Yea, rightly art thou hated worse than death,For he, at length, is longed for in the breast.But not with thee, wild beast,Was ever aught found beautiful or good;For life is all that man can lose by death,Not fame and the fair summits of applause;His glory shall not pauseBut live in men's perpetual gratitude.While he who on thy naked sill has stoodHe shall be counted low, etc.D.G. Rossetti.
Yea, rightly art thou hated worse than death,For he, at length, is longed for in the breast.
Yea, rightly art thou hated worse than death,
For he, at length, is longed for in the breast.
But not with thee, wild beast,Was ever aught found beautiful or good;For life is all that man can lose by death,Not fame and the fair summits of applause;His glory shall not pauseBut live in men's perpetual gratitude.While he who on thy naked sill has stoodHe shall be counted low, etc.
But not with thee, wild beast,
Was ever aught found beautiful or good;
For life is all that man can lose by death,
Not fame and the fair summits of applause;
His glory shall not pause
But live in men's perpetual gratitude.
While he who on thy naked sill has stood
He shall be counted low, etc.
D.G. Rossetti.
D.G. Rossetti.
The concept of the German mystics was infinitely more profound than the concept of the merely external poverty of the Franciscans, which in the case of St. Francis and Jacopone was an inherent characteristic and pure, but in the case of the others more or less vicious. "Man cannot live in this world without labour," says Eckhart, "but labour is man's portion; therefore he must learn to have God in his heart, although surrounded by the things of this world, and not let his business or his surroundings be a barrier." There is a passage in the book of an unknown author, entitledThe Imitation of Christ's Poverty(formerly ascribed to Tauler), which reads as follows: "Poverty is equality with God, a mind turned away from all creatures; poverty clings to nothing and nothing clings to it; a man who is poor clings to nothing which is beneath him, but to that alone which is greater than all things. And that is the loftiest virtue of poverty that it clings only to that which is sublime and takes no heed of the things which are base, so far as it is possible." "The soul while it is burdened with temporal and transient things is not free. Before it can aspire to freedom and nobility it must cast away all the things of the world." "Nobody can bereally poor unless God make him so; but God makes no man poor unless he be in his inmost heart; then all things will be taken from him which are not God's. The more spiritual a man is, the poorer will he be, for spirituality and poverty are one...." Pseudo-Tauler even affirms that a man "can possess abundant wealth and yet be poor in spirit." The meaning of this is clear: He whose heart is not wrapped up in the things of the world, will find his way to God; a soul which is without desire is rich.
But there was a still greater contrast between the naïve religion represented by St. Francis of Assisi and the religion of Eckhart. The former lived entirely in the obvious and visible; the love of all creatures filled his heart and shaped his life. The heart of the mystic too, was filled with love, but it was love transcending the love of the individual, love of the primary cause. In the last sense Eckhart taught, contrary to traditional Christianity, and in conformity with Indian wisdom, that the soul must be absorbed into the absolute and that everything transient and individual must cease to exist. "The highest freedom is that the soul should rise above itself and flow into the fathomless abyss of its archetype, of God Himself."
Even St. Bernard was not quite free from this mystical heresy (cf.the previously quoted passages). "When he has reached the highest degree of perfection, man is in a state of complete forgetfulness of self, and having entirely ceased to belong to himself, becomes one with God, released from everything not divine." Even compassion must cease in this state, for there is nothing left but justice and perfection.
We recognise here a characteristic of all those who are greatest among men: of Goethe, for instance, of Bach, or Kant: namely, the correspondence of intense personality and the most highly developed objectivity; for the greatest personality ceases in the end to distinguish between itself and the world,has eradicated everything paltry, selfish and subjective and has become entirely objective, impersonal, divine. St. Francis knew nothing of this consciousness. "God has chosen me because among all men He could find no one more lowly, and because through my instrumentality He purposed to confound nobility, greatness, strength, beauty and the wisdom of the world." He was the disciple of the earthly Jesus, Who went through life the compassionate consoler of all those who were sorrowful. But Eckhart aspired "to the shapeless nature of God." "We will follow Him, but not in all things," he said of the historical Jesus. "He did many things which He meant us to understand spiritually, not literally ... we must always follow Him in the profounder sense." Compared to the religion of Eckhart, the religion of St. Francis is the faith of a little child, picturing God as a benevolent old man. Such a religion is equally true and sincere, but it represents an earlier stage on the road of humanity. If Christianity were—as we are occasionally assured—the religion of Jesus, then the great mystics cannot be called Christians. And yet St. Augustine's: "We are not Christians, but Christs," was fulfilled in them.
The profoundest depth of European religion, of which Eckhart was the exponent, and which found artistic expression in Gothic art, was not sounded by music until very much later. Bach, more emphatically in the High Mass and the Magnificat, but also in his purely instrumental music, brought the universal feeling of mysticism to absolute artistic perfection. The deep religious sentiment which pervades the High Mass is so far above all cults, that it has no real connection with any historical faith—it is pure consciousness of the divine.
