environment, health and cultural encounters.
The Languedoc site lays it out:
Courtly love was contradictory as it encompassed both erotic desire and spiritual aspiration. As one modern authority puts it, “a love at once illicit and morally elevating, passionate and self-disciplined, humiliating and exalting, human and transcendent.” The knight accepts the independence of the object of his desire and tries to make himself worthy of her by acting honourably and by doing deeds of heroism that might appeal to her.
Rather than being critical of romantic and sexual love as sinful, troubadours praised it as the highest good. The woman was an ennobling morale force. This view was diametrically opposed to the clerical view, which held that women and sex were both inherently sinful. Clerics saw religion as the only route to salvation and regarded as blasphemous the troubadours’ innovation that love might offer an alternative route to the same end.
Matrimony had been declared a sacrament of the Church, at the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215, but even after this time the ideal state of a Christian was celibacy. Around the same time Courtly Love was condemned by the church as heretical. But there was a carrot as well as a stick. It is no coincidence that the cult of the Virgin Mary also began in the west around this time — fostered specifically to counter courtly views of women.
Nice! It is very much like the relationships in the “Floating World” period in Japan, and just as with that time, the creation of these elaborate customs of relationship rested strongly on relative prosperity and the development of a leisure class (again, relatively speaking). Europe was going through a fortuitous climate change that lasted about 300 years and resulted in lots of food and lots of overpopulation. Ritualizing relationships could help with the latter trend, and time to sit around singing about it resulted from the first.
Our correspondent goes on to tell of the Troubairitz, or women troubadours:
The question has arisen as to why it should have been the medieval Languedoc that saw such the first flourishing of so many ideas: sexual equality, the decoupling of sex and sin, literary creativity, and so on. Why the trobairitz first appeared in the Languedoc can be explained by a conjugation of factors.
First, Occitan society was already far more accepting of women than other European societies of the time; it was ahead of the rest of Europe in many ways.
Second, since the end of the eleventh century many nobles of the Languedoc had followed their suzerains, the Counts of Toulouse, on crusade to the Holy Land — leaving their ladies in charge: Women in the Languedoc were accustomed to administering estates, dispensing justice and even defending castles. Writing songs could hardly have been a great leap for such women.
Third, The Languedoc at this time neighboured Moslem Spain. Spanish Moslems knew how to have fun and the idea of women poets may well have filtered into Christian Europe through the Languedoc from the culturally more sophisticated Moslem Europe. Indeed, Occitania itself had been Moslem earlier in the Middle Ages.
This is an English translation of a song by La Comtessa da Dia, around 1200. Remember, I’m not advocating the kind of skanky behavior sung about here. She is quite the Real Housewife! I’m just saying that it was out there, and people smiled knowingly, and must have thought enough about the lyric to preserve it all these years:
I was plunged into deep distress / by a knight who wooed me,
and I wish to confess for all time / how passionately I loved him;
Now I feel myself betrayed, / for I did not tell him of my love.
therefore I suffer great distress / in bed and when I am fully dressed.
Would that my knight might one night / lie naked in my arms
and find myself in ecstasy / with me as his pillow.
For I am more in love with him / than Floris was with Blanchfleur.
To him I give my heart and love, / my reason, eyes and life.
Handsome friend, tender and good, / when will you be mine?
Oh, to spend with you but one night / to impart the kiss of love!
Know that with passion I cherish / the hope of you in my husband’s place,
As soon as you have sworn to me / that you will fulfill my every wish.
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Fun read, Maria! Medieval Europe was sophisticated and fascinating.
Another important factor in the more relaxed attitudes in the region at the time was the widespread adherence to Catharism, which was a liberal form of Christianity that had taken hold there in the 11th century. By the 12th & 13th it had become extremely widespread there. Among other things, the Cathars were very democratic. Without going into the whole religion… instead of priests they had elected officials, both men and women. They saw men and women as equals, and taught that non-procreative sex was the “best” kind of sex. They had no doctrine against contraception. They practiced veganism, apparently on moral grounds. They believed in reincarnation. Etc etc. The Cathars were very cool.
The website’s comment about Muslim Spain as an influence in Occitan attitudes isn’t really accurate. By this period Muslim Spain had long been beaten way south (the Muslims occupied southern Catalonia only briefly, in the 8th century), but the 11th & 12th century kings and counts of neighboring Aragon and Catalonia were themselves open minded and forward thinking.
Thank you, Maria, for quite an education (which you always provide). It would appear that one thing never changes – the heart wants what it wants. All the rest is dross.