If the age of chivalry is judged by the tone of its aubades, fables and romances, it may well have been 'profoundly immoral and licentious', to quote the historian Thomas Wright, whose History of Domestic Manners was published at the high tide of Victorian prudery. But the Middle Ages, like our own age, may have demanded sexual fantasy in its literature of escapism. What sort of impression of the morals of the nineteen-fifties would be gained, a thousand years hence, by a scholar mulling over specimens of popular literature bought from magazine stands in London and New York? Thomas Wright repeatedly tells his readers that it is impossible to describe what went on in feudal castles in the name of gallantry. 'This intercourse', he permits himself to say, 'extended to what we should now call the privacy of the bedchamber.' Young women were in the habit of 'going by night into the men's chambers and kissing and embracing them in their beds without candle'. Yet, in Wright's day, rural courting in some parts of the British Isles was uninhibited to a degree. Nor does the medieval habit of going to bed bare (an increasingly popular custom in modern America) seem in itself to justify a charge of licentiousness.
It may be equally dangerous to judge the morals and manners of an age from the admonitory pages of etiquette books, but it would be foolish to overlook this source. Among apprehensive males who compiled books of advice for their womenfolk was the trouvere Robert de Blois, who wrote Le Chatiment des Dames. In this he urges his daughter not to let men kiss her on the mouth, or to put their hands into her breasts. Whether this affable custom was a commonplace when gentlefolk met, or only between lovers, is not made dear. Robert de Blois finds it necessary to warn his daughter against undressing in the presence of men. She is to control her tongue at all times, to march to attention, looking neither to one side nor another, to glance at no man but her lover. She must not let vanity impel her to expose breast, leg or side. Her face may be uncovered, because handsome faces are intended to be seen; only if her face is ugly need she cover it. If her breath is bad, she can take aniseed for it. A later counsellor specifics the exact point on which a discreet woman's gaze should rest when walking-thirty feet in front of her.
Rather more light-hearted, yet practical, advice to a young lady is given by Sir Amanieu de Escas, in mid-thirteenth century. If, when she is on the castle battlements or in a shady arbour, a man attempts to talk courtship, she should not show a strange or sullen behaviour but defend herself with pleasant and pretty repartees.
If his talk annoys you, and makes you uneasy, I advise you to ask him questions, for instance, 'Which ladies do you think are more handsome, those of Gascony or England; and which are more courteous, and faithful and good?' And if he says those of Gascony, answer without hesitation: 'Sir, by your leave, English ladies are more courteous than those of any other country.' But if he prefers those of England, tell him Gascon ladies are much better; and thus carry on your discussions and call your companions to you to decide the question.
Francis Hueifer, who quotes this advice in his book The Troubadours (1878), says; (I defy any modern professor to indicate a more graceful and appropriate way of giving a harmless turn to a conversation or cutting short an awkward tete-a-t'ete.' It is possible that in our own times amorous American soldiers in Europe have been sidetracked by similar methods into debates on the respective merits of American and English (or French, German or Italian) girls.
The Knight of La Tour-Landry, in Anjou, offers his daughters advice in phrases which have all the ring of seventeenth-century puritanism, with the same tendency to gloat over wickedness. Remembering the follies of his contemporaries when young, the knight swore to warn his motherless daughters against the world's wickedness, and to this end he employed priests to gather moral tales and warnings. The result is a very odd book of precepts. In case his daughters are tempted to lechery in church, he tells them how a man defiled a woman at the altar, in punishment for which the two were made fast 'like a dog and a bitch together'. Especially does he caution his daughters against indulging in light glances, which can only lead to the foul sin of lechery. As for kissing and fondling, such practices stir the blood and invite the wrath of God. Young women should be careful never to be alone in the presence of any man except father or son (elsewhere women are warned not to be alone with priests, except at confession).
To discourage his daughters from showing off their figures, the knight tells how a suitor journeyed to wed a maiden who, for his benefit, had arrayed herself in thin clothes. These made her look so cold that he changed his mind and married her sister.
The knight unbends so far as to admit that he once debated with his late wife whether ladies and damsels should hold any traffic with paramours. Was it not possible (he had argued) for a paramour to be incited by love to great deeds? His wife's view was that the love of knights was permissible if they contented themselves with worship and honour only. To the knight's suggestion that a suitor might wish to bestow kisses on his lady, the wife pointed out that kissing was 'cousin to the foul deed'. A little regretfully (one feels) the knight concurs, and he advises his daughters that if any man speaks to them of love, it is their duty to leave his presence or to summon a third party.
At the close of the thirteenth century, the cult of romantic love-both in its pure and in its most cynical form-was crystallized in that schizophrenic work, The Romance of the Rose. Guillaume de Lords wrote the first half, in terms of innocent and (as it now seems) tedious allegory. Some forty years later Jean de Meung, ruse and sceptical, tacked on the second half, ending in a passage which even now blushing translators dare not tackle. If Guillaume's readers were not sure what the Rose was, Jean's readers were in no doubt at all. In the second half are long paraphrased tracts of Ovid's The Art ofLffve. The Romance of the Rose was a wildly un-Christian work, and tremendously popular; indeed, its fame spanned two centuries. The pure, if they did not read too far, could find texts in it, and so could the impure, if they did not start too soon. Devout and irreverent, The Romance of the Rose enshrined that dual attitude to sex which marked the Middle Ages.
Like every fashion, courtly love flourished only to be 'debunked'. The poets had overdone it; such follies as Ulrich von Lichtenstein boasted in his Frauendienst-cutting off his finger and sending it to his lady, dressing as a beggar and mingling with lepers at her gate-made parody almost unnecessary.
On one hand, courtly love had distracted chivalry from its first high purpose, the Crusades. On the other, it had taught rude knights gentler arts, and left a tradition of gallantry which was to survive the break-up of the feudal world, and to linger on in the verses of medieval poets. But, as Frederick Engels observes in a disillusioned survey of man's matrimonial progress: 'From the love which strives to break up marriage to the love which is to be its foundation, there is still a long road, which chivalry never fully traversed.'1 The Church still had to be convinced that love was not lewdness, and that Christianity and sexual desire could blend in a not ignoble, domestic flame. In fact, it was the Church's opposition to romantic love that helped to advance the cult, since passion cannot flourish without obstacles to inflame it. 'Christianity has done much for love by making it a sin,' says Anatole France.
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