The peculiar state of the soul, called mysticism, could never become popular, or exert any very great influence. A few men, such as Tauler, Suso, Merswin, and the unknown author of theTheologica Germanicahanded on—not by any means always unadulterated—the doctrine they had received from Eckhart—which at all times appealed to a few thinkers—but the real influence on the world and on history was reserved for the reformers. The reformer, in his inmost nature, is related to the people; his soul is agitated by formulas and ceremonies, to which the mystic is indifferent; they are to him obstacles to his faith and he strains every nerve to destroy them. He has every appearance of the truly free spirit, but he is secretly dependent on that against which he is fighting. He suffers under its inefficiency; his deed is the final reaction against his environment; salvation seems to him to lie in the improvement of existing conditions, and not until he has succeeded in accomplishing his purpose can he hope for religious peace. The mystic is possible in all states of civilisation. He is not dependent on external circumstances; his whole consciousness is filled with one problem only, before which everything else pales: the relationship of the soul to God. But the reformer is possible only under certain circumstances. He, too, starts from an inner religious consciousness, but his problem is soon solved, and he devotes all his energy to the world. The mystic is not even aware of the difference between his own conception of God and traditional religion; he is under the impression that he is still an orthodox believer, long after he has broken fresh ground; for he has taken from the traditional doctrine everything which he can re-animate. The remainder is dead as far as he is concerned. To accuse him of heresy appears to him as a monstrous misunderstanding.
Thus mystic and reformer drink from the same well of direct religious consciousness. But while in the case of the mystic the well is fathomless, it is much more shallow in the case of the reformer. Certain of himself, he directs his energy to the conversion and reformation of the world. He resemblesin some respects the public orator and agitator; he has a grasp of social conditions, strives to influence his surroundings by word and deed, and is ready to sacrifice his life to his convictions. The mystic remains solitary and misunderstood. Luther, who was to some extent influenced by German mysticism, fought, at his best, against the dogma of historical salvation.
It is the tragic fate of all religions that they must crystallise into a system. A reflection of the enthusiasm which animated their founders still falls on their disciples: Follow me! But the second generation already demands proofs, tradition and clumsy miracles; reports are drawn up and looked upon as sacred—religion has become a glimpse into the past. Most people never have any direct religious experience, their salvation lies in the dogmas, the universally accepted doctrines. The founder of a new religion is always regarded by his contemporaries as abnormal, and is persecuted accordingly; not in malice, but of necessity. Arnold of Brescia died at the stake; St. Francis was no more than a heretic tolerated by the Church, and Eckhart escaped the tribunal of the Inquisition only through his death.
I have attempted to show in diverse domains of the higher spiritual and psychical life, how powerfullythe Christian principle of the individual soul, the real fundamental value of the European civilisation, manifested itself at the time of the Crusades, and everywhere became the germ of new things. The deepest thinkers teach the deification of man as the culmination of existence, the ultimate purpose of this earthly life, and claim immortality for the soul. This position, which may roughly be conceived as the raising of the individual into the ideal, has determined the European ideal of culture and differentiated it from all Orientalism, including even the loftiest Indian philosophy. Every attempt to substitute for this fundamental concept and its emotional content something else—whether it be pantheism, Buddhism, or naturalism—will always remain a failure.
Side by side with the splendid achievement of the German mysticism, the Teutonic race has always been apt to give practical proof of its individualism by endless petty quarrels and by splittings into numerous cliques. But even before this race began to play a part in history, at the beginning of the third century, the principle of the individual soul was outwardly carried to extremes. While it was the ideal of the man of antiquity to serve the higher community of the State with body and soul, nascent Christianity cared solely for the salvation of the individual soul, and frequently proved this by quite external evidence, by living a hermit's life in the desert, for instance. Children left their parents, husband and wife separated, dignitaries forsook their office to seek solitude and prepare their souls for the world beyond the grave. The first convents—the outcome of Christian individualism and asceticism—were founded; and the anti-social extreme of this individualism acquired such ominous proportions that the Emperor Valens in the year of grace 365, was forced to legislate against the monastic life.
This hatred of the world, which was quite in harmony with the spirit of Christianity, was only overcome by the profounder concepts of German mysticism, for in the primitive dualistic view of the first millenary the renunciation of the world was the only possibility of avoiding sin. The Emperor Justinian decreed that any man who induced a consecrated nun to marry him should be punished by death. The thought that personal greatness did not consist in renouncing the world but in living in it and overcoming it, had not yet been conceived.
The delight in the human form, characteristic of antiquity, was extinguished, a crude dualism denied all antique values. The body must be hated, so that the soul could flourish. But as the Hellenic periodwas preceded by vague, unindividualised, material life, so the impersonal, chaotic, spiritual life of the first thousand years of Christianity matured the individual soul. It found its climax in Dante and Eckhart, the greatest poet of the Neo-Latin race, and the most illumined religious genius of Germany. These two men, who were contemporaries (Dante died in 1321 and Eckhart in 1329), finally revealed the character of two kindred nations, completing and fructifying each other. In Dante the great artistic power of the Neo-Latin race appeared for the first time in its full intensity; it took possession of the whole visible universe, and poured new beauty into the traditional myths of Christendom. Eckhart experienced and recreated the shapeless depths of the soul, the regions of the blending of the soul with God. With these two men Europe definitely severed herself from antiquity and barbarism, henceforth to follow her own star.
The new world had come into existence! Renascence, the lucky heir, gathered the ripe fruit from the tree of art which had blossomed so marvellously. God was no longer sought in the depth of the soul, all emotion was projected into the world of sense. Churches were built, not from an irresistible impulse, but as store-houses of the pictures which were painted with amazing rapidity. The fundamental principle of personality was externalised in the Renascence. Vanity and boasting, traces of which frequently appeared in the age of chivalry, grew exuberantly. No less manifest than the incomparable genius andespritof the heyday of the Renascence—although far less frequently commented on—was the desire to be conspicuous, to shine, to display wealth and learning. The essence of personality, instead of being sought in the soul, was sought in outward magnificence. As a matter of fact, the much extolled Renascence only perfected the various branches of art and poetry, which had sprung up in the period of the Crusades.The latter was the time of the planting of the tree of European culture; all that followed was merely its growth and ramification. Only exact science had its origin in the Renascence, and this fact, in historical perspective, must be regarded as the supreme glory of this period. However paradoxical it may sound—the "impersonal" science is the perfection of the European system of individualism, its most potent weapon for taking spiritual possession of the world and all that the world contains. The consciousness of personality had to permeate the whole soul before it could recover its external function: organic existence justified by itself. While art borrows from nature and mankind all that we ourselves deem beautiful, perfect, valuable, and imposes on the world a man-made law—science strives to understand all things and all creatures according to the law which dominates them; it strives to comprehend nature and humanity—even where they are foreign and hostile—not according to human values, but according to their inherent nature—and this is only possible when the individuality of all things is respected. The method of science has slowly become the perfect weapon by whose aid Europe has attained the mastery of the world; it rests on the fundamental feeling for the material, and is capable of confronting the "I" with the whole system of natural phenomena, the "not-I," and expresses the final victory of comprehending spirit over matter.
(a) The Love of the Troubadours
In the long chapter on the Birth of Europe, I have attempted to bring corroborative evidence from all sides in support of my contention that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed the birth and gradual development of a new value of the highest importance: the value of individuality, impersonated by the citizen of Europe. We are now prepared to realise the psychological importance and the importance for progress of one of the greatest results of this new development—the spiritual love of man for woman. From this subject, the specific subject of my book, I shall not again digress.
We are aware that the man of antiquity (and also the Eastern nations of to-day) recognised between man and woman only the sexual bond, uninfluenced by personal and psychological motives, and leading in Greece to the institution of monogamy on purely economical and political grounds. In addition to this bond there existed a very distinct spiritual love, evolved by Plato and his circle and projected by one man on another member of his own sex. In the true Hellenic spirit this love aspired to guide the individual to the ideal of perfection, the beauty and wisdom of the friend serving as stepping-stones in the upward climb. In Christianity the spiritual love of the divine became the greatest value and the pivot on which the emotions turned. The primitive Christian scorned the body, his own as well as thatof his fellow; he despised beauty of form, and regarded only the divine as worthy of love. Woman was disparaged and suspected; all thinkers, down to Thomas and Anselm, looking upon her merely as a snare and a pitfall. The period discussed in detail in the foregoing chapter ushered in a new and, until then, unknown feeling. In crude and conscious contrast to sexuality, deprecated alike by classical Greece and primitive Christianity, spiritual love of man for woman came into existence. It was composed of three clearly distinguishable elements: the Platonic thought, maintaining that the greatest virtue lies in the striving for absolute perfection; the entirely spiritual love of the divine, sufficient in itself, and representing the final purpose of life, as developed by Christianity; and the dawning knowledge of the value of personality. From these three elements: the noblest inheritance of antiquity, the central creation of Christianity, and the pivot of the new-born European spirit, sprang the new value which is the subject of the second stage of eroticism. The position of woman had changed; she was no longer the medium for the satisfaction of the male impulse, or the rearing of children, as in antiquity; no longer the silent drudge or devout sister of the first Christian millenary; no longer the she-devil of monkish conception; transcending humanity, she had been exalted to the heavens and had become a goddess. She was loved and adored with a devotion not of this earth, a devotion which was the sole source of all things lofty and good; she had become the saviour of humanity and queen of the universe.
The rejection of sensuality is an inherent part of the Christian religion; only he who had overcome his sinful desires was a hero. Spiritual love was as yet unknown, only the sexual impulse was realised, and that was looked upon as a sin; there was but one way of escape: renunciation. This view isvery clearly expressed in the legends of Alexius, and in Barlaam and Josaphat (which although of Indian origin, had found a German interpreter and were known all over Europe). The latter legend tells how Prince Josaphat, a devout Christian, married a beautiful princess. On his wedding night he had a vision of the celestial paradise, the dominion of chastity, and the earthly pool of sin. Recognising in his bride a devil who had come to tempt him, he left her and fled into the desert. Many legends illustrate the incapacity of the first millenary to realise the relationship between the sexes in any other sense. Woman was evil; the struggle against her a laudable effort.
Very probably the stigmatising of all eroticism during that long spell of a thousand years was necessary. Only the unnatural condemnation of love in its widest sense, a hatred of sex and woman such as was felt by Tertullian and Origen, could result in the reverse of sexuality—purely spiritual love with its logical climax, the deification and worship of woman. There can be no doubt that the Christian ideal of chastity was largely responsible for the evolution of the ideal of spiritual love. The identity of love and chastity was propounded—in sharp contrast to sexuality and—more particularly amongst the later troubadours, such as Montanhagol, Sordello, and the poets of the "sweet new style" in Italy—with a distinct leaning towards religious ecstasy.
Infinite tenderness pervaded the nascent cult of woman. It seemed as if man were eager to compensate her for the indignity which he had heaped upon her for a thousand years. His instinctive need to worship had found an incomparable being on earth before whom he prostrated himself. She was the climax of earthly perfection; no word, no metaphor was sufficiently ecstatic to express the full fervour of his adoration; a new religion was created, and she was the presiding divinity. "What were the worldif beauteous woman were not?" sang Johannes Hadlaub, a German poet.
Once more I must revert to personality, the fundamental value of the European. In antiquity, even in Greece and Rome, personality in its higher sense did not exist. The hero was the epitome of all the energies of the nation, a term for the striving of the community; the statesman was the incarnate political will of the people; even the poet's ideal was the representation of the Hellenic type in all its aspects. Agamemnon was no more than the intelligent ruler, Achilles the headstrong hero, Odysseus the cunning adventurer. The individual was a member and servant of the tribe, the town, the state; each man knew that his fellow did not essentially differ from him; and even at the period when Hellas was at its meridian the individuals were, compared to modern men, but slightly differentiated. But the Greek differed from the Oriental, the barbarian, inasmuch as he felt himself no longer a component part of nature, but realised his distinct individuality.
We find the first germs of the new creative principle of personality in the Platonic figure of Socrates who, first of all, conceived the idea of a higher spiritual love, blended it with the love of ideas and separated it sharply from base desire. Though his conception was not yet personal love in the true sense, it was nevertheless a spiritual divine love. The Greek State could not tolerate him, and sentenced him to death. But this same Socrates also said (in "Crito") that man was indebted to the State for his existence. "Did not thy father, in obedience to the law, take thy mother to wife and beget thee?" This sentiment was as antique as it could well be, and the death of Socrates—as related by Plato—was the most magnificent confirmation of the Greek idea that the individual, even the wisest, was entirely subordinate to the community.
The civilisations of China and Japan are impersonaleven to a greater extent than the civilisation of ancient Greece. Percival Lowell maintains that the diverse manifestations of the spirit of those countries can only be understood if regarded from the standpoint of absolute impersonality. He sees in a "pronounced impersonality the most striking characteristic of the Far East", "the foundation on which the Oriental character is built up." It is very instructive to observe how it determines the individual's conception of birth and marriage, thoughts and acts, life and death. It is carried to so great an extreme that special terms for "I," "you," "he," do not even exist in the Japanese language, and have to be replaced by objective circumlocutions. Not content with the fact of having been born impersonal, it is the ambition of the inhabitant of the Far East to become more and more so as his life unfolds itself. Witness the heroic exploits of Japanese soldiers during the last war: individual soldiers frequently went to their death for the sake of a small advantage to their group. We Europeans regard this in the light of heroism—and it would be heroism in the case of a European. But with the sacrifice of his individual life in the interest of the community, the Japanese instinctively yields the smaller value. In the same way Greeks and Romans did not attach very much importance to life; suicide was very common, and frequently committed without any special motive. As true love is based on personality, it is impossible for the modern East-Asiatic to know love in our sense. Lowell agrees with this: "Love, as we understand it, is an unknown feeling in the East." He reports that Japanese women will appear before strangers entirely nude, without the least trace of embarrassment—as would Greek women!—because they are innocent of that other aspect of personality—the feeling of shame. To be ashamed implies the desire of concealing something individual and intimate; where this is not the case, there canbe no feeling of shame. Finally, I should like to point out that the perversity and sexual refinement peculiar to China and Japan are attributable simply to the fact that the limits of sexuality cannot be overstepped, and that sexuality is therefore dependent on vice and perversity to satisfy its craving for variety.
The first manifestation of overwhelming personality appears in Jesus, and he created the religion of love. In him personality and love were convertible forces, one might even say they were identical. He, first of all, revealed their mysterious intimate connection, and clearly showed that love can only be experienced by a distinct personality, because it is an emanation of the soul and not a natural instinct.
It was, again, personality which, in the twelfth century, produced a new force: spiritual love projected not only on God and nature, but also on woman. Now only had personality acquired its true significance; it no longer meant—as it did in the mature Greek world—the individual separated from his environment, the individual with a conscious beginning and a conscious end, but the principle of the synthesis, a higher entity above the mere individual, the source of all values and virtue.
Personality is the self-conscious, individual soul, producing out of its own wealth the universal ideal values, and re-absorbing and assimilating these ideal values in their higher form. It admits of the fusion of the subjective with the universal and eternal, with the religious and artistic, the moral and scientific values of civilisation. "Personality is the blending of the universal and the individual," said Kierkegaard, expressing, if not exactly my meaning, something very near it.
I shall endeavour to depict the spiritual love of man for woman—the position cannot be reversed—from its inception to its climax. I shall submit abundant evidence to make the great unbroken stream ofemotion clearly apparent, and indicate all its tributaries. I do not pretend that I have exhausted the subject—that would be impossible. The works from which I have drawn may be safely regarded as the direct outpouring of emotion; those purely lyric poets were entirely subjective and ever intent upon their own feelings; there hardly exists one Provençal, old-Italian, or mediæval love-song without the "I."
Spiritual love first appeared as a naïve sentiment—unconscious of its own peculiar characteristics—in the poems of the earlier troubadours of Provence. There is a poem in which the Provençals claim the fathership of the cult of woman; their opponents do not deny it, but add that it was an invention which "could fill no man's stomach." These words express the great and insurmountable barrier between pure spiritual love and pleasure. The Christian dualism: soul-body, spirit-matter, had invaded the domain of love.
Spontaneous, genuine love, untainted by speculations and metaphysics, is found in the songs of the earlier troubadours. The greatest among all of them, Bernart of Ventadour, was the first to praise chaste love. If any champion of civilisation deserves a monument, it is this poet.
Dead is the man who knows not love,A sweet tremor in the heart.Love's rapture fills my heartWith laughter and sighs.Grief slays me a hundred times,Joy bids me rise.Sweet is love's happiness,Sweeter love's pain.Joy brings back grief to me,Grief, joy again.
Dead is the man who knows not love,A sweet tremor in the heart.
Dead is the man who knows not love,
A sweet tremor in the heart.
Love's rapture fills my heartWith laughter and sighs.Grief slays me a hundred times,Joy bids me rise.
Love's rapture fills my heart
With laughter and sighs.
Grief slays me a hundred times,
Joy bids me rise.
Sweet is love's happiness,Sweeter love's pain.Joy brings back grief to me,Grief, joy again.
Sweet is love's happiness,
Sweeter love's pain.
Joy brings back grief to me,
Grief, joy again.
Guillem Augier Novella expressed the feeling of being "elated with exaltation and grieved to death" as follows:
Lady, often flow my tears,Glad songs in my mem'ry ring,For the love that makes my bloodDance and sing.I am yours with heart and soul,If it please you, lady, slay me....
Lady, often flow my tears,Glad songs in my mem'ry ring,For the love that makes my bloodDance and sing.I am yours with heart and soul,If it please you, lady, slay me....
Lady, often flow my tears,
Glad songs in my mem'ry ring,
For the love that makes my blood
Dance and sing.
I am yours with heart and soul,
If it please you, lady, slay me....
Aimeril de Peguilhan is of opinion that the pain of love is no less sweet than the joy of love:
For he who loves with all his heart would fainBe sick with love, such rapture is his pain.
For he who loves with all his heart would fainBe sick with love, such rapture is his pain.
For he who loves with all his heart would fain
Be sick with love, such rapture is his pain.
And Bernart again:
God keep my lady fair from grief and woe,I'm close to her, however far I go;If God will be her shelter and her shield,Then all my heart's desire is fulfilled.
God keep my lady fair from grief and woe,I'm close to her, however far I go;If God will be her shelter and her shield,Then all my heart's desire is fulfilled.
God keep my lady fair from grief and woe,
I'm close to her, however far I go;
If God will be her shelter and her shield,
Then all my heart's desire is fulfilled.
And:
My mind was erring in a maze,That hour I was no longer I,When in your eyes I met my gazeAs in a mirror strange and shy.Oh, mirror sweet, reflecting me,Sighing I fell beneath your spell;I perished in you utterlyAs did Narcissus in the well.
My mind was erring in a maze,That hour I was no longer I,When in your eyes I met my gazeAs in a mirror strange and shy.Oh, mirror sweet, reflecting me,Sighing I fell beneath your spell;I perished in you utterlyAs did Narcissus in the well.
My mind was erring in a maze,
That hour I was no longer I,
When in your eyes I met my gaze
As in a mirror strange and shy.
Oh, mirror sweet, reflecting me,
Sighing I fell beneath your spell;
I perished in you utterly
As did Narcissus in the well.
In the same poem he goes on to say that he will ask for no reward, but finally concludes:
My fervent kisses her sweet lips should cover,For weeks they'd show the traces of her lover.
My fervent kisses her sweet lips should cover,For weeks they'd show the traces of her lover.
My fervent kisses her sweet lips should cover,
For weeks they'd show the traces of her lover.
The German minnesinger, Heinrich of Morungen, called woman "a mirror of all the delights of the world," and sang:
Blessed be the tender hour,Blest the time, the precious day,When my brimming heart welled over,When my secret open lay.I was startled with great gladness,And bewildered so with love,I can hardly sing thereof.
Blessed be the tender hour,Blest the time, the precious day,When my brimming heart welled over,When my secret open lay.I was startled with great gladness,And bewildered so with love,I can hardly sing thereof.
Blessed be the tender hour,
Blest the time, the precious day,
When my brimming heart welled over,
When my secret open lay.
I was startled with great gladness,
And bewildered so with love,
I can hardly sing thereof.
The sensuous element still dominated Bernart and his contemporaries to some extent. In their poems, all of which are genuine and sincere, the longing for kisses, sometimes for more, is frankly expressed, but the tendency towards the not sensuous and super-sensuous is already apparent. The lover loves one woman only, and would rather love in vain, patiently enduring every pang she causes him, than receive favours from another woman, were she beautiful as Venus her self.
Bernart says:
My sorrow is a sweet distressTo which no alien bliss compares,And if my pain such sweetness bears,How sweet would be my happiness!
My sorrow is a sweet distressTo which no alien bliss compares,And if my pain such sweetness bears,How sweet would be my happiness!
My sorrow is a sweet distress
To which no alien bliss compares,
And if my pain such sweetness bears,
How sweet would be my happiness!
Elias of Barjols:
Full of joy I am and sorrowWhen I stand before her face.
Full of joy I am and sorrowWhen I stand before her face.
Full of joy I am and sorrow
When I stand before her face.
Bonifacio Calvo:
There is no treasure-trove on earthWhich I would barter for my pain;I love my grief, but spite and wrathRun riot in my heart; my brainIs reeling—and I laugh and cry.Jubilant and desperate,Exultant, I bewail my fate.Quarter! Lady, ere I die.
There is no treasure-trove on earthWhich I would barter for my pain;I love my grief, but spite and wrathRun riot in my heart; my brainIs reeling—and I laugh and cry.Jubilant and desperate,Exultant, I bewail my fate.Quarter! Lady, ere I die.
There is no treasure-trove on earth
Which I would barter for my pain;
I love my grief, but spite and wrath
Run riot in my heart; my brain
Is reeling—and I laugh and cry.
Jubilant and desperate,
Exultant, I bewail my fate.
Quarter! Lady, ere I die.
The earlier troubadours were still ignorant of the later dogma which made chaste love the sole fountain of virtue and the road to perfection—the beloved woman can make of her admirer what she wills—a saint or a sinner.
Thus Guillem of Poitiers says:
Love heals the sickAnd a grave does it delveFor the strong; mars the beauty of beauty itself,Makes a fool of the sage with its magic,A clown of the courteous knight,And a king of the lowliest wight.
Love heals the sickAnd a grave does it delveFor the strong; mars the beauty of beauty itself,Makes a fool of the sage with its magic,A clown of the courteous knight,And a king of the lowliest wight.
Love heals the sick
And a grave does it delve
For the strong; mars the beauty of beauty itself,
Makes a fool of the sage with its magic,
A clown of the courteous knight,
And a king of the lowliest wight.
The equally early Cercamon:
False can I be or true for her,Sincere or full of lies,A perfect knight or worthless cur,Serene or grave, stupid or wise.
False can I be or true for her,Sincere or full of lies,A perfect knight or worthless cur,Serene or grave, stupid or wise.
False can I be or true for her,
Sincere or full of lies,
A perfect knight or worthless cur,
Serene or grave, stupid or wise.
Raimon of Toulouse:
In the kingdom of loveFolly rules and not sense.
In the kingdom of loveFolly rules and not sense.
In the kingdom of love
Folly rules and not sense.
It was typical of this enthusiastic love that the social rank of the beloved, the mistress, was invariably above the rank of the lover. The latter was fond of calling himself her vassal and serf, proclaiming that she had invested him with all his goods; even kings and German emperors composed love-songs, although in all probability they would have achieved their purpose far more quickly by other means; but in all cases we find the characteristic attitude of the humble lover, looking up to his mistress. The underlying thought is obvious: Love, the loftiest value in all the world, is the great leveller of all social differences, a force before which wealth is as dust. "I would rather win a kind glance from my lady's eyes than the royal crown of France," was a favourite profession of the poets. Montanhagol, for instance, in a rhymed meditation, stated that a lady was wise in choosing a lover of a lower social rank, because not only could she always count on his gratitude and devotion, but she would also have more influence over him, a fact which in the case of a social equal or superior was, to say the least, a little doubtful. This supreme reverence for love soon became an accepted doctrine. We constantly meet the thought that chaste love alone can make a man noble, good and wise. I will select a few illustrations from a wealth of instances:
Miraval:
Noble is every deed whose root is love.
Noble is every deed whose root is love.
Noble is every deed whose root is love.
Peire Rogier:
Full well I know that right and goodIs all I do for love of her.
Full well I know that right and goodIs all I do for love of her.
Full well I know that right and good
Is all I do for love of her.
Guirot Riquier:
The man who loves not is not noble-minded,For love is fruit and blossom of the highest.
The man who loves not is not noble-minded,For love is fruit and blossom of the highest.
The man who loves not is not noble-minded,
For love is fruit and blossom of the highest.
And:
Thus love transfigures ev'ry deed we do,And love gives everything a deeper sense.Love is the teaching of all genuine worth.So base is no man's heart on this wide earth,Love could not guide it to great excellence.
Thus love transfigures ev'ry deed we do,And love gives everything a deeper sense.Love is the teaching of all genuine worth.So base is no man's heart on this wide earth,Love could not guide it to great excellence.
Thus love transfigures ev'ry deed we do,
And love gives everything a deeper sense.
Love is the teaching of all genuine worth.
So base is no man's heart on this wide earth,
Love could not guide it to great excellence.
Giraut of Calenso said of the City of Love that no base or ignorant man could enter it, and the Italian Lapo Gianni sang:
The youthful maiden who appeared to meSo filled my soul with pure and lofty thoughts,That henceforth all ignoble things I scorn.
The youthful maiden who appeared to meSo filled my soul with pure and lofty thoughts,That henceforth all ignoble things I scorn.
The youthful maiden who appeared to me
So filled my soul with pure and lofty thoughts,
That henceforth all ignoble things I scorn.
Dante in theVita Nuovacalls Beatrice "the destroyer of all evil and the queen of all virtues."
The very thought of the beloved makes a good man of the lover:
"I cannot sin when I am in her thoughts."
"I cannot sin when I am in her thoughts."
"I cannot sin when I am in her thoughts."
asserts the sincere Guirot Riquier, and he prays Christ to teach him the true love of woman.
While it was a generally accepted theory that love was the source of man's perfection, I know of only one passage (by Raimon of Miraval) contending that woman, also, was perfected by love; everywhere else we meet the universal and silently accepted opinion that the essence of womanhood is something unearthly, unfathomable and divine. Perhaps the most classical formulation of the new doctrine, to wit, that spiritual love is the begetter of all virtue and the mother of chastity, outside which there is nothing divine, is to be found in the poems of the somewhat pedantic Montanhagol:
The lover who loves not the highest love,Is like a fool polluting precious wine.Let loftiest love alone within thee move,And purity and virtue will be thine.
The lover who loves not the highest love,Is like a fool polluting precious wine.Let loftiest love alone within thee move,And purity and virtue will be thine.
The lover who loves not the highest love,
Is like a fool polluting precious wine.
Let loftiest love alone within thee move,
And purity and virtue will be thine.
Guirot Riquier expressed a similar sentiment:
For chaste and pure my love has always been,From my "sweet bliss" I've never asked a boon;If I may humbly serve her night and noon,My life be her inalienable lien.
For chaste and pure my love has always been,From my "sweet bliss" I've never asked a boon;If I may humbly serve her night and noon,My life be her inalienable lien.
For chaste and pure my love has always been,
From my "sweet bliss" I've never asked a boon;
If I may humbly serve her night and noon,
My life be her inalienable lien.
Walter von der Vogelweide says: "Love is a treasure heaped up of all virtues."
As time went on the barrier erected between true spiritual love and insidious sensuality became more and more clearly defined; the former pervaded the erotic emotion of the whole period. Parallel with chaste love, sensuality continued to exist as something contemptible, unworthy of a noble mind; and it must be admitted that according to the contemporary "Fabliaux," later German comedies and Italian and French novels, the sexual manifestations of the period, were of incredible coarseness. As against these, spiritual love was not merely an artistic and theoretic concept, but the profound emotion of the cultured minds, and remained a powerful and creative force even in later centuries. Spiritual love and sexuality were irreconcilable contradistinctions; the man who thought otherwise was looked upon as a libertine. The following passages from the poems of the troubadours and their heirs, the Italian poets of thedolce stil nuovo, will prove the historical reality of this relationship, the ideal of the declining Middle Ages. We need take no account of the German minnesingers, for although they shared the same ideal, they did not influence principle in the same way as the neo-Latin poets.
Bernart of Ventadour:
Lady, I ask no other meedThan that you suffer me to serve;My faith and love shall never swerve,I'm yours whatever you decreed.
Lady, I ask no other meedThan that you suffer me to serve;My faith and love shall never swerve,I'm yours whatever you decreed.
Lady, I ask no other meed
Than that you suffer me to serve;
My faith and love shall never swerve,
I'm yours whatever you decreed.
Peire Rogier:
Mine is her smile and mine her jest,And foolish were I more to askAnd not to think me wholly blest.'Tis no deceit,To gaze at her is all I need,The sight of her is my reward.
Mine is her smile and mine her jest,And foolish were I more to askAnd not to think me wholly blest.'Tis no deceit,To gaze at her is all I need,The sight of her is my reward.
Mine is her smile and mine her jest,
And foolish were I more to ask
And not to think me wholly blest.
'Tis no deceit,
To gaze at her is all I need,
The sight of her is my reward.
Gaucelm Faidit:
Of all the ways of love I chose the best,I love you, love, with ardour infinite,Yours is my life, do as you will with it.Nor kiss I ask, nor sweet embraces, lestI were blaspheming....
Of all the ways of love I chose the best,I love you, love, with ardour infinite,Yours is my life, do as you will with it.Nor kiss I ask, nor sweet embraces, lestI were blaspheming....
Of all the ways of love I chose the best,
I love you, love, with ardour infinite,
Yours is my life, do as you will with it.
Nor kiss I ask, nor sweet embraces, lest
I were blaspheming....
The most enthusiastic champions of pure love were Montanhagol, Sordello and Guirot Riqiuer. The former maintained that a lover who asked for favours incompatible with his lady's honour, neither loved her nor deserved to be loved.—"Love begets purity, and he who knows the meaning of love can never forsake virtue."
There is a controversy between Peire Guillem of Toulouse and Sordello, which contains the following passages:
Of all mankind I never sawA man like you, Sordell', I wis,For he who woman does adoreWill never flout her love and kiss.And what to others is a prizeYou surely don't mean to despise?Honour and joy I crave from her,And if a little rose she bindInto the wreath, Sir Guillem Peire,From mercy, not from duty, mind,That would be happiness indeed,Oh! that such bliss should be my meed!A humble lover such as you,Sordell', in faith, I never knew.Sir Peire, methinks what you expressIs lacking much in seemliness.
Of all mankind I never sawA man like you, Sordell', I wis,For he who woman does adoreWill never flout her love and kiss.And what to others is a prizeYou surely don't mean to despise?
Of all mankind I never saw
A man like you, Sordell', I wis,
For he who woman does adore
Will never flout her love and kiss.
And what to others is a prize
You surely don't mean to despise?
Honour and joy I crave from her,And if a little rose she bindInto the wreath, Sir Guillem Peire,From mercy, not from duty, mind,That would be happiness indeed,Oh! that such bliss should be my meed!
Honour and joy I crave from her,
And if a little rose she bind
Into the wreath, Sir Guillem Peire,
From mercy, not from duty, mind,
That would be happiness indeed,
Oh! that such bliss should be my meed!
A humble lover such as you,Sordell', in faith, I never knew.
A humble lover such as you,
Sordell', in faith, I never knew.
Sir Peire, methinks what you expressIs lacking much in seemliness.
Sir Peire, methinks what you express
Is lacking much in seemliness.
In another poem the talented Sordello says:
My love for her is so profoundI'd serve her, spurn and scorn despiteEre with another I'd be found—Yet I'd not serve without requite,
My love for her is so profoundI'd serve her, spurn and scorn despiteEre with another I'd be found—Yet I'd not serve without requite,
My love for her is so profound
I'd serve her, spurn and scorn despite
Ere with another I'd be found—
Yet I'd not serve without requite,
and in another, after stating that he loves his lady so much that he would thank her even if she killed him, he continues:
Thus, lady, I commend to theeMy fate and life, thy faithful squireI'd rather die in miseryThan have thee stoop to my desire.The knight who truly loves his dameNot only loves her comely face,Dearer to him is her fair fameUndimmed, unsullied by disgrace.How grievously I should offendThy virtue, if I spoke of passion;But if I did—which God forfend!Sweet lady, stoop not to compassion.
Thus, lady, I commend to theeMy fate and life, thy faithful squireI'd rather die in miseryThan have thee stoop to my desire.
Thus, lady, I commend to thee
My fate and life, thy faithful squire
I'd rather die in misery
Than have thee stoop to my desire.
The knight who truly loves his dameNot only loves her comely face,Dearer to him is her fair fameUndimmed, unsullied by disgrace.
The knight who truly loves his dame
Not only loves her comely face,
Dearer to him is her fair fame
Undimmed, unsullied by disgrace.
How grievously I should offendThy virtue, if I spoke of passion;But if I did—which God forfend!Sweet lady, stoop not to compassion.
How grievously I should offend
Thy virtue, if I spoke of passion;
But if I did—which God forfend!
Sweet lady, stoop not to compassion.
Although Sordello appeared so extremely modest, yet he was grieved to death because his lady did not return his love. There is a poem in which he compares himself to a drowning man whom the beloved alone could save.
This spiritual love (then as now) puzzled the commonplace, and was misunderstood and regarded with scepticism. Bertran d'Alaman taunted Sordello with his "hypocritical happiness" and "the whole deception of his love," and Granet, in a satirical poem, cast doubt upon his sincerity.
It is very significant to find that Sordello, that typical champion of chaste love, kept up a number of questionable liaisons with all sorts of women. Bertran reproached him with having changed his lady at least a hundred times, and he himself shamelessly confesses:
The jealousies of husbands ne'er amaze me,For in the art of love I do excel,And there's no wife, however chaste she may beWho can resist me if I woo her well.And if her husband hate me I'll not grumble,Because his wife receives me in the night,If mine her kiss, if mine sweet love's delight,His pain and wrath my spirit shall not humble.No husband e'er shall rob me of my pleasure,None can resist me, what I wish I gain,All do I love and never will refrainSpite husbands' wrath to rob them of their treasure.
The jealousies of husbands ne'er amaze me,For in the art of love I do excel,And there's no wife, however chaste she may beWho can resist me if I woo her well.And if her husband hate me I'll not grumble,Because his wife receives me in the night,If mine her kiss, if mine sweet love's delight,His pain and wrath my spirit shall not humble.No husband e'er shall rob me of my pleasure,None can resist me, what I wish I gain,All do I love and never will refrainSpite husbands' wrath to rob them of their treasure.
The jealousies of husbands ne'er amaze me,
For in the art of love I do excel,
And there's no wife, however chaste she may be
Who can resist me if I woo her well.
And if her husband hate me I'll not grumble,
Because his wife receives me in the night,
If mine her kiss, if mine sweet love's delight,
His pain and wrath my spirit shall not humble.
No husband e'er shall rob me of my pleasure,
None can resist me, what I wish I gain,
All do I love and never will refrain
Spite husbands' wrath to rob them of their treasure.
It may seem strange at first sight that this enthusiastic exponent of pure love should have led such a double life. But Sordello's conduct is not in the least paradoxical; in accordance with the tendency of the period, he carefully distinguished in his own heart between sexuality and love; before the one he lay prostrate, unable to find words enough in self-depreciation, so that he might the more exalt his mistress; but with respect to all other women he was a mere sensualist. We read that although he was "an expert in the treatment of women" in her presence his voice forsook him and he lost all self-control. Petrarch, who—while living with a very earthly woman—extolled all his life long a lofty being whom he called Laura, was akin to Sordello, although he was a far less brutal character. The latter approached the type of the seeker of love, the Don Juan.
In a tenzone between Peirol and the Dauphin of Auvergne, the former maintains that love must die at the moment of its consummation. "I cannot believe," he says, "that a true lover can continue to love after he has received the last favour." (Otto Weininger agrees with this.) But Peirol winds up with the subtle suggestion that though love be dead, a man should always continue to behave as if he were still in love.
The troubadours never weary of drawing a linebetweendrudariaandluxuria, pure love and base desire.Mezura, seemliness, is contrasted withdezmezura, licentiousness. Pure love is regarded as the creator of all high values, luxuriousness as their destroyer. In the same way the German minnesingers distinguished between "low" love and "high" love.
As both cultured minds and the upper classes, contemning sexuality, acknowledged spiritual love only, it follows as a matter of course that the avowal of such sentiments became good form; the motif that the honour of the beloved must be carefully shielded, and that no desire must dim her purity, occurs again and again. But it should not be forgotten that a poet may love a sentiment for its own sake, without being in the least influenced by it. Many a troubadour drew inspiration from an emotion which all praised as the supreme value; even if he had no earthly mistress, he adored the sublime sentiment. Not infrequently it happened that a troubadour who had been loud in praise of high love and denunciation of base desire—a trick of his trade—suddenly came to himself and changed his mind. Folquet of Marseilles, for instance, after more than ten years of vain sighing, came to the conclusion that he had been a fool